Transition Town Tooting

Tag: Events

  • So Much On At Foodival 2014!

    The 2014 Foodival looks set to be the biggest yet. In its seventh incarnation, Foodival now involves a presence at both the BATCA Funday and Foodcycle (both on Saturday 13th) where you can drop off food donations, have your photo taken in our photo booth and maybe be a late entry for Top Tooting Cook.

    On Sunday 14th at Samaj Hall, 26b Tooting High St, the line-up of bands and performers is incredible and we are really grateful for all of their offers to entertain us.  Similarly we are very grateful to the particpating restaurants cooking up your donated produce, the fabulous array of local groups who will be there, not to mention the special input of fanSHEN, Mark Watson and Tooting’s Phantom Knitter.

    Follow these links to head over to the Foodival website for more details.

    We hope to run into you enjoying yourself this weekend in the cultural food village that is Tooting.

  • Restart Party Report

    Tonight’s Restart Party was very cool. Thank you so much to Ugo and Janet for organising this event for us at Mushkil Aasaan. Naseem I hope your intercom and kettle were fixed! So I took my TV, only two years old, and watched guitarist Ben and 11 year old schoolboy Sonny, take it apart. It took an hour or more to test every bit of it but in the end the verdict is that I can buy a £17 power supply board to fix this rather than buy a £200 replacement!  Thank you so much boys – I will try!  You can see them in this slideshow:

    The Restart idea is surely the way forward. We cannot endlessly plunder our planet for finite resources to make disposable electronic and countless others products.  Had a great chat with the Gaia Foundation about their Short Circuit report which focuses on the lifestyle of electronic gadgets and the true cost to the earth.  Thanks to everyone who volunteered and attended this evening – let’s do it again. David

  • Three weeks until Foodival!

    Tooting Foodival 2013
    It’s just 3 weeks until the 7th annual Tooting Foodival! 
    We’re beavering away behind the scenes and we hope that your fruit and vegetables are growing well.  Thanks to everyone who has added their produce to the What’s Growing in Tooting map.

    Donate your fruit and veg on Saturday 13 Sep

    If you have spare fruit, vegetables or herbs, you can donate them at two locations on Saturday 13th September from 1pm – 5pm:

    Even if you only have two tomatoes or a sprig of rosemary, bring it along, so that we can offer delicious local food to many people on Sunday. Your donations will be delivered to local restaurants and to our Top Tooting Cook contestants, who will be cooking up a treat overnight, ready for the festival on Sunday 14th September at Samaj Hall, 26b Tooting High Street (by Broadway Studios).

    Join us at Samaj Hall on Sunday 14 Sep from 12 noon until 5pm.

    There will be plenty to entertain you – some great musicians and entertainers, games, theatre, craft activities, local stalls, and of course some very tasty food with very low food miles from our local restaurants.

    We’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who’s involved so far in getting the festival off the ground:

    And special thanks to the Wandsworth Eco Fund for the grant that goes towards running costs for the Foodival.  

    If you’d like to get involved with Foodival, get in touch.  You can help by spreading the word, telling your friends, family and neighbours.  Or join in by donating food on the Saturday, or volunteering on the Sunday serving food or collecting food from restaurants.  There are still spaces if you’d like to enter the Top Tooting Cook competition and we will be running a final Meet & Make session to get ready for Foodival at Sprout Arts on 10th September.

    Let the countdown begin!

  • Growing Connections as Spring Arrives

    The clocks are about to go forward and it’s officially spring time!  We celebrated the start of a new growing season by donating and swapping over one hundred packets of seeds with local people on Saturday.  The event aimed to encourage and support people, young and old, in growing food and flowers in whatever space they have.

     
    It was a great opportunity to bring people together. We met some wonderful characters.  Two women excitedly took handfuls of seeds to share with friends and family, and a man, we coaxed in with offers of kale, shared a beautiful tale about how the scent of broad beans takes him back to his childhood in Cyprus.

    Following on straight after Foodcycle,there were plenty of activities to entertain everyone. Heather, from Tooting Library, told stories like Jack and the Beanstalk; Sharon taught us how to make origami seed pots from newspapers; Belinda helped us make flowers out of plastic bags for the story walk on 5th May; and Stephanie wowed us all with paper making from straw collected from the wheat harvest at the garden last year.

    One visitor summed it up, saying: “The paper making workshop was amazing. I’ve never seen paper made of straw! I enjoyed chatting with the gardeners and for the price of a piece of my overgrown mint plant, I left with poppy seeds, wild sweet peas, radish, sunflowers and hollyhock seeds – all grown in Tooting and so all the more special as I know that they could do well again this year. Thank you.”


    People as young as five and as old as seventy five took away sunflower seeds collected from the community garden, to grow at home.  Tooting Community Garden is running a challenge this year to see who can grow the tallest sunflower in Tooting.  All you have to do is take a photo of the sunflower you have grown this summer and post it to our Facebook page.  We’ll announce the winner at Foodival (13-14 September). JT

  • Community Garden Open Day, Sun June 9th

    The TTT Community Garden was open to the public as part of the Open Garden Squares weekend last Sunday.  Regular garden volunteer, Jenny Teasdale, reports.


    It was a time of excitement and reflection when we opened the garden to celebrate our second birthday, linking up with Open Garden Squares weekend and the Chelsea Fringe.  All the volunteers had been busy bees preparing for the big day and what a big day it turned out to be with nearly 100 visitors, young and old, enjoying the garden with us. People came out of curiosity and community, exploring the range of spaces we have created over the last two years, including the vegetable beds tended by volunteers and local school children, the new herb garden, the secret garden, the willow house and the play area. It was great to see young children taking such delight in throwing themselves into the tall grass, before settling down to hear a story from Emily in the secret garden or printing plants with Chuck under the holm oak.

    I know I speak for all our volunteers when I say that we came out of the day with a strong feeling of community and a desire to open up the garden more often for special events. We are already planning another story session, a composting workshop and some harvest days, and will be creating a new wildlife and wild flower space in the coming months.

    Everyone is welcome to come along to the garden on any Sunday this summer between 11 and 1 whether you are interested in getting involved or just curious to see this fantastic space.

  • Fresh & Refresh

    On 13 April 2013 Mushkil Aaasan in the Upper Tooting Rd hosted “Fresh and Refresh” co-curated by Amee Ramesh and Jeni Walker. This event was designed to be a Spring Festival to inspire people to turn a new leaf and initiate new and positive changes in their lifestyle.

    The Tooting Bec Lido & Zumba trainers demonstrated ways that exercise can help, while information was also on hand about stopping smoking, blood pressure monitoring and cholesterol checks. Information on how to eat healthily and grow your own food, alongside the latest from the Friends of Streatham Cemetery bees, rubbed shoulders with delicious free tasters from Tooting Market’s Portuguese Café, Minashop, and Indian delicacies kindly donated by Tooting Pharmacy. Crafty Pint helped people create wonders from discarded plastics, while pop-up kindness and recipe swaps were also on offer. The event was very busy with a diverse audience, some who just wandered in off the street to investigate.

    Amee Ramesh was delighted at how the event turned out and said: “The day itself was lovely and everyone came together, generating a really enthusiastic and positive atmosphere. It was lovely to meet new people and foster an ‘onwards and upwards’ mentality in the local community, especially after such a long winter!”

    Once again thanks to Amee, Jeni, Mushkil Aasaan and all who contributed to making the event such a success.

  • Fresh & Refresh

    A diverse and interesting experience was on offer this afternoon at TTT’s Fresh & Refresh with quite a few new surprises, such as great Portuguese natas, bhel puri, a wishing tree, seeds, compost, craft, how to stop smoking and even a free Zumba class (see below)!

  • Fresh and Refresh Spring Festival – Saturday 13th April 11am to 2pm

    Come along to Transition Town Tooting’s Fresh And Refresh spring celebration from 11am to 2pm at Mushkil Aasaan, 222 Upper Tooting Road.. Fresh ideas to refresh the spirit – lots of fun and free activities for all ages! 

    Things to do include:

    • the Fresh and Refresh Walk (leaves Tooting Lido at 9am and meanders through places of interest in Tooting), ending at the venue)

    • local food tasting

    • sowing and growing stall – free seeds to pot up and grow on then bring your produce back to the Foodival in September

    • media forum

    • zumba taster session

    • carbon cutting

    • bee keeping with the Friends of Streatham Cemetery

    • upcycling workshop by the Crafty Pint

    • quitting smoking

    Come along and join us – drop in at any time during the day or come early and try everything.  All welcome.

  • 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!

  • 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: