Transition Town Tooting

Category: Community Garden

Community Garden in London SW16 run by Transition Town Tooting. Come down and get your hands dirty!

  • Celebrating Community Outdoor Learning with Wandsworth’s Mayor

    This afternoon a formal celebration of three years of Community Outdoor Learning with Gatton School took place at the Tooting Community Garden, attended as guest of honour by the Mayor of Wandsworth, Councillor Nicola Nardelli, plus site owner Naseem Aboobaker of Mushkil Aasaan and Rifat Batool, Head at Gatton School. 
    The celebration was joined by many of the children, staff and volunteers who have contributed to the development of the garden and the Outdoor Learning programme.

    The Mosaic and Vertical Garden

    The Mayor officially opened the vertical garden made by Year 6 children in recent weeks as well as unveiling the mosaic curated by artist Kirsteen Ritchie and made with the help of many of the children at school.  
    Naseem expressed her thankfulness for the community connections made in the garden and a group of the children read out their own tributes and reflections on the garden projects.  
    Rifat spoke about the educational value of the outdoor projects over the past three years.

    A community collaboration


    Mayor Nicola Nardelli & Naseem Aboobaker

    The Mayor with Gatton School Year 6 children

    We’re very grateful to all who took part on a lovely day to celebrate this project.
    More to follow …

  • Bringing local cultures and faiths together with outdoor learning in Tooting Community Garden

    We’re proud to be helping with a new outdoor learning project in the Community Garden with Gatton Primary School and the Mosaic Jewish Primary School

    Our Community Garden-based project with Gatton School has run for nearly three years. Gatton is a Muslim primary near Tooting Broadway – click here for lots of our earlier reports.
     
    The Head at Gatton Scool, Rifat Batool, has always been keen to extend the project to capitalise on ‘Garden’ learning opportunities for building community links plus vivid SMSC education. 
     
    SMSC is Social, Moral, Spiritual and Cultural development, which is linked strongly to schools’ citizenship curriculum content.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

    Rifat Batool has met an enthusiastic ally in Kate Baum, Head of the Mosaic Jewish Primary School. 
     
     
     
     
    This is a first exciting step in bringing together two Wandsworth borough faith communities in a new way, and facilitating a new chapter of shared outdoor learning. Both schools are Ofsted ‘Outstanding’, and this creative experiment is an example to all.
     
    After planning in the autumn, last week on a sunny day in Tooting a Year 1 group from Gatton were joined by children from the Mosaic Jewish School. The photos tell the story:
     
    Examining pictures of the diverse school activities in the Garden since March 2013.
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Sorting garlic bulbs and separating the individual cloves. 
    Which way up to plant them?


     
     
     

    Measuring the plot and cutting string to mark the row.
     

     
     
     

    Planting the garlic cloves.
    Later in the summer we’ll save some to cook dishes at both schools for the Tooting Foodival in September.
     Close encounters.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    The Mosaic Jewish School is starting a school garden at their new location in Roehampton. TTT and Gatton School’s facilitation experience – including growing and nature, awareness and teamworking games, building the rainwater harvesting classroom, the insect hotel and the bottle greenhouse – gave the visitors energy and plenty of ideas to add to their own garden and learning plans.

    Children from both schools will continue be involved in joint plans. We can’t wait to see what develops, and we’ll share news on this blog.
     
    Please get in touch with us at TTT if you would like to know more, or contribute to this project.
     
     

  • So what is outdoor learning?

    For the past 2 1/2 years, TTT has been running outdoor learning classes with pupils from Gatton, a local primary school in the community garden. From weekly sessions with Reception and Year 1 classes, to 7-week projects with the Year 6 students, the classes encompass a huge range of cross-curriculum learning, developing new skills and vocabulary and allowing the children to fully interact with nature in the safe and beautiful environment of our garden.

    But I still get asked regularly, what exactly is outdoor learning? So, here’s a brief example of my class today, on a beautiful autumn morning with a lively Year 1 group…

    After warm greetings and not-at-all-exaggerated reports on how much they had grown over the summer holidays, the children discussed the different seasons, today’s weather and how the sunshine made them feel: happy, bright and a bit sweaty! We then looked at some of the plants we had been growing – a cherry tomato that I picked just before they arrived and a beetroot. They were very excited to discover that beetroot acts as a natural dye and took great delight in getting a red thumb. We also went to look at the green and yellow pumpkin that was growing in the vegetable beds.

    Then we played an energetic game of seek and find, bringing back different numbers and colours of grasses, leaves, pinecones, sticks and acorns. The children learned that the squirrels love to eat acorns and hide them away so that they can eat them later in the winter; we found lots of buried acorns in the garden – sorry squirrels!

    And then, while half the group help collect objects for the Big Draw, the other half used trowels (remembering the safety instructions I taught them last year) to dig up the old pea plants in their little veg bed. The plants went on the compost heap to be recycled in the garden. We all put our hands into the freshly dug soil to feel how it was drier on the top and damper underneath but was also loose like crumble mix. And the numerous worms that were unearthed during the process were all gently and kindly transported to the bush where rumour has it they were having a big worm party…

    Finally, after making big shapes, small shapes and star shapes, the children exploded with an impressive “Acorns!” for their “word jump”. Exit one group of happy, rosy-cheeked, energised children.
    Sharon

     

  • From the outside looking in

    Mena participating in the garden

    Earlier in the year, we had a visit by an MSc student from Edinburgh called Mena Grossmann. Mena, as she describes below, used Transition Town Tooting as a case study to explore diversity within the Transition Town Movement for her MSc research project.

    For us and the Transition Movement as a whole, engagement with academic research has to be 2-way, with both parties benefitting. We hope Mena’s research will give us real insight into who we are reaching through our work in Tooting.

    Mena will be publishing her dissertation after it has been marked, we can’t wait! And will share it when we can.

    If your Transition Initiative is interested in engaging with academic research, The Transition Network do have suggested guidelines to help negotiate the first steps of partnership between a Transition Town and a Researcher, these can be found here. There is also the Transition Research Network who focus on this area and provide a forum to link a researcher with an Initiative. However, we sort of made it up as we went along…

    Over to Mena…

    “Somebody told me that Tooting was like an onion, because it has many layers. During my 2-week stay in Tooting, undertaking interviews and participating in TTT’s activities as part of my MSc dissertation on diversity and participation in the Transition Movement, I was able to have the incredible opportunity of unpeeling some of those layers.

    Coming to TTT, and Tooting in general, as a complete stranger, my first days felt like when you’re cutting an onion; eyes watering furiously and impaired vision. However, after a few fascinating days visiting the community garden, going along to a neighbourhood planning meeting and undertaking a couple of interviews, a map began to develop bit by bit in my mind as I started to develop an understanding of the functioning of TTT, of the multitude of community groups working in the area and of the social networks and connections that link them.

    Of the many wonderful impression I take with me of TTT and Tooting a few have particularly stuck in my mind. One is the massive dedication and motivation of the TTT core group. Incredible amounts of time go into organising events, maintaining, developing and improving longer term projects, as well as building working relations and friendships with other actors in the Tooting community. And each is done with a sense of joy and passion. TTT offers an incredibly wide range of activities from community gardening to restart workshops (to repair broken gadgets), thus appealing to people with different interests. It also collaborates with a large number of local restaurants, charities, politicians and schools through events and projects, thus embedding itself in the community and playing a part in strengthening the sense of community in Tooting.

    This leads me to my next impression, which is the incredible generosity and willingness of the people of Tooting to be of assistance and to openly share stories with a stranger. I experienced this first hand when, on one of my first days, I went to a restaurant called Al Mirage to ask the owners about their collaboration with TTT during the annual Foodival. Without quite realising what was happening, I was promptly ushered to a table and invited to have lunch free of charge with the owner and his son whilst talking about TTT, the restaurant and life in general. For me, this one event characterises my entire research trip to Tooting. The openness of people outside of TTT to tell me about their experiences of collaborating with them is certainly a testimonial to the favourable reputation that TTT enjoys among the wider community.

    On this note I would like to thank all my interviewees within and outside of TTT, to Richard as my main point of contact in TTT and who worked tirelessly to organise interviews, to all in TTT for making me feel welcome and to Al Mirage for setting the tone of my visit.”

  • Growing Tooting

    TTT is delighted to launch Growing Tooting, a new project to promote community gardening in Tooting and nearby neighbourhoods. This is a year-long project which aims to attract more people into growing healthy local food.

    You may be familiar with some of the benefits of community growing, for instance:

    • Socialising with a shared interest 
    • Improving your health via gentle physical exercise and eating fresh, highly nutritious fruit and veg 
    • Helping the environment by reducing food miles 

    Whether you are completely new to growing fruit and veg, or whether you are an experienced gardener wanting to develop your growing skills, this project can help you. Having a garden isn’t necessary: we can also give you ideas about growing on a windowsill, windowbox or balcony. If you’re a school, community group or club, or a local enterprise and you’d like to set up a growing space or develop an existing one, we can help too, with ideas about crops, composting, encouraging wildlife, etc.

    In the coming months we’ll be holding a number of community events, so please follow the Growing Tooting posts on this site. In the meantime, if you’d like to contact the project: call Martin on 07980 095 152 or EMAIL US

    We are very grateful to Wandsworth Borough Council Big Society Fund for their support of this project.

  • Foodival Stories

    Over on the Foodival blog we have been rounding up the stories from this year’s sustainable food event in Tooting.  There’s a Balham woman who grew bananas …

    Bananas grown by Susan in her Balham back garden

    And Sophie was the new face winning the prestige title of Top Tooting Cook 2015 with her beautiful culinary creation.

    Top Tooting Cook Sophie with her prize winning dish

    Pooja produced the tastiest dish according to the judges and Jenny Shand from SHARE Community Garden managed to cultivate the ugliest vegetable!  There’s more on the prize winners here. 

    Dave says: “Gimme Fracking not Solar!”

    Meanwhile, the Prime Minister tried to persuade us that subsidies for those dodgy polluting, diminishing, ever harder to reach fossil fuels are much more important than those for renewable technology.  Indeed this government plans to make community solar power generation unviable by slashing solar feed-in tariffs.  Sign the petition here to try to get this folly debated in Parliament.  Thanks to Furzedown Low Carbon Zone for highlighting this issue.

    Then there was the mysterious Giant Pea spotted up and down Tooting High St and featured in this Wandsworth Guardian video. 

    Children show off the Ugly Vegetables – the red pepper was voted the winner!

    Keep an eye out for more stories from the Foodival, some great pictures and a video over the coming days.
    Meanwhile what did you think of this year’s Foodival?

  • Exploring facilitation choices for our ‘Rooting in Tooting’ project with asylum-seekers and refugees

    Our new ‘Rooting in Tooting’ project has been developed with the Tooting charity CARAS (Community Action for Refugees and Asylum-Seekers). We’ve written two posts so far, please scroll down this blog to read them. You’ll see that our pilot project in May and June was enjoyable and positive. 

    For Those in Peril on the Sea – Hew Locke

    Quiz question A: what percentage of the migrants who have come to Europe so far in 2015 have reached Calais? 1%, 4%, 8%, 15%? Answer is at the end of the post.

    On Sept 1st, 11 of us gathered at CARAS for an orientation hosted by the charity team. 
    Against a background of dramatic media coverage, our intention was to understand just a bit more about the ‘whys, whats and hows’ for refugees and asylum-seekers, and the experiences of the young people and families with whom CARAS works.

    We know a lot about the activities we are going to do offer: growing and gardening and improving biodiversity at the CARAS office, creative projects, telling the Rooting in Tooting story over the next year, and exploring low-carbon living. 
    We’re not familiar with the reality of life for refugees now. 

    • How should we offer activities so that they are meaningful to participants, and so that we share them in an appropriate way? 
    Rug People – Paloma Varga Weisz

    A 2-hour discussion on this topic had to be very selective, and we take our TTT hats off to Eleanor and Molly as guides. 
    Thank you for your preparation and care, and thoughtful, challenging comments.

      Quiz question B: What was the country of origin for the largest number of unaccompanied children entering the UK so far in 2015?  
      Afghanistan; Eritrea; Albania; Syria? Answer is at the end of the post.

      Three of the topics that we discussed:

      1. Refugees and asylum-seekers have been repeatedly processed and questioned…of course those are the steps for coming to an agreement about official leave to stay in the UK. 

      • To balance that experience in our activities: we’ll ask for and trust that individuals have skills and that they can teach each other; we’ll tackle things together rather than directing.We’ll let participants volunteer what they want to tell us.
      The Folkestone Mermaid – Cornelia Parker

      2. Unaccompanied teenagers are resilient and ambitious, not passive. They have crossed many countries (at CARAS 18 home countries are represented), and weathered many setbacks (the ones that make it). Asked in youth club discussions about their ideal futures, they want to give something back – for example become a teacher, or a pharmacist. “In many ways they are the alpha children of the world”, and they deserve respect. 

      • We’re encouraged not to shy away from new vocabulary that can be stretching and thought-provoking. We’ll explain specialist and unfamiliar language.

      3. What is going well in the UK for refugees? The UK system sees teenage unaccompanied asylum seekers as ‘children first’ and provides a range of services to support them, so that as far as possible they can experience life like other teenagers locally – with everyday choices, opportunities, and challenges. 

      Public Works – Folkestonomy

      These approaches are role models for other countries.

      • We’ll try and reflect the atmosphere in the youth club, which “feels like a group of people having a nice time together”.   We’ll encourage putting down roots.

      All the photos are taken at Folkestone Sculpture Triennial shows 2008-2014, which included themes of dislocation and distant travel in the setting of a derelict Channel port railhead. 
      And the two quiz answers? Question A: 1%. Question B: Albania.

      Please contact TTT if you would like to discuss or contribute to this project. – Charles

    • Snapshots from the CARAS Open Day in Tooting

      TTT is looking forward to our new partnership project with CARAS and the RHS ‘Greening Grey Britain’ campaign (see our 18th Aug post below). To help launch ‘Rooting in Tooting’, we joined in at the CARAS Open Day at All Saints’ Church, Tooting. 
      It was a very welcoming day for the extended CARAS family, where many people knew each other and came to chat in the sun (or find some shade), or play outdoors. 
      We had a brilliant lunch made by The Chickpea Sisters (who’ll be at the Tooting Foodival on Sun 13th Sept). There was music, dancing…& some diverse growing action.

      Chris was flat out sowing seeds and playing with mud:
       

      Chris plus seed sowers
      Making mud seed bombs

       

      Threshing and winnowing wheat grown in the Tooting Community Garden: we took the heads of wheat and did the steps used round the world for thousands of years (and which are still in our language even if we’ve never seen it happen). 
      So, Seamus found helpers for threshing to separate the wheat grains from the heads, and then winnowing the resulting mix to remove the chaff:

      Bashing bags on the ground…
      …or jumping up and down on them
      Then, with the right puff, the chaff blows away
      Flicking up the chaff to catch the wind: experts!

      We also gathered great ideas in several languages for what to consider growing in the project: for food, for health, for beauty, and for nature:

      Thanks to all (of all ages) at the open day for getting so involved! 
      Plus, we’re grateful to Chris and Sophie from the RHS, and to Seamus, Jenny and Chuck from TTT, and all at CARAS. More news as ‘Rooting in Tooting’ develops.

    • Young people’s garden project leads to Rooting in Tooting

      If you’ve walked past the Derinton Community Centre in Tooting recently, you may have noticed vibrant yellow planters bursting with colourful flowers, where rubbish used to reside, and young people sitting on bright benches doing their homework.

      Those young people, who attend the CARAS youth club on the site, worked with a team from Transition Town Tooting to build the planters and the benches and paint them over a number of weeks. They sowed seeds early on in the project and also chose plants that now grow there, during a visit to Share Community Garden

      The project came about after the youth club made a visit to Tooting Community Garden.  This led to the idea of the teenagers creating an urban garden on-site over eight weekly Saturday sessions.

      “Before this, I didn’t know how to plant and grow plants, but I learned how, and I enjoyed making the planter too”, said Waseem, one of the young people who transformed the space.

      CARAS (previously Klevis Kola) is a community based organisation working with refugees and asylum seekers.  The gardening project was developed with the young people, encouraging teamwork and communication, developing and practicing new skills and meeting new people in the wider community.

      Jenny Teasdale, who coordinated Transition Town Tooting’s involvement said,

      “Working with these young people over the last couple of months has been wonderful. Together, we imagined the possibilities of an urban garden, creating a mood board of ideas, and then we made some of those ideas a reality.

      Everyone planted seeds in the first few weeks and the kids tended them throughout, watching sunflowers, beans and salad leaves growing, ready to be planted out in the final weeks. With wooden materials from the community garden, the kids cut, assembled and painted planters and benches – making design decisions on the fly and developing new skills along the way. As a group, we decided what plants to grow and where to site what we built.

      I know I wasn’t the only person sad to see the project come to an end, having enjoyed every second of the process. At the same time, we are all really happy to see the transformation in just two short months.”

      CARAS Youth Coordinator, Molly Abraham spoke about the project,

      “The gardening project with TTT has been a fantastic opportunity for young people who attend CARAS to gain skills, share knowledge and create something we are all extremely proud of.  It’s been amazing to watch the group grow in confidence as they became proficient with drills, saws and secateurs, and to relax into sharing stories of growing in their home countries.  Working with the wonderful team from TTT has been a real pleasure for all of us and we are excited to be able to develop the work, and the friendships, over the coming year.”

      “We painted the pallet planter and the yellow planter, and I sowed flowers and beans. They’re still growing”, said Hafso, shown here painting.

      Spurred on by the development of the space and the enthusiasm of the youth group, we are delighted to announce that CARAS and Transition Town Tooting are now working in partnership with the RHS over the next year, running monthly sessions with the youth club and adults at CARAS.

      The new project is called Rooting in Tooting, and is part of the RHS’s Greening Grey Britain scheme. We’ll be developing more flourishing, attractive growing ideas that will transform the site.  This practical, experiential project is just one of the ways CARAS is helping newly-arrived people to integrate into the vibrant community of Tooting.

      Chris Young from the RHS led a session with the youth group last Saturday:

      “I was very excited to make my first practical visit to the CARAS youth club, and had a great afternoon working with the youth club members and volunteers. We started by talking about our project to grow plants in various spaces surrounding the centre and then looked at propagating some herbs that could be used later on.
       
      I gave a quick demonstration of how to take cuttings from the plants I’d brought and then everyone got stuck in and had a go.We finished up by extracting seeds from dry seed heads and sorting them into origami seed packets we’d made earlier.

      Everybody was incredibly helpful, enthusiastic and welcoming. I was also impressed that some of the young people knew the plants I brought and told me about how and where they grow in their home countries.Fingers crossed that the cuttings root!
       
      Looking forward to my next visit for the community fun day on Saturday where we’ll set up stand for the project .”

      We’ll be promoting the new project at the CARAS Family Fun Day on Saturday, 22nd August.

    • Sunday Aug 2nd: Make a day of it with the Community Garden and Tooting Field Day

      All welcome to make a FREE day of it together this Sunday – with an outdoor focus:

      Tooting Community Garden will be open to all from 11:00 to 1:00
      There’s lots to do, from sowing autumn crops to sculpting our bramble bushes (there’s going to be a lot of fruit for the Tooting Foodival on 12 & 13 September (click on FOODIVAL in the Quick Links above for info).

      Tooting Field Day starts at Sprout Community Arts at 1:30 and runs until 5:00
      The theme of this month’s Field Day is ‘Shelter’. 
      We’ll start off in Sprout making recycled-bottle insect hotels to take home, in this case specifically for ladybirds and lacewings (both these families of bugs eat lots of garden pests, particularly aphids).

      Then we’ll move outdoors to practice making some family-size ‘human’ shelters out of natural materials. 
      Can’t take these home, but we can imagine….
      All the details here: http://www.fanshen.org.uk/current/tooting-field-days.html