Would you like to join local residents for a programme of facilitated workshops exploring our responses to the climate crisis -personally and collectively?
Living with the climate crisis is a programme of workshops which offer a mix of psychologically-based groupwork and experiential learning which support people in managing their feelings, experiences and actions towards this complex issue.
Anxiety, distress, burnout and despair are common responses to struggling with climate change. The workshops provide a space for people to talk, to share, to express what they feel and to reflect, but they also offer tools, ideas and skills for action. They focus on:
support and understanding
communication
finding pathways to carbon reduction and community and political action
The programme was designed by the same team who designed Carbon Conversations, which we ran in Tooting for several years – you can read more here.
We will be running a programme of these workshops in the Tooting area during June and July 2023.
If you are interested in taking part please email Ben Cuddon to learn more: bencuddon@gmail.com
Our 2021 Tooting Foodival was again a great success, with Volker and team serving locally grown street-cooked food throughout the day to a constant stream of visitors.
The sustainable theme was more congruent than ever with many relevant stalls selling handmade local produce, a variety of workshops and attractions utilising a larger road space, the music drawing people in, well integrated with interesting speakers on climate topics. The sustainable fashion restyling and catwalk were great new additions.
Thanks as ever to Naseem at Mushkil Aasaan, Brian at BJ Hardware and the residents of Hereward Rd for the use of their spaces and especially to all the volunteers who came to help set up, take down, decorate, serve and recycle.
Could Foodival #14 have been the best yet? Quite possibly!
Here’s a short video to give you a taste of the day!
Tooting Foodival is a community festival celebrating all things locally grown, cooked, re-created and re-imagined. Shining a light on how we can try to live sustainably in a time of global climate change.
Running since 2008, the event showcases all things locally grown, cooked and produced with stalls selling local produce, music, dancers, speakers, competitions, a soap box and much more. Find out more https://tootingfoodival.blogspot.com/
Keep an eye on this page for the date of our 2022 Foodival or follow the social media channels below…
Thank you to everyone who took part in our 2021 Pollinator Paradise competition.
We had over 40 entries across the Tooting and Balham area.
And the winners are:
In the Front Garden Competition;
Brightside Crescent
Judges’ comments
The planting was well chosen to be attractive to pollinators and to provide a succession of flowering over the summer months and into the autumn. The choice of flower colour and shape of flower was also very varied making for a colourful visual tapestry of plants. The judges particularly liked the fact that a small dry hedge of old dry leaves and sticks had been squeezed into the garden under the laurel hedge at the side of the garden, providing nesting and hibernating spaces for some of the pollinator insects and other insects and bugs.
“I am hugely flattered my garden proved so popular with the judges.I have tried to plant a garden dedicated to supporting as many different bees and other pollinators as possible and have squeezed in a lot of species and varieties of flowers to provide forage.And the insects have turned up!It has also prompted many conversations about plants and bees with neighbours and passers-by. It has been great to participate in the project. And I have been learning as I go and shall continue to do so. The garden is very much a work in progress…………I feel I have gained a great deal from participating.Thank you again for running the project.” The winner Brightwell Crescent
In the Street Competition;
Joint winners are
Bickersteth Road and Montana Road
These two streets reflect different approaches taken to providing a pollinator paradise in the context of a whole street; by planting up street tree pits and by planting up a cluster of front gardens.
Both of these street entries made a marked and pleasurable difference to people walking along the streets and of course to pollinating insects. Here are some recent pictures of the winner in the Front Garden competition in Brightside Crescent
More about the competition
Pollinator Paradise launched in March 2021 to encourage the planting of flowers that are specifically pollinator-friendly in and around Tooting.
A Pollinator Paradise could be a front garden, a balcony, window sill, hanging basket or even around the base of the street tree outside your home. Entry was open to any place or planter that could be seen safely from the street and where there was permission to plant. There were two parts to the competition; an individual competition and a street competition – to encourage people to team up with neighbours and try to make as many pollinator-friendly habitats as possible!
Transition Town Tooting work with a number of partner agencies. One of the agencies we have a long history of working with, is Community Action for Refugees and Asylum Seekers. There have been a number of projects over the years, but the current projects are:
The Youth group project
This supports users of the CARAS youth group and is facilitated by Dermot Jones and Nikki Hafter. The project focuses on supporting young people with mental health needs through activities such as carpentry, art and games.
The CARAS women’s gardening group
This is a weekly gardening group for the users of the CARAS women’s group who meet once or twice a week. This group focuses on supporting the women to develop gardening skills through enabling them to grow vegetables and flowers in Tooting Community Garden. This is facilitated by Resina Chowdhury, Nicola Pattinson and Sharon Gray.
In 2016 we staged the Tour de Tooting combining fun, wellbeing, cycling, wheel mechanics, health and quieter, greener streets to celebrate the wheels in our lives with a parade through the centre of Tooting.
On a glorious sunny day in May 2012, Transition Town Tooting (TTT) held a day-long walk celebrating the places and things that contribute to our local wellbeing. The walk brought together two recurrent themes of Tooting transition: a ‘mobile’ approach to making local connections and a focus on community wellbeing.
Tooting stretches between and beyond two tube stations and along a major arterial road used by 10 million cars each year. Although the area has numerous spaces for education, faith, sports and other activities, there is no central communal shared space. We have numerous halls but no Town Hall, indoor markets but no Market Square, much green space but little centrally that is openly accessible. In the absence of a clear, shared ‘public space’, we have developed an often mobile approach to our activities.
An early experiment was the Tooting Earth Talk Walk which visited seven places of worship at each of which a faith leader spoke followed by a representative of TTT. Much common ground emerged between Christian, Muslim, Sikh and Hindu teachings about man’s care for the earth, while TTT representatives spoke of their hopes and fears for the future.
At the same time in Tooting we have been seeking ways to introduce people to ideas of wellbeing as a way to build local resilience. Many transition initiatives, focusing as they do on people doing something active and constructive with their neighbours, report those involved feeling happier and their communities feeling more robust and more connected. In addition, research shows ‘happiness and fulfillment come less from material wealth and more from relationships; less from focusing on ourselves and more from helping others; less from external factors outside our control and more from the way in which we choose to react to what happens to us’ (Action for Happiness: 2012).
Bringing these themes together, our walk ‘Treasuring Tooting’ celebrated places and things that contribute to our local wellbeing. More than 60 local people joined us as we wended our way through 12 locations from the Lido to the Library, the Bingo Hall to the Market, the Community Garden to the Islamic Centre. At each a different aspect of our happiness and wellbeing was experienced and celebrated – through stories, making, talking, laughing, learning, planting and giving.
Below you can see images from the day as well as a map of the walk and a short video.
Traffic on Tooting High Street came to a stop in 2010 when the Tooting Trashcatchers Carnival came to town! Over 800 participants from local schools, community groups and clubs took part in this unique carnival made almost entirely from household rubbish.
Check out the CARNIVAL BLOGand read all about what happened on that magical day and take a look at the film below!
There is much talk about the breakdown of communities in urban areas but our experience in Tooting in SW London is of an area teeming with multi-layered communities brought together by faith, politics, sport, art, social support, neighbourhoods, health and much more. These communities may not be immediately visible but looking closely at the buildings we walk past every day you start to notice how many house a community group – a nursery, a constitutional club, a yoga centre, a swimming club, a political party or a gym. In particular Tooting has a large and diverse number of places of worship.
In mid-2009 TTT joined a mile long walk organised by South London Interfaith Group and the Balham and Tooting Community Association where we were welcomed by seven different places of worship including those of Hindu, Sikh, Muslim and Christian faiths. Inspired, we decided to create our own Transition Walk taking as its theme conversation about care of the earth from personal and faith perspectives.
Over several months we made contact with each venue and visited them to discuss the idea behind the walk – we were humbled by the incredibly warm welcome we received and the interest, support and hospitality we were offered. At each stop on the walk a faith leader spoke followed by a representative of Transition Town Tooting. Much common ground emerged between Christian, Muslim, Sikh and Hindu teachings about man’s responsibility to care for the earth and its bounty. The Transition Town representatives gave personal perspectives about their involvement the movement and their hopes and fears for the future of the earth.
The group carried a giant cardboard ‘book’ in which people wrote their impressions at each stage of the journey and pasted the talks and texts relevant to each visit. At the final venue (Mushkil Aasaan, a local charity) the youth group of a local theatre, Tara Arts performed a short piece based on a 9thC text from Basra describing how the world’s animals sued the humans for their lack of care for the earth. We were joined on the walk by the then local MP, Sadiq Khan, and the Mayor of Wandsworth, Cllr John Farebrother who both provided personal reflections and their appreciation of the space the walk had created for meeting on common ground.
‘A wonderful day, celebrating what we share, but also the creativity and individuality of faiths and cultures here in Tooting. A wonderful welcome through doors we so easily walk past and ignore.’ Kate Allan – BATCA (her full report of the walk can be found below)
PRESERVING THE PLANET: THE ‘EARTH TALK WALK’ report by Kate Allan
On Saturday 31 January, I joined a group of about thirty people on the ‘Earth Talk Walk’ organised by the Tooting Transition Town (TTT) network, who are a group of local people committed to a more sustainable way of life.
The Earth Talk Walk was a series of visits to places of worship of different faiths to hear about their approach to caring for the earth. It was a fascinating experience. The group received a warm welcome everywhere it went. There was a striking similarity among Christians, Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus in their teachings about man’s responsibility to care for creation and use its fruits responsibly. At each stop, a faith leader spoke as well as a representative of Tooting Transition Town. The TTT person explained, often movingly, how he or she had been drawn to the environmental movement and their hopes and fears for the future. This counterpoint of TTT and faith voices was very effective.
The walk began at Holy Trinity, where Hugh Grear welcomed everyone. He drew on Genesis to show God at the centre of creation. He described the tension between man’s ‘dominion’ of the earth and his responsibility ‘to till and keep it’ and its resolution in the teachings of the New Testament. Sadiq Khan MP spoke briefly. The next visit was to the Catholic Education Centre at Tooting Bec (a beautiful Georgian house) where we were given an excellent lunch. The Mayor of Wandsworth, Cllr John Farebrother, provided some reflections.
After that we crossed to the Sunni Muslim Association in Tooting Bec Road, where there’s a small plain mosque behind a shop front. The SMA reflects the Sufi tradition in Islam, where the individual’s quest for closeness to God dominates rather than strict observance of prayers and rituals. The imam explained how the Koran gives man the role of God’s vice-gerent (deputy or appointee) on earth and charges him to care for everything in it. For instance there is a command about avoiding destroying crops and animals when waging war. The imam showed how Koranic teaching is applied to the present day. Mohammed told his followers not to pollute a water source with human waste. This is interpreted as forbidding chemical and industrial pollution today.
The following visits were to the Sikh Khalsa centre and the richly decorated Muthumari Amman Hindu temple. The Sikh spokesman emphasised the responsibility of all men as equals to look after each other and all creation. Our Hindu host described the innate feeling of Hindus for the earth. The first thing a Hindu does on arrival in a foreign country is to kiss the ground. Hindu deities and worship are bound up with nature and creation – water, rivers, the earth are at the heart of their beliefs. The next brief stop was at Tooting Islamic Centre, where the imam again drew from the Koran, in both English and Arabic, to emphasise man’s responsibilities.
The day was more than just a walk. TTT people carried a giant cardboard ‘book’ in which people wrote their impressions at each stage of the journey and pasted the talks and texts relevant to each visit. This will be reproduced as a booklet and will be a durable reminder of the event. The final flourish was a performance at Mushkil Aaasaan, the Asian women’s charity by a gifted young African actress of a story that originated in medieval Iraq. Dramatic and witty, it described how the animals took their revenge on humans who had ruined their lives by taking them to court – and winning.
