Transition Town Tooting

Author: Transition Town Tooting

  • #Foodival2016 starts tomorrow! Join in, donate produce and celebrate local grow-&-cook-your-own

    The Tooting #Foodival2016 starts Saturday 10th from 1300-1700

    This is the ninth year we’ve run the Tooting Foodival, and every year we call out to local gardeners for home-grown donations.

    Every year we’re amazed at the range and quality of what gets grown locally by beginners and experts in backyards or pots, on balconies or allotments.
    Maybe you took part in our Growing Tooting classes in spring 2016?
    Maybe you have been growing your own all your life.

    Here’s our ‘I Grew This’ poster of locally-grown donations at the 2015 Foodival.

    To contribute your locally-grown donations, please select something you’ve grown which you’d like to share and bring it along to Mushkil Aasaan, 222 Upper Tooting Road SW17 7EW between 1:00 pm and 4:00 pm on Saturday 10th Sept. There are lots of other activities at the venue on Saturday.

    • After 4:00 pm on Saturday 10th, local cooks taking part in the Top Tooting Cook event will be able to choose produce from what’s on offer. There will be the potential for wonderful dishes – maybe with surprising ingredients that the cooks had not anticipated using before seeing the selection. Top Tooting Cook will be judged on Sunday afternoon at Mushkil Aasaan.
    • Then we’ll store remaining vegetables overnight for use in the Soup Disco cook-up with music and dancing on Sunday evening in Tooting Market.
    • Any surplus will be donated to the Battersea Canteen supper clubs being run by the London Cooking Project and Tooting’s own Be Enriched. The clubs aim to reduce food waste and feed those in need.  And to CARAS, who run clubs and support services for refugees and asylum seekers in south west London.
    A huge Jerusalem Artichoke!
    And small ones – but with big leaves!

    Whatever you decide to bring along, donating is all about celebrating local food and wanting to share that enthusiasm with others.
    It’s about sharing Tooting’s flavour, diversity and interest! 

  • Soup Disco … What Are You Wearing?

    This year’s Foodival culminates in a Soup Disco in Tooting Market on Sunday night at 7pm. What are you wearing and what veg are you chopping?  Send us a picture inspired by veg and disco (see above!). Bring a peeler and your dancing shoes, DJ till 10 pm, Unwined and Graveney Gin will both be open, too.

    As usual the Tooting festival of sustainable food starts with donations of locally grown produce at Mushkil Aasaan on Saturday 10th, where you can enter the Top Tooting Cook and Ugly Vegetable Competitions, learn about bee-keeping and sample some taster dishes.

    All the info you need is HERE on the Foodival blog.  We look forward to seeing you this weekend.

  • Counting Down To Foodival

    This year’s Foodival is nearly upon us as next weekend we will run our 9th annual celebration of all things local and sustainable in Tooting’s food culture.  For the latest news head to the Foodival blog.


    As usual we will be collecting donations of locally grown fruit and vegetables at Mushkil Aasaan on Saturday and there’ll be a chance to enter the Top Tooting Cook and Ugly Vegetable competitions, as well as check out many other food related goings on.

    On Sunday we have the truly marvellous concept of a Soup Disco where you can help wash, chop and cook all the fantastic locally grown, donated produce to make an enormous soup, before cutting up the dance floor with your vegetable-themed moves!  

    Other dance styles will be perfectly acceptable and our resident DJ will be keeping you grooving till 10pm.  We hope to see you there!

  • Celebrating Local Food Together as a Community: Preview of #Foodival2016 on the 10th & 11th Sept

    We’re very excited about TTT’s ninth annual Tooting Foodival which is all about Celebrating Local Food Together as a Community. 
    We’re planning the details now – here’s a snapshot preview.
    Plenty more information to come later on.

    ‘Local food plus local community’ is the weekend’s theme:

    I Grew This! (Foodival 2015)

    Saturday 10th Sept activities run from from 1pm to 5pm and are based at Mushkil Aasaan, 222 Upper Tooting Road SW17 7EW. 

    On Saturday we welcome all local growers to share and donate some of their local produce – maybe a bag of potatoes, or a single chilli pepper…whatever you would like to share.

    Mark where you’ve been growing on our Growing Tooting Map.

    We’ll take your photo proudly holding your fruit or veg for our 2016 I Grew This! poster and we’ll display what’s shared.

    Where will all this wonderful donated local produce go?

    Top Tooting Cook! 
    First, donated produce goes to anyone who wants to enter our fun Top Tooting Cook event. Take some produce or recipes away (or cook with what you have grown at home), and bring back what you make on Sunday for the light-hearted judging and more at Mushkil Aasaan from 4 to 7pm.

    The TTC hat – not the only prize you might win

    Show off your culinary skills using fruit and veg grown locally and you could win a prize… and the coveted title “Top Tooting Cook”!
    Find out all about the competition here and get in touch with Belinda to enter.
    For inspiration, look at these delicious dishes – sorrel soup, risotto with cavolo nero, fava bean toast with egg – cooked by visitors to the Tooting Community Garden, using produce picked that day!

    Thanks Naomi, Charles and Janine.

    Soup Disco!


    Second, local produce donated on Saturday will go to Sunday evening’s Soup Disco party from 7pm to 10pm in Tooting Market, 21-23 Tooting High Street SW17 0SN.

    From 7pm, we will all starting chopping the veg to make our delicious Tooting soups for a shared meal. And throughout this collective cook-up, our top local DJ will be spinning the tunes so you can show off your dance skills as well as your kitchen skills.

    Beginners welcome throughout… fabulous outfits very welcome!
    Plus, some Graveney Gin and Unwined will also be open for business – it’s going to be a memorable night!

    Other activities for all ages on Saturday at Mushkil Aasaan from 1pm to 5pm will include:

    Celebrate reducing waste and having fun by displaying your Ugly Veg. Or as it’s called in the USA: Produce with Personality.

    Learn about urban beekeeping, taste SW12 and SW17 honey and get close to bees. Local beekeeper Richard is bringing a demonstration hive of live bees. He can chat about bees & honey – and about sources of info for planting and gardening to encourage bees and other pollinators.

    Sprouted teff seed

    Practice being a successful home farmer by sprouting seeds – easy and delicious. Fresh seeds sprouted at home only have to travel a few inches ‘from plot to plate’. 
    NO food miles!

    Play our fun low carbon living games including exploring food’s footprint and much more.

    Get hands-on and creative with crafts linked to food and the Soup Disco – all ages can come and enjoy making.

    In the garden…

    Explore the local network of community gardens which can offer you fun, exercise, friendship, time outdoors in nature and a place to grow healthy local food.
    Plus, you will pick up plenty of growing advice and encouragement to grow your own fresh food on window sill, a balcony or in a front garden.

    Discuss the other local sustainability projects that Transition Tooting facilitates with many different partners, find out how to get involved – and we welcome your suggestions and new ideas.

    All welcome to #Foodival2016!

  • Dragon Bean bench in Tooting Community Garden: the grand opening

    Yesterday we officially opened the Dragon Bean bench at the Community Garden Summer Picnic!

    Gentle finishing touches last week

    For the past twelve months Fio Adamson has been guiding a participatory sculpture project in the Community Garden.

    About to cut the ribbon & unveil the bench

    Now, can Fio rest….?

    Working with many pieces of the American Oak felled on the Furzedown Rec, the Furzedown Oak Project was born.
    Over this past year around 80 people of all ages have worked with Fio to imagine, draw, visualise, carry, carve and advise on what’s evolved into the Dragon Bean bench.

    Our Summer Picnic celebrated the Dragon Bean and good company in the Garden: we had delicious food, made popcorn and cooked potatoes on a fire, enjoyed volcano kettle tea, picked brambles, weeded the leeks, painted beautiful signs for the vegetable plots…

    Lots more picnic photos on the Community Garden facebook pages

    We’re so lucky to have the use of the Community Garden land, loaned to us by Tooting charity Mushkil Aasaan. It means we can facilitate community projects like this and our outdoor learning with schools. Plus we can enjoy the Community Garden sessions with anyone who wishes to come, every Sunday.

    We’ve opened the space on over 225 Sundays since 2011.

    Why ‘Dragon Bean’? Come and have a look!
    The sculpture-bench is ready to sit or lie on in the Tooting Community Garden on Sundays from 11:00 to 1:00 at 5 North Drive SW16 1RN.
    We post any updates on our Facebook pages. All welcome!

  • Two inspiring & successful sustainability projects!

    Sharing two inspiring projects! 
    Both projects aim to demonstrate and create something that is beautiful and functional, creating results which please people and show that sustainability is achievable and attractive now.

    One is in Tooting: a front garden restoration that takes into account affordability and biodiversity.
    One is north London-based: an bamboo bicycle enterprise which is imaginative and practical.

    Tooting Front Garden Restoration
    The project has been a partnership between a housing association, residents, project leader and a professional team including Community Gardener Rose deFalbe. The intention was to carry out the restoration in a way that is participatory, affordable, adaptable, biodiverse and with zero environmental footprint. There’s a full description of the project downloadable here.
    Here’s the result photographed earlier this week. 37 Manville Road – go and have a look as it’s a beautiful sight!

    In April the restoration was Commended at the Wandsworth Design Awards. Here’s the team in front of their display with the Mayor of Wandsworth who gave out the awards.
    Congratulations!

    Bamboo Bicycle Club
    Engineer James Marr has established this business designing cycle frames out of bamboo (imported at the moment) and hemp (grown in Yorkshire). All the details online here.

    A unique element is that BBC sells no finished bikes at all: the new owners and riders make the frames and fit out the bikes themselves. James want to offer cycles that are sustainable, recyclable and designed collaboratively according to need.
    As a consumer, the maker-rider is in charge and makes all the decisions. Each maker practices or learns new skills.

    ‘His and hers’ road bikes

    Over 200 have been designed and built in all shapes and sizes (look at their Hall of Frames) – either from kits at home or on weekend courses where the output is a bamboo cycle frame that you then fit out with the drive train, wheels, handlebars, etc. Track bikes, tandems, balance bikes…and a new project in Africa where farmers will make their own bikes that can each carry 100kg.


    Another practical BBC project now: school groups of 5 children are making bamboo BMX frames for shared use – fantastic teamworking and design & technology experience.

    A vision for the future is that a family will plant bamboo on their urban plot. When the children are 8 they’ll cut their materials in the garden to make their first bikes at home… a lovely image.

    TTT met the Bamboo Bicycle Club at the London Permaculture Festival last Sunday, which we mentioned in our recent mailout.
    It was a great scene of stalls, children playing, several hundred people chatting and engaging, good food and a demonstration garden – plus two dozen workshops to choose from.

    We explored permaculture in our Growing Tooting grow-your-own workshops (for example in the 6th class and handout). While the concept covers far more than gardening, it is rooted in growing.

    Permaculture teacher Patrick Whitfield described it like this: 

    ‘Permaculture is a design system for human habitats which work with nature rather than against it. 
    It is modelled on natural living systems, and makes use of both traditional skills and modern science’.
     
    ‘Transition Towns’ and ‘Permaculture’ have very similar approaches. There’s a lot of shared history, research and ideas (plus some jargon which may not always help); both cover a huge international and diverse range of activities; both are practical and can-do. 
    The hall of stalls at the Permaculture Festival on 31st July

  • Tooting Community Garden Summer Picnic 7th Aug

    All welcome to join us for an informal and free family picnic on Sunday 7th August from 1- 3 pm at the Community Garden at 5 North Drive SW16 1RN.

    At 2pm we’ll unveil the oak sculpture that many hands have been carving with Fio’s support since June ’15

    Come over from 11am if you would also like to do some gardening!

    The picnic is going to be a simple and enjoyable family get-together, and a time to chat and enjoy the garden. Please bring whatever you wish to eat, plus some to share.

    We’ll provide tea-making with the volcano kettle – and there’s mint, lemon balm and more to sample.
    It would be very helpful if you could bring a mug for tea.

    We’ll prepare a bed of hot charcoal. Try our special long-handled popcorn maker…!

    At 2pm we’ll unveil the oak sculpture 

    No alcohol please, out of respect for Mushkil Aasaan the social charity who lends us the garden land. Thanks for your consideration.

    And no need to RSVP: just come along.

    We’ll post any late picnic notices on the Tooting Community Garden facebook pages.

    See you on Sunday!

  • Restart Party comes to Tooting!

    Do you have broken electrical or electronic items that you don’t want to throw away?

    Good at fixing or mending stuff or would like to learn how?   

    Come to a Restart Party!

    Tuesday 9th August from 7 – 9pm

    Restart Parties are the antidote to the thow-away society, why chuck out your electrical and electronic stuff when they could easily last longer?  Laptops, cameras, kitchen appliances, gadgets etc. – we will try to mend anything or at least tell you what’s wrong and what to do next and it’s all completely free!
    Here is a great description of a previous event in Tooting to get an idea about what goes on…

    Do remember that Restart Parties are a community self-repair space where you take responsibility for your own electronic items and data, so please don’t forget to take any back-ups beforehand, if relevant.  Also, if possible, do please arrive during the first two hours to allow time for fixing!
    The next Restart parties in Tooting, all at Mushkil Aasaan, 220 – 222 Upper Tooting Road, SW17 7EW are scheduled for :

    > Tuesday 9th August, 7 – 9.30 pm

    > Saturday 12th November, 2 – 5pm
    More info about Restart including details of regular skillshares at www.therestartproject.org

  • Outdoor Learning and doing with NCS Challenge

    On Sunday 17th July, Jeni Walker and Richard Couldrey continued with the 4th year of our annual pattern of work with the National Citizen Service through “The Challenge” – a personal development and social integration programme offered to 15 – 17 year olds which includes a project focused day with a Charity or Community Group.

    Emer Clark, our principle contact and Challenge Mentor, reflected that interaction with Transition Town Tooting challenges the participants to step out their comfort zones and enables them to make a contribution to a local community, which is a huge part of the overall aims of NCS Challenge.

    For us, this project chimes loudly with our aim to work with Young People of all ages – from the Reception Class of Gatton Primary to a poster competition with Graveney Secondary School for Foodival last year, to name but 2.

    The 11 participants of this years NCS Challenge with the results of their labours!

    Read on to find out what happened on the day…
    After an introductory session on Saturday 9th July, the 11 participants spent the week doing 2 tasks for Transition Town Tooting to bring back to the Project Day:

    • fundraising for the project day together – understanding the value of the work we do and championing that to raise money for materials and tools needed.
    • pitching for £50 to a Dragon’s Den of experts, again for the project day.
    Both activities are focused on the ideas and application of the Young People involved – if they don’t creatively engage and bring ideas, the project wouldn’t work. Jeni and I continued this theme, giving a palette of options for the project day and asking the participants to “vote” on the preferred options.

    Rubbing down for painting
    Noticeboard decoration!
    Signs from re-use bed slats

    During the project day, we completed…

    • Re-covering the Rainwater Catchment – a necessary bit of maintenance for this Gatton Primary Project of 2013.
    • Sign making and information board design and making – a wonderful addition to the garden for us to better communicate what is growing and the range of projects to visitors new and old.
    • Bottle Greenhouse repairs – another Gatton Primary School project, this time from 2015, that needed a dose of TLC.
    Back to Emer for closing remarks, “The feedback was very positive. On the whole these teams had never been involved in this kind of community project before, but they got involved and by the end they certainly all learnt something new and had a really enjoyable day! It was great to hear the stories about the day-all of them revealing just how stuck in and creative this project allowed the young people to be.”

    Thank you Challengers for your work in all aspects of this part of your programme! Richard and Jeni

  • Growing Tooting finale – the 8th weekend of TTT’s local grow-your-own classes completes the series

    In the final local growing sessions in Balham, Tooting and Wandsworth we celebrated progress and looked at what comes next now the programme is complete. 

    We discussed harvesting and preparing food (and bringing any surpluses to the Tooting Foodival), and asked about what the participants might need next in their growing journey. 
    Suggestions so far: ‘local gardeners’ question time’, a Facebook group, occasional meetings, visiting each others’ growing spaces.

    Plus, local community gardens including Tooting Community Garden and Wendelsworth Community Garden can offer support.

    Exploring the herb bed
    With the Balham group, Rose identified plants and explained how the herb bed at Tooting Community Garden is managed, in particular how foliage is cut and left lying to suppress weeds and help prepare the ground for sowing – and the group raised a glass to celebrate.
    Fresh produce laid out on the Eatwell pie chart
    With the Tooting group, Belinda took us through the new Public Health England Eatwell Guide. The Guide illustrates how to achieve eating a healthy dietary balance of good food – including what we can grow in our gardens.
    Our 8th Growing Tooting Handout is available for all: please click here. To see all 8 handouts, and to read each fortnightly blog post, click on GROWING TOOTING in the quick links above.  
    Hats off to Martin for writing the handouts and facilitating the delivery of Growing Tooting so brilliantly! And to the others who co-facilitated: Eleanor, Belinda, Rose, Jeni and more.

    In summary the Growing Tooting series of 30 local workshops reached 24 people who came to each session, another 24 who came to some of each local series, and another two dozen who are interested for another time.  70+ people are connected in a new way to local growing and each other. 


    There’s an evaluation under way, and we’ll share the results.

    There’s been a second major part of Growing Tooting’s activities. As agreed with the Wandsworth Big Society Fund who gave us financial support for the whole programme, we also supported local gardeners with the development of growing spaces. We’ve been working with six gardens. Please see our blog post from March for more info.

    Two examples include:
    Ravenstone Primary School. The school garden’s layout and access has been improved so children do not get so muddy on wet ground before returning to their next class.
    The school Gardening Club has been encouraged and enthused by Mary, Barbara and Richard.
    The garden has extended its reach to link with the teaching at the school, school events such as the Summer Fair and the parent body and wider community networks.
    Talking of community links, Thomas from Ravenstone pushed a planted-up wheelbarrow in TTT’s #TourdeTooting extravaganza ten days ago.

    CARAS Women’s Drop-in Group. TTT already work with CARAS on TTT’s Rooting in Tooting project. Growing Tooting support helped us work with a new group of CARAS service users, 12 to 18 adult refugee women who attend a weekly class devoted to english language and to participation together exploring new skills. A programme of seven facilitated sessions saw the women planting at their drop-in site, exploring favourite foods and recipes, and learning about sprouting seeds and grains at home. 
    Many thanks to Silvia, Fio, Jane, Lucy, Hilary, Rosalind, Jeni and more who helped to run these classes, and to many friends who donated plants, including Martin, Jane, Deb, Fio, Chuck, and Brockwell Park Community Greenhouses.

    Finally – do get in touch with us at TTT to explore how to start or keep on Growing Tooting (and Balham and Wandsworth). 
    Thanks all for taking part!
    – Chuck