Please join us on Saturday 15th December from 1:00 pm to 4:00 pm for an exciting afternoon of Christmas making in Tooting Library, 75 Mitcham Road. This time we’ll be focusing on what we can do with paper: folding, cutting, glueing, decorating…
All welcome: drop-in activities for all ages. No need to book. For flyer, please click here.
Two of us from TTT joined the Wildlife Gardening Forum on 28 November – a hundred people face to face from many sectors and all sizes of organisation: government departments, researchers, urban farmers, scientists, community enterprises, architects, ‘green infrastructure’ experts…and individual gardeners.
The programme (see it here.) was an excellent fit with local steps to a sustainable Tooting – at the very practical level of bringing more of nature into all our lives, and appreciating nature’s relationship with our wellbeing, as well as responding to global challenges like the growth of cities and climate change.
For interest: do you know…
That over 60% of the area of the City of London is roofed – a third of which is suitable now to become ‘green roofs’ growing native plants, cooling the environment, and looking beautiful?
The Forum aims to share practice, knowledge, and science, not hot air – and that reminds me, the meeting was held in a retrofitted tram shed which has been developed to the ‘passive house’ standard: super-insulated, airtight…and with no supplementary heating at all. Great to have the location, and the topic, all joined up!
It left me with positive examples of things we can do together locally. In particular it was great timing in relation to the current community consultation on plans for Springfield Park, and the opportunity to make sustainability and biodiversity the foundations for all the activities of the new Park.
We’ll follow up with more about that – for now, see www.springfieldregeneration.co.uk
This local project with the Furzedown Low Carbon Zone involved many partners, including Transition Town Tooting.
The Award citation described the project as ‘an excellent example of a local sustainability alliance: learning with and learning from other organisations and sectors’.
Andy Marks, Head Teacher of Eardley School, outlined the new project starting in the school: the first step is an energy efficiency evaluation being carried out this week.
And we had an excellent celebratory cake!
Many thanks to all the project’s participants and supporters – we will share more updates soon. For more about the Award, please see the more detailed posting below in this blog.
Some of the hands that contributed to this weekend’s Vision & Pathways Day, again held at the fantastic chapel in Streatham Cemetery. Thanks to everyone who contributed, especially Malik Gul of WCEN and Graham Peterson of the Greener Jobs Alliance who both joined us over lunch.
Will Tooting begin to look like this imagined plasticine scene some time in the near future? (Where Jane claims dogs will rule … which might fit with Jasmine’s petting zoo …)
And what a lot of potential projects we have to develop in 2013 (see left) How will we choose?
Lots of food for thought … & a great selection of home made food brought by everyone (thanks Mal for organising).
We did some listening:
some stretching:
and some prioritising:
One of our next steps will be to refine TTT’s Strategy. We’ll share when and how we’ll do that: all welcome to contribute.On Saturday 3rd November TTT helped Tooting Library run a drop-in Day of Stories.
Library staff and volunteers read engaging stories, Alison offered a participative ‘live’ story, and Jane & Charles ran 2 hours of making and crafts that also told a story: ‘What would you like to see in Tooting?’
Children and adults took part, and there was a great atmosphere on the first floor of the Library – the sun streaming in the windows, mixed ages busy on different activities on the carpet or tables, a row of other young people on the computers, storytelling in the middle of the space: all in all, certainly what we love to see in Tooting!
Many thanks to Liz, Bill and Heather in the Library. We are hoping to be be offering crafts and making again on Saturday December 15th in the Library – more details to follow, and please come along.
South Thames College has won the prestigious 2012 Green Gown Award in the ‘Best Newcomer’ category, from a strong field of 5 other finalists.
Sadiq Khan MP will celebrate the Award with a local presentation to Sue Rimmer, Principal of South Thames College
The Green Gown Awards recognise exceptional sustainability initiatives being undertaken in tertiary education across the UK
This award was won for the project carried out in the Furzedown Low Carbon Zone with the Greener Jobs Alliance, Transition Town Tooting, and other valued local partners.
That’s fantastic recognition of hard work, and will help enormously with the profile (and funding!) of further projects.
For all the detail, see the Winner’s brochure: on page 4 there’s the detail about our project – including a picture of a TTT Carbon Conversations workshop in action in Furzedown. Go to the Awards website at http://www.eauc.org.uk/2012_green_gown_awards
We made this video in spring 2012 about the project – do have another look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNRx6tNFG8U
Award celebration:
There’s a celebration on Tuesday November 27th from 6 to 7pm at the Furzedown Project, 91-93 Moyser Road, SW16.
Sadiq Khan MP will present the Award to Sue Rimmer, Principal of South Thames College
All welcome for some celebration cake!
Details in the Events listing here on the TTT blog, and for a .pdf copy of the celebration flyer, click here.
Tooting Library + Transition Town Tooting present a free Day of Stories. Saturday 3rd November. Tooting Library, 75 Mitcham Road, SW17 9PD. Phone: 020 8871 7175
Come and celebrate the magic of stories at Tooting Library!Throughout the day staff and volunteers will be sharing some of their favourite stories in the specially-created Story Zone, featuring classics and new favourites. And, help put together a visual story of a sustainable future in Tooting!
The Day of Story at Tooting Library marks the launch of Transition Town Tooting’s Imagining Tooting project, which is gathering together views and ideas on a flourishing local future for Tooting, from many voices in the community.
Programme for the day:
10:30 am. Story: Handa’s Surprise, and Handa’s Hen
11:00 am. Story: Peace at Last and The Tiger Who Came to Tea
11:30 am. Story: The Gruffalo and The Gruffalo’s Child
12:00-2:00pm. Crafts & making with TTT. Come along and use the craft materials provided to make props and illustrations for a creative story about our shared future in Tooting.
For all ages – families, individuals, children and young people are welcome to join in. Drop in or stay as long as you like.
No art experience necessary – just bring along your interest in Tooting, and try out some fun techniques with TTT.
2:00 pm. Story: Local storyteller Alison Royce presents her Stories of Wonder and Surprise, for ages 7-adult.
2:30 pm. Story: Mog the Forgetful Cat and The Rainbow Fish
3:00 pm. Story: Dog’s Don’t do Ballet and Goldilocks and Just the One Bear
Children’s and adults’ book-sale all day
Starting on Saturday 20th October, there’s an interactive installation developed by local school children and artists at Sprout Arts, 74 Moyser Rd. Details here.
Last weekend, TTT had a stand at St George’s Community Open Day on Sat 13th October. We displayed pictures of the community garden, met many interested people, and played the carbon food-chain game made of recycled boxes.
Come and try it at another event…here are two groups of young people arranging the boxes in rank order of ‘food miles’:
On October 8th we had our TTT monthly open public meeting, focused on Growing in the City – growing plants, food, relationships, skills, connections, enterprises, awareness of nature…
We continued with a planning discussion for the Tooting Community Garden, revisiting its purpose and our own separate and shared reasons for spending time in the Garden, and explored some questions:
> How complex do we want the project to become?
> Could we commit to producing salad or herbs for a local restaurant? (A real challenge, because a request from a supportive local restaurant owner was put on the table)
We’ll summarise the notes of the meeting, and share them. If you would like to be involved with the Community Garden group, come along to 5 North Drive on the south side of Tooting Common (look for us behind the large house) between 11:00 and 1:00 on Sundays, and join our planning get-togethers too.
Email Adrian at adifalconer@hotmail.com for any more info.
All welcome!
Each day in the week of October 1st, the Transition Network website posted informal reports from different London Transition groups.
Here is the link for a report from Transition Tooting:
https://www.transitionnetwork.org/stories/guest-blogger/2012-10/transition-town-tooting-five-ways-wellbeing
To view the other London accounts, click on ‘Guest Bloggers’.
TTT appears in another Transition blog, in an account of a session we offered during the Transition Conference held in Battersea on Saturday Sept 15th. It was a section of the Treasuring Tooting Walk. There’s that photo of feet in the Lido again!http://www.transitionnetwork.org/stories/mark-watson/2012-09/humans-flying-walking-backwards-future-and-dipping-our-feet-lido
And – remember the wonderful Tooting Transition Shop in Upper Tooting Road in May? A video of the nine-day project has been posted at https://vimeo.com/48938206
Happy viewing!