Transition Town Tooting

Author: Transition Town Tooting

  • Pop-up Cinema in Furzedown Friday 10th July

    Pop-Up Cinema on the Green at the local bowling club in Furzedown, to enjoy a social evening, meet people and raise funds for the Furzedown Low Carbon Zone workshops we’re planning for this winter.  
    Free popcorn!
    At Streatham Park Bowling Club, Pringle Gardens, London SW16 1SH 
    Timings: 7:00pm to 9:30pm 

    We’re showing ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ by Michael Winterbottom with Russell Brand, plus a short film of Naomi Klein’s ‘This Changes Everything’.  The screen is in a marquee, Spanish street food stall Moyete Man will be serving his delicious dishes, and the bar is open before and after.
    Tickets are selling fast – there’s a handful left so do book now! Tickets cost £5, or £2 for students / unemployed. Reserve by emailing us or book online at eventbrite

    London | Lambeth | Streatham
    Streatham Park Bowling Club, Pringle Gardens, London SW16 1SH – See more at: http://www.projectdirt.com/apps/event/37051/#sthash.sJPmG3wS.dpuf

    Pop-Up Cinema on the green at the local bowling club in Furzedown. The screen is in a marquee, bar is open all night and Spanish street food stall Moyete Man will be serving his delicious dishes. Tickets are selling already so remember to book. We’re raising funds for the workshops we’re planning for this winter.
    Details below –
    Pop-Up Cinema showing ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ by Michael Winterbottom with Russell Brand, plus short film of Naomi Klein’s ‘This Changes Everything’
    Book your Tickets: £5 or £2 for students / unemployed
    Reserve by emailing us: furzedownlowcarbonzone@gmail.com or online:
    eventbrite.co.uk/e/flcz-pop-up-cinema-tickets-17344991336
    Screen in Marquee on the lawn
    Bar open before and after
    Free popcorn
    – See more at: http://www.projectdirt.com/apps/event/37051/#sthash.sJPmG3wS.dpuf
    Pop-Up Cinema on the green at the local bowling club in Furzedown. The screen is in a marquee, bar is open all night and Spanish street food stall Moyete Man will be serving his delicious dishes. Tickets are selling already so remember to book. We’re raising funds for the workshops we’re planning for this winter.
    Details below –
    Pop-Up Cinema showing ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ by Michael Winterbottom with Russell Brand, plus short film of Naomi Klein’s ‘This Changes Everything’
    Book your Tickets: £5 or £2 for students / unemployed
    Reserve by emailing us: furzedownlowcarbonzone@gmail.com or online:
    eventbrite.co.uk/e/flcz-pop-up-cinema-tickets-17344991336
    Screen in Marquee on the lawn
    Bar open before and after
    Free popcorn
    – See more at: http://www.projectdirt.com/apps/event/37051/#sthash.sJPmG3wS.dpuf
    Pop-Up Cinema on the green at the local bowling club in Furzedown. The screen is in a marquee, bar is open all night and Spanish street food stall Moyete Man will be serving his delicious dishes. Tickets are selling already so remember to book. We’re raising funds for the workshops we’re planning for this winter.
    Details below –
    Pop-Up Cinema showing ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ by Michael Winterbottom with Russell Brand, plus short film of Naomi Klein’s ‘This Changes Everything’
    Book your Tickets: £5 or £2 for students / unemployed
    Reserve by emailing us: furzedownlowcarbonzone@gmail.com or online:
    eventbrite.co.uk/e/flcz-pop-up-cinema-tickets-17344991336
    Screen in Marquee on the lawn
    Bar open before and after
    Free popcorn
    – See more at: http://www.projectdirt.com/apps/event/37051/#sthash.sJPmG3wS.dpuf

  • Any Electrical or Electronic Items that need fixing….

    Electrical or electronic items that need fixing?

    Broken something and don’t want to throw it away?
    .

    The Restart Project, encourage and empower people to use their electrical and electronics longer!  They are back in Tooting this weekend so do come along!


    Saturday 26th September – 2.30 – 5.30pm
    Mushkil Aasaan, 220 – 222 Upper Tooting Road, SW17 7EW (next to Nandos) 


    Do note that Restart Parties are a community self-repair space where you take responsibility for your own gadgets and data, so please do not forget to take any back-ups beforehand, if relevant – and if possible arrive during the first two hours to allow time for fixing!

    Read more about one of our previous parties here.

    We hope to make Restart Parties a regular feature in Tooting and are on the lookout for skilled local fixers. If you are interested come along and say hello – or email Hilary Jennings on transitiontowntooting@gmail.com

    More info at Restart Project (http://therestartproject.org/) including details of regular skillshares.

  • Carbon Conversations – Energy at Home

    We’re into week 2 of Carbon Conversations and this week, workshop attendee, Robin Dru, gives his report on the session focused on Home Energy.

    This week’s session on Home Energy was fascinating, full of tips and new technologies. Over the course of the evening we:

    • discussed what is important to us in making a home comfortable, 
    • played a game based around reducing a family’s carbon emissions (oh yes we did!) 
    • and had the chance to learn from Susan, a green architect who has set out to reduce the carbon emissions of her home by 80%. 

    We all left excited, with some practical tips and new ideas to implement in our own homes.
    First off we thought about the important things to each of us in our own homes. This ranged from practical things like bike storage and south vs. north facing through to things like positive family/house dynamics.

    The discussion hovered over the issue of how to get other house members on board with making changes. Several ideas were thrown up, like making things easy e.g. clear signs for what can be recycled, making things fun e.g. smart meters to monitor energy consumption and making things comfortable e.g. draught-proofing your house.

    After this we moved into playing a game based around a family with a limited budget trying to reduce their carbon footprint. Whilst the game was perhaps a little one-dimensional, it helped to expose us to different ideas, divided into good housekeeping, weekend jobs, appliances and building jobs. A flavour of things mentioned: housekeeping changes like regularly defrosting your fridge and freezer and monitoring your monthly bills; weekend jobs like draught-stripping windows and doors and bigger changes like triple-glazing windows and various types of insulation.

    How much energy do areas of your house lose?

    Finally we had the pleasure of listening to Susan, an inspiring architect who has managed to reduce the carbon emissions of her family home by over 50% in 3 years for ~£25,000. Whilst obviously she has the advantage of construction being her bread and butter, she offered us some a couple of key tips: 1) the importance of awareness and monitoring and 2) the importance of comfort (and how the vast majority of times carbon reduction goes hand-in-hand with this).

    We left excited and energised from the session, equipped with knowledge and greater understanding of energy consumption in the home. Right, now to find a smart meter!

    For more comprehensive information on changes you can make, please visit the Energy Saving Trust.

    If you’d like to find out more about the Carbon Conversations series of workshops, please contact us. We hope to run another series in the autumn.

  • Growing for the Foodival

    Are you growing for the Foodival?  Unfortunately so are the caterpillars! They are causing havoc on the local cabbage patches!

    Foodival is TTT’s sustainable celebration of local growing, local cooking and all things food related, taking place this year over the weekend of September 12th & 13th.

    There will be a competition for weird looking vegetables, something on fermentation, a schools cook off challenge, plenty of entertainment, including I am reliably informed a giant pea, as well as the usual features such as Top Tooting Cook and dishes to sample cooked by local restaurants.

    Keep an eye on the Foodival blog for the latest information and keep growing for this year’s event despite adversarial critters! 

    No, not these people … they are donors of home grown veg & fruit snapped at a previous Foodival.  Recognise anyone?  Fancy joining in this year?

    Yes You Can!

  • What would a low carbon future look like?

    The first session of six in our ninth Carbon Conversations series took place this week.
    We dug into motivations for reducing our carbon footprints, who is responsible for addressing climate change and what a low carbon future might look like.

    Each week, a different person taking part will report on the themes of each session, giving you a flavour of the series as a whole, while picking up some tips on how you might be able to reduce your own carbon footprint.

    Carbon Conversations facilitator, Ben Cuddon, gives us his impressions of the first session.

    We took some time this week to look at who is responsible for addressing climate change, and the question was raised of how far individuals can make a difference. There were certainly different opinions – some thought individuals could make a real difference; others weren’t convinced.

    We discussed how business and government can take meaningful action and whether legislation or ethical convictions will be the driving force for change.  The question of whether moral or legal change comes first is a fascinating one to think about!

    Group members shared thoughts over how the problem could be solved. Whether our entire economic model (free-market capitalism, endless economic growth) was the essential problem, or whether climate change could be solved within capitalism, through technological innovation.

    We thought about why we want to reduce our carbon footprints and why it’s important. A range of opinions emerged – from the importance of the equal distribution of resources around people to the importance of reducing the world’s overall consumption of resources. Most people seemed to agree that activism on climate change brought people together through a sense of shared purpose, and that this made it exciting and fun.

    Finally we tried to imagine what a low-carbon future world might look like. Some of our ideas were easy to imagine – less long-distance travel, more vegan and vegetarian food, less material consumption. Others were more surprising. I liked the idea of making insects and garden creatures a bigger part of our diet.

    Calculating your carbon footprint

    Each member of the group also calculated their carbon footprint, so they can start to explore areas where reductions are possible. If you’d like to calculate your footprint, head over to Carbon Collaborations, where you’ll find a range of calculators including some for children.

  • Urban Heat in Tooting

    Today we facilitated our first workshop on a new project in Tooting which aims to explore how communities can best deal with the impact of heatwaves. Called “Urban Heat” the project is funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and run by the Policy Studies Institute at the University of Westminster (See http://www.psi.org.uk/site/project_detail/urban_heat for more details).
     
    In an age when average global temperature is on the rise, the workshops will look at the effect of heatwaves on communities, particularly with regard to more vulnerable members of our society. Tooting is one of three locations chosen to participate alongside Hounslow (with South West London Environment Network) & Hackney (with Age UK). 

    Workshop held at CFC in Tooting today

    In parallel, the project will also be working with the local councils, emergency services, and other public bodies to see how actions for and by the community could feed into their emergency plans.

    Today was a successful first foray into this area, on an appropriately warm day, if not anywhere near the heatwave threshold for London of two consecutive days at 32°C or above.  We look forward to the second workshop on July 1st and aim to disseminate some of the findings and developments via this blog.

    If anyone reading this is interested in taking part please do contact Charles to find out more via transitiontowntooting@gmail.com
    DT

  • A lovely Tooting Community Garden Open Day

    Our Open Day on Sunday 14th June was full of contrasts. A damp and quiet start with a steady trickle of visitors, good conversations and storytelling with Aesop Grimm gathered pace in the afternoon as the sun came out. We cooked delicious treats prepared by the Tooting Field Day group on the charcoal fire, while fanSHEN’s The Apple Cart was performed all around us, with the Furzedown Oak sculpture underway and our plastic bottle greenhouse being raised by many hands (it was great to have tall visitors for some of the key jobs…). 

    By the end of the day all was quiet again, and the morning felt a very long time ago, a different time and place. That’s what is great about the social and growing microclimate of the Community Garden!

    To share our own first reactions, we’ve posted a slide show below. We’ll return to some of the themes of the day again – the garden as a place for nature, to be outdoors, for learning, for creativity, for growing and cooking, and for enjoyable company of all ages. 

    Enjoy the photos and come and visit again or for the first time. We’re open every Sunday between 11:00 and 1:00 for our welcoming sessions at 5 North Drive, SW16 1RN.

    And for the diary, the free July Field Day is on Saturday 12th. Details are here online.

  • Meet & Make Bunting Party

  • Annual Tooting Community Garden Open Day Sunday June 14th 11am – 5pm

    All welcome to our free Garden Open Day!

    There’s plenty to join in with:
    > For the third year running we’re part of the Open Gardens and Squares London-wide weekend.
    > Aesop Grimm is telling intriguing stories.
    > We’re linked in with the local Furzedown Festival, and the Furzedown Oak Community Project will start to shape a sculpture.
    > fanSHEN come to the Garden with the June Tooting Field Day: we’ll be cooking on charcoal, and fanSHEN will perform their show The Apple Cart.

    And: you can simply relax, chat and enjoy the space. 

    Timings and details:  

    For more details on the Field Day arrangements for preparing treats to cook, please click here

    We’ll be posting any late news on the Open Day on our Tooting Community Garden pages on Facebook.
    Any queries? Please email us here

    To download the Open Day poster, please click here.

    Here’s where we are
    Off Tooting Common on the south side at 5 North Drive, SW16 1RN:

    We look forward to seeing you!

  • Carbon Conversations – free workshops to reduce your carbon footprint

    Do you want to make some changes to reduce your carbon footprint and save money, but not sure how or where to start?

    Join a group of local residents in a free series of 6 sessions to explore how small changes can make a big difference. You’ll assess your own footprint, then together we’ll look at home energy, transport and travel, food, consumption and waste to help you make changes that fit your situation.
    To read personal blog posts by participants in our 2014 series of meetings, click here and scroll down the six posts (they are in reverse order..).

    Sessions will take place every Monday, 7pm-9pm, from 22nd June – 27th July 2015, at 43 Woodfield Ave, SW16 1LE (near Tooting Bec Common).

    Trained facilitators from Transition Town Tooting will run each session. Please email Jane at transitiontowntooting@gmail.com to join, express an interest, or ask any questions. 

    The workshops are free.  We ask for a voluntary contribution of £14.00 per participant to cover the direct cost of “In Time for Tomorrow?” – the excellent Carbon Conversations handbook.

    For more information, download our flyer.

    All welcome – you do not have to be an expert!