Transition Town Tooting

Tag: Creative

  • Gardens of Refuge project. April ’17 update on vertical strawberries and a watery ceiling mural

    We’re continuing to facilitate workshops as part of the Gardens of Refuge project with refugees and asylum-seekers who use the local services of CARAS in Tooting.

    This is the project for which our partnership won funding from Aviva – via the public voting so many people joined last autumn.

    The emphasis of Gardens of Refuge is on creating therapeutic experiences where participants feel happy and safe to explore imaginative activities together.

    We’re working alongide the CARAS team and volunteers with two groups:

    • with the Saturday Youth Club (mostly unaccompanied teenagers) 
    • and with Family Activity Days (adults and children in half terms and school holidays)

    Here’s the story from Gardens of Refuge in March and April:


    Saturday Youth Club: our sessions take place alongside a whole range of other social and learning activities at the youth club. Success is when groups and individuals come and join in for some or all of the time, because they want to, and try out new things as well as building on what we all did together in ’15 & ’16 in ‘Rooting in Tooting’.
     

    In the 24th March and 1st April sessions the Club has built two pallet-planters and painted them ready for planting up.

    Below right, one of last year’s flourishing planters.

    We’ve also made a new vertical strawberry planter of textile (a theatre blackout curtain from the Scrapstore). Young people problem-solved how to make the planter, folding, tucking and stapling the heavy cloth onto a big piece of plywood (part of the old Community Garden fence…). 

    They planted it up with strawberries (these same plants were growing at CARAS in 2016 and overwintered in the Community Garden). The pallet planters and this strawberry wall are all at the entrance to the CARAS office, and the idea is for the benefits to be enjoyed by passers-by and visitors alike – a real Garden of Refuge in busy urban Tooting.

    April Family Activity Day: After our growing-based Day in February, we’re continuing to link family activities with our plans to offer sessions later in ’17 in the Community Garden.

    Our idea is to create a collaborative mural for the ‘ceiling’ of the rainwater harvesting roof in the Community Garden.
     It’s an exciting open-air space and the mural’s theme will be ‘Water’.

    That gives huge scope for decoration, pictures, ideas, celebration, story telling and sharing.  
    Water is life-giving for us all and for what we grow. Water is rich with diverse meanings worldwide.

    The rainwater harvesting roof built with Gatton School in ’13. Soon to have a ceiling mural!

    On Tuesday 11 April we made a start by immersing ourselves in ideas and images and different materials – there are so many threads to follow up.

    Thanks for these FAD photos, Nikki!

    The next session is in May, and we can’t wait…

    Another benefit is that the project is attracting new volunteers who have added their energy and diverse experience – so our whole group is learning together en route. Thanks to all the volunteer team & for your co-ordination, Dermot and Jeni! 

    We welcome contacts from others who would like to be involved, or who have ideas and resources to contribute.
    Please contact us by emailing TTT here.

    Yum! The crop in 2016’s textile planter

     – Charles

  • Dragon Bean bench in Tooting Community Garden: the grand opening

    Yesterday we officially opened the Dragon Bean bench at the Community Garden Summer Picnic!

    Gentle finishing touches last week

    For the past twelve months Fio Adamson has been guiding a participatory sculpture project in the Community Garden.

    About to cut the ribbon & unveil the bench

    Now, can Fio rest….?

    Working with many pieces of the American Oak felled on the Furzedown Rec, the Furzedown Oak Project was born.
    Over this past year around 80 people of all ages have worked with Fio to imagine, draw, visualise, carry, carve and advise on what’s evolved into the Dragon Bean bench.

    Our Summer Picnic celebrated the Dragon Bean and good company in the Garden: we had delicious food, made popcorn and cooked potatoes on a fire, enjoyed volcano kettle tea, picked brambles, weeded the leeks, painted beautiful signs for the vegetable plots…

    Lots more picnic photos on the Community Garden facebook pages

    We’re so lucky to have the use of the Community Garden land, loaned to us by Tooting charity Mushkil Aasaan. It means we can facilitate community projects like this and our outdoor learning with schools. Plus we can enjoy the Community Garden sessions with anyone who wishes to come, every Sunday.

    We’ve opened the space on over 225 Sundays since 2011.

    Why ‘Dragon Bean’? Come and have a look!
    The sculpture-bench is ready to sit or lie on in the Tooting Community Garden on Sundays from 11:00 to 1:00 at 5 North Drive SW16 1RN.
    We post any updates on our Facebook pages. All welcome!

  • Reduce, Re-use, ReSparkle! Our seasonal family crafts workshop with Tooting Library

    On Saturday 12th December TTT offered our fourth annual Resparkle! seasonal crafts session at Tooting Library –  this time combined with Jeni Walker’s monthly Meet & Make.

    The aim was to teach children and adults how to make interesting, fun and attractive decorations or presents using household materials – newspaper, drinks cartons, scrap textiles.

    Here’s what we had on offer to make:

    • drinks carton wallets
    • newspaper present bags 
    • textile and paper decorations
    • paper flowers
    • adding to the Library’s collage Xmas tree
    • and some children made up their own ideas…

    All these activities are easy to repeat at home – for us it’s all about mixing creativity and upcycling everyday waste.
    And it’s all about enjoyment and making things together. 

    Some children did every single activity on offer, then went back for more..

    The afternoon was delightful – a real mix of Tooting’s cultures, with a lot of concentration and focus from three dozen young people. There were rewarding challenges working with new materials and techniques, and persisting with folding, cutting, punching and sticking to make beautiful things.

    Most of the adults were making too – it was great to see the mix of generations and also whole families doing these engaging activities together.
    There was a lot of achievement, pride and quiet celebration.

     

    Thanks so much to the multi-tasking TTT volunteers who ran the day: Jane, Jeni, Hilary, Rachel & Chuck.
    Thanks to Tooting Library – to Heather and Khalid for inviting us (and for helping to clear up at the end).

                    

                                          
     More photos in this slideshow  

    See you at December 2016 Resparkle!

  • Resparkle! plus Meet & Make: Free upcycled crafts activities in Tooting next weekend

    Two long-running TTT crafts projects which mix creativity and attractive recycled materials are coming together on December 12th at Tooting Library.

    Reduce, Re-use, Resparkle! has been offered with our partners Tooting Library at Christmas for the past four years.
    Meet & Make is community artist Jeni Walker’s monthly project for local upcycling and making.
    On Dec 12th we are bringing them together for a free event.

    Resparkle! is all about making fun Christmas presents or decorations out of recycled materials – do come along from 2-4 at Tooting Library on the 12th. All ages, all welcome, all materials provided.

    The regular attendees (and others!) at Meet & Make are invited to come along too – make some great upcycled festive decorations and also get some inspiration and encouragement on any making project of your own. All artists and makers welcome.

    Three inviting photos from last year’s Resparkle! –


    More Meet & Make news:
    Our newly formed connection with local charity Wandsworth Oasis was knitted a little closer last month with the generous hosting of our monthly Meet & Make in their new shop near Amen Corner. 

    Helen brought along the finished shopper trolley started at last months M&M, Jeni whipped up a couple of tiny aprons for her toddler art classes and Martin chatted at length about the possibilities and challenges of starting a social enterprise based on up cycled making.

     
    Elsewhere in the TTT arts story the power of making saw many hands came together to put paint, paper and glue to the Giant Saxophone. The friendly yellow giant was witness to young mums with their children, Pilates teachers, Meet & Makers, local arts practitioners, people claiming that they ‘aren’t any good at this art stuff‘ another saying they ‘literally hadn’t made anything in years’ all creating a very pleasing result both visually and in the sense of connecting together.
    We have plenty more participatory making planned – please come and get involved, and also do share your ideas for new projects or community groups and partners to join up with. 
    Contact us at transitiontowntooting@gmail.com

  • Transition Network International Conference

    You may know that TTT is part of a network of Transition Towns round the world – community groups of all shapes and sizes who are each taking local action on environmental and social sustainability. TTT’s motto is Making Change in How We Live, Where We Live, in Light of Climate Change. That encourages a wide range of activities, and inspires us to want to get on with it alongside local partners who are ‘transitioning’ to establish a better future now.

    The Transition Network is hosting its first international conference for 3 years: hundreds of people are booked in from dozens of countries this weekend in Devon. 
    Nine of us from the TTT family are attending. It’s only a week after the Foodival – there are still many great and tired memories to share, and now we are about to make new ones.

     
    As I post this blog four of us are zooming down the road towing a cute caravan. 

    The others are packing or looking for their train tickets…


    Between us we’ve been invited to facilitate three workshops, and we’re proud to be able to do that: 

    • Tomorrow Lucy is co-facilitating a day workshop on ‘The Art of Invitation: creative engagement for ourselves and our communities’. Details are here.
    • On Saturday morning, Charles, Jenny, Richard and Sharon are hosting a workshop on ‘Outdoor Learning with Young People’. Details here.
    • On Saturday afternoon, Dan and Rachel from fanSHEN are offering a workshop on ‘Creative Facilitation’. Details here.

    We’ll all attend other sessions and there will be a lot of interaction and chatting in the lunch queues.

    It’s very inspiring to me that ‘Transition’ includes TTT’s local Tooting focus and the wide international network. 

    In the last month we’ve been lucky to welcome visitors from 2 overseas Transition initiatives – Catherine and Leonard from Transition Albany in the Bay Area of California…


     …and Caroline from Transition XL in Ixelles, Brussels. 
    We’ve learned a lot from them all, and also shared the joys of Tooting. 

    At the conference we’re looking forward to sharing ideas that encourage us and make our community projects more effective. 

    We’ll let you know all about it. -Charles

  • Shelter – the theme for our 5th Tooting Field Day

    On Sunday August 2nd we focused on Shelter.  
    Each family Field Day safari has a theme that’s about enjoying the local outdoors, creativity and also low-carbon living. We’ve explored Travel, Water, Nature and more…and had a lot of fun together, and discovered parts of Tooting we didn’t know at all.

    What did we do?
    In the first part of the afternoon we met at Sprout Community Arts and made insect hotels out of re-purposed plastic bottles and cardboard (yes, packaging from Dan’s kitchen furniture). 

    These shelters are designed for ladybirds and lacewing flies – both are welcome predators on aphids. The results were fantastic!  Brilliantly decorated, with ideas zipping around the tables as children and adults thought of new techniques, and showed them off, and copied. Lucky bugs…we made over 3 dozen shelters.

    The second part of the Field Day continued the theme. 
    We walked to Tooting Graveney Common and built shelters and dens from willow branches (kindly donated by Lambeth Council).  Again, the creativity and healthy competitiveness that everyone displayed was inspiring. People also commented how much fun it was to hang out and play in the woods. 

    After a picnic (courtesy of Pooja, Arena and The Collective Dairy) certificates were awarded to the best dens in different categories by our young judges Dominic and Benji.
    At the end we followed the ‘leave no trace principle’, dismantling all the dens (after we’d taken photos to remember them by!).

    But what’s this on Airbnb? 

    One of the bottle shelters may have been left behind!

    It sleeps 16…and has 8 bathrooms…look it up and check out the spec.

    And look out for other Shelter-themed surprises you may find in Furzedown and Tooting – let us know what you spot. Including any sleeping ladybirds

    Thanks very much to all the helpers who prepared and led this wonderful day, and to participants for your energy!

    The last Field Day is on September 13th, part of the Tooting Foodival. There’s going to be a giant pea … all the info is available online here. All welcome, all ages, and it’s free.

  • Time to Act on Climate Change – 7th March

    A group of a dozen of us from Tooting went to the Time to Act march on Saturday in London. 

    Why march? To express yourself, to be counted, to meet friends and strangers, to witness change in the making, to represent others, simply to be there. 





     
    Making and feeling the weight of your message in your hands – it’s unusual, active, and personal. Totally unlike holding a phone. 




    The sun was hot; the wind blew the banners so they tugged like sails.

     
    At one point in the march, between The Savoy and 
    Charing Cross, everyone sat down on the warm tarmac of the Strand. 


    For me that was a good moment – not quite touching the wild earth, but certainly feeling in touch with London, and valuing it as a physical place that shelters us. 

     
    None of us wants to be preached to, and I liked these diverse messages –  direct and also complex; creative and calling up so many associations.

    Why march, why do what we do locally in Tooting?
    Naomi Klein from the introduction to ‘This Changes Everything‘:
    “We know that if we continue on our current path of allowing emissions to rise year after year, climate change will change everything about our world. 
    And we don’t have to do anything to bring about this future.  
    All we have to do is nothing“
    – Charles 

  • Reduce, Re-use, RESPARKLE! crafts workshop

    Tomorrow: Saturday 20th December
    TTT crafts with recycled materials, Tooting Library, 2:00 to 4:00

    Our free drop-in seasonal craft making workshop upstairs at the beautiful Tooting Library, 75 Mitcham Road, SW17 9PD. 

    All welcome, all ages, all tuition and materials provided
    Practical and fun session to illustrate making beautiful things from waste – and reduce carbon. Photos from our 2012 event here
     

    We’ll be using recycled materials to make creative presents, decorations or packages (for yourself or for others). 
    With quite a lot of glitter.

    Many thanks to the team at Tooting Library, and to GLL

    Crafts with recycled materials!
    Our biennial free drop-in seasonal craft making workshop upstairs at the beautiful Tooting Library.
    We’ll be using recycled materials to make creative presents, decorations or packages (for yourself or for others). With quite a lot of glitter.
    All welcome, all ages, all tuition and materials provided.
    Practical and fun session to illustrate making beautiful things from waste – and reduce carbon.
    Photos from our 2012 event here on PD:
    http://www.projectdirt.com/project/7213/#!/journal…
    Many thanks to the team at Tooting Library, and to GLL
    Any queries – email us at transitiontowntooting@gmail.com
    – See more at: http://www.projectdirt.com/apps/event/32290/#sthash.fDExqieP.dpuf
    Crafts with recycled materials!
    Our biennial free drop-in seasonal craft making workshop upstairs at the beautiful Tooting Library.
    We’ll be using recycled materials to make creative presents, decorations or packages (for yourself or for others). With quite a lot of glitter.
    All welcome, all ages, all tuition and materials provided.
    Practical and fun session to illustrate making beautiful things from waste – and reduce carbon.
    Photos from our 2012 event here on PD:
    http://www.projectdirt.com/project/7213/#!/journal…
    Many thanks to the team at Tooting Library, and to GLL
    Any queries – email us at transitiontowntooting@gmail.com
    – See more at: http://www.projectdirt.com/apps/event/32290/#sthash.fDExqieP.dpuf
    Crafts with recycled materials!
    Our biennial free drop-in seasonal craft making workshop upstairs at the beautiful Tooting Library.
    We’ll be using recycled materials to make creative presents, decorations or packages (for yourself or for others). With quite a lot of glitter.
    All welcome, all ages, all tuition and materials provided.
    Practical and fun session to illustrate making beautiful things from waste – and reduce carbon.
    Photos from our 2012 event here on PD:
    http://www.projectdirt.com/project/7213/#!/journal…
    Many thanks to the team at Tooting Library, and to GLL
    Any queries – email us at transitiontowntooting@gmail.com
    – See more at: http://www.projectdirt.com/apps/event/32290/#sthash.fDExqieP.dpuf

    Crafts with recycled materials!
    Our biennial free drop-in seasonal craft making workshop upstairs at the beautiful Tooting Library.
    We’ll be using recycled materials to make creative presents, decorations or packages (for yourself or for others). With quite a lot of glitter.
    All welcome, all ages, all tuition and materials provided.
    Practical and fun session to illustrate making beautiful things from waste – and reduce carbon.
    Photos from our 2012 event here on PD:
    http://www.projectdirt.com/project/7213/#!/journal…
    Many thanks to the team at Tooting Library, and to GLL
    Any queries – email us at transitiontowntooting@gmail.com
    – See more at: http://www.projectdirt.com/apps/event/32290/#sthash.fDExqieP.dpuf

  • TTT’s ’12 tweets to Christmas’: here is tweet no. 1

    TTT’s ’12 tweets to Christmas’

    We’re going to tweet every day from now until Christmas Eve on practical, creative, seasonal & interesting sustainability themes. 

    Here is the welcoming tweet:
    Today we begin @tttooting‘s 12 tweets to Christmas, built on our email newsletter last month ow.ly/FMPV5 Join in!

    And here is tweet number one:
    No.1 in @tttooting‘s 12 day to xmas: Source your dinner locally. Use a tool like @findlocalfood‘s ow.ly/FMQcO or @MadeInTooting

    Follow us on twitter (@tttooting) and retweet the messages, and we’ll follow you. The more the merrier….and please join in and tweet us your sustainability tips too.
    If you are not on twitter, you can read the posts here on the TTT blog, one a day. Do email us more ideas here.

    Yes it’s a challenge to be concise and fit a message into 140 characters – it must be good practice! Actually it is quite addictive…
    And we haven’t written these as a committee – the tweets are simply what diverse individuals have volunteered to share.
    If it catches on….we could do a run of New Year’s Resolutions in Jan?

    Our twitter address again: @tttooting 

  • 100 children in the Garden: hunting for minibeasts and for bears in mid-November

    In the past fortnight we have hosted two year groups of 50 children each with staff and parents from Gatton School for two special mid-November outdoor learning sessions, Tooting style.

    Year Four actively searched the garden’s diverse habitats for minibeasts as part of a curriculum day on the natural world. They found worms, woodlice, centipedes, snails, spiders, beetles, and more.

    Year One went step-by-step through an active version of We’re Going on a Bear Hunt – a super experience of literacy, creativity and using their imaginations outdoors.

    What did Year 4 do?

    They dug energetically
    They peered under the roof

    Clipboards came out with the sun
    They inspected everything

    Year One’s Bear Hunt was thrilling…..
    …click below to read on

    50 Year 1 childen singing ‘We’re not scared..’ was great to hear. The children walked through the Long Grass, they crossed the Deep River, they dragged themselves through the Mud, they went through the Forest, they battled the Snowstorm…

    Crossing the Deep Cold River

    Battling the snowstorm

    Through the Forest


     
    …and they found the Cave. 

    In the Cave….was the BEAR!


    Was the bear real? Some children thought the best thing to do was to hug the bear..and others ran back to the Forest.

    How did the visit end? 
    With more songs, and with snacks of carrots and pears – and all the cores went straight into the compost. Nothing left but footprints and good memories.

    It was a privilege to host both year groups in the Community Garden, and to see the children being so adventurous, responsive and positive, and the sessions so creatively prepared.
    And if you don’t know the story, click here to see Michael Rosen performing his poem..and try it out yourself.