Transition Town Tooting

Author: Transition Town Tooting

  • Journeys We Undertake …

    In the summer TTT’s Bruce Mackenzie made an inspiring return to the Isle of Eigg, one of the Scottish Small Isles in the Inner Hebrides. The people of the island of Eigg have already made great strides towards sustainability and retaining local identity for their island, including generating their own power via Eigg Electric. To read and comment on Bruce’s article go here to TTT’s ning discussion board. What thoughts does anyone have about the future of the “Isle of Tooting”?  More …

  • Events This Week

    Don’t forget that tomorrow, Transition Town Tooting is running an an interactive discussion event at Tara Arts – Studio in Earlsfield entitled “Imagining Tooting in 2030, a positive vision of life beyond oil”. It’s FREE! Come along & bring your imagination!

    If you missed The End of the Line, the film about overfishing and the threat to fish species, it will be screened at 10pm on More4 tonight, Tuesday 20th October.

    The New Economics Foundation is running The Bigger Picture Festival of Interdependence this Saturday 24th October at the Bargehouse, Oxo Tower Wharf on the South Bank. They promise “learning, making, doing, celebrating and debating” with plenty of speakers, films and things to try out. It’s free too!

    The festival is part of the 350 international day of climate action 350 is 350 parts per million – what scientists estimate to be the safe upper limit of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. There are loads of other events on Saturday tying into this.

    On 27th October the All Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil has an event entitled: Will Global Oil Production peak Before 2020? Anyone can register to attend. Claudia is a veteran I believe and can recommend!

  • Tooting Harvest Foodival 2009 Highlights

    Watch the video …

    And for more information, reports and all the pictures go to the Foodival Site

  • Tim Lang & Andrew Simms in Tooting

    Last Thursday, TTT & Transition Town Wandsworth organised a discussion event with Tim Lang, Professor of Food Security at City University and Andrew Simms, Policy Director of the New Economics Foundation at Mushkil Aasaan. There was then some time to chat, brainstorm ideas and ask questions. A really enlightening evening with a good turnout. This video contains brief excerpts from the speakers.

    And here are the post-it boards:

  • What Are Transition Towns? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . and why families get involved

    Kate Birch’s article for Families South West magazine looks at Transition Towns including TTT and TTBrixton. Click the image below to read in full.

  • Rob Hopkins at Mirch Masala

    Rob Hopkins, the creator of the Transition Town concept, made a flying visit for a late afternoon snackette at Mirch Masala last night, the table cunningly adjacent to our Foodival poster, before being ferried to the Brixton Pound launch in Lucy’s van!

    Also, a whole hour was devoted to Transition Towns and the B£ on LBC yesterday courtesy of Jeni Barnett who thinks Rob is a visionary hero! She’s right of course.

    Now what shall we call the Tooting currency when it arrives and who shall we put on it? Just thumbing the Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People for a decent mugshot of Tōta, the c.6th century Anglo-saxon, and his people the Tōtinges, from whom the name Tooting apparently descends. dt

  • Tooting Harvest Foodival – 10 Days To Go!

    Final preparations are taking place for this year’s Tooting Harvest Foodival which takes place on Sunday 27th September. We are aiming to highlight the possibilities for local food sustainability with this event which will involve high street restaurants cooking up dishes in their own inimitable styles using ingredients grown and supplied by local people. The Food Walk starts at 12 noon at Al Mirage, 215 Upper Tooting Rd arriving at Fircroft School for a Food Fete from 2pm. For more details go to the Foodival page

  • Foodival in The Post

    More press coverage of the Tooting Harvest Foodival in this week’s Mitcham, Morden & Wimbledon Post.

    Click on the image to enlarge

  • Foodival In The Wandsworth Guardian

    Great bit of publicity in today’s Wandsworth Guardian for next month’s Foodival – well done Foodival team! We now have a good selection of Tooting’s restaurants signed up and ready to get involved, cooking up great locally grown food in their own inimitable styles and are also grateful to several other supporters (see below). All it needs now is for Tooting residents to keep nurturing those plants and to keep fingers crossed for a bumper crop come September! As usual head for the Foodival & Veg Pledging sites or contact Giles Read or Claudia Ruane for more details. Click on the pictures below to enlarge them.

  • The Psychology of Climate Change

    In a surprise first for this “correspondent”, a whole meal was created from the bounteous produce of our postage stamp garden this week (see below). It IS possible! OK we didn’t “grow” the fish but … an ocean is made of many raindrops. And doesn’t that carrot look like a well known Tooting resident? Answers on a postcard please.

    Out in the ether, todays’ Ecologist has an article entitled “The psychology of climate change: why we do nothing” which is an interesting read. The article cites Renee Lertzman a PhD Research student in the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University who, looking at the unconscious motivations behind many people’s responses to climate change, reckoned that:
    “more participant-led models such as the Transition Town movement where people were encouraged to bring there own ideas rather than being lectured at, were more likely to succeed”.
    Let’s hope so! The positive outlook of the Transition Movement, its open framework and inclusiveness do seem to engage the “man or woman in the street” on climate change and peak oil issues better than beating us about the head with scenarios of impending doom!

    Meanwhile back in South London’s vibrant melting pot, TTT are busy signing up the town’s restaurants to cook local produce for the Foodival next month and looking for more growers to pledge food to be cooked and served to the public on the day. Can you help? Surely you can do better than my lookalike carrot? Contact Giles Read HERE to join in the project.

    Finally, if you just can’t get enough of TTT in your life, you could join our Facebook group or follow TTT on Twitter. Whatever next?! DT