Transition Town Tooting

Tag: Nature

  • Tooting Field Days – Free Family fun – Starting Sunday 19 April

    Tooting Field Days are local safaris based in and around Tooting; a chance to get outside and play, walk or make something. We can’t promise lions and zebras but you might discover something you’ve never seen before, think something new or have a mini adventure!

    Tooting Field Days will happen every month on a Sunday afternoon from April until September. The first Field Day is Sunday 19 April.

    The theme for the April Field Day is “Natural Neighbours.” Make a pine cone bird feeder, discover voices of Tooting past and do scavenger hunts in Streatham Cemetry. Drop in for part of the day or join us for the whole event.

    2pm: Meet at Tooting Library (75 Mitcham Road, SW17 9PD) to make a pine cone bird feeder that you can hang in your garden or balcony to encourage more feathered friends to visit you. Materials provided.

    3pm: Depart Tooting Library to do Tootingwalks 1, a specially-made audio walk packed full of music and the voices of local people, talking about Tooting past and present and Tooting’s love of food. MP3 players and maps provided.

    3.45 – 5.30: Treasure Trails, Scavenger Hunts and honey tasting in Streatham Cemetery (enter through gate on Broadwater Road).

    You can join us for the whole afternoon or drop in for just one section.

    All activities are suitable (and fun) for children and adults.

    Tooting Field Day is a collaboration between Transition Town Tooting and local arts organisation fanSHEN.

    To book a (free) place or for more information, click here

  • Birds, stories, a volcano, willows: a winter day in the Community Garden, Sunday 25th January

    All welcome to join us for a winter day this weekend in the 
    Tooting Community Garden at 5 North Drive, SW16 1RN

    Brave the cold outside, 
    and swap screen time for wild time
    1030-1130

    Shhhhh…take part in the RSPB Garden Birdwatch

    1145

    Bird-themed storytelling with Emily Duizend

    1200

    Tea making with the volcano kettle

    1230-1330

    Get active adding willow to our living willow yurt  

    >Come for any part or all of the day
    >For all ages 5-105
    >All materials provided
    >The activity area is wheelchair accessible
    >Nearest toilet to the garden is at Tooting Athletics Track
    >To see the poster: click here 

    >Updates: Tooting Community Garden or Transition Town Tooting on Facebook
    >Many thanks to Emily Duizend: www.storyisland.net


    We started the willow yurt 3 years ago
    Any queries, please comment on Facebook or email us here

  • Wildlife Gardening Forum: conference 21 Oct 13

    TTT joined this bi-annual conference yesterday at the University Hospital, Coventry. The Wildflife Garden Forum is a voluntary UK-wide group including local and national projects and charities, researchers and academics, local authorities and government agencies. The Forum’s intention is to share evidence and practice about the value of wildlife to gardening (and people) – and vice versa.
    Yesterday’s conference topic was ‘Human Health and Wildlife Gardening’ – please see the agenda here. An excellent range of speakers covered up-to-date research and personal experience of the links between our own health, wellbeing and happiness, and the health and biodiversity of wildlife.
    It’s a topic that’s one of the keys to sustainability in Tooting.
    A very exciting feature of the day was the focus on wildlife and nature’s role across the NHS itself: including softer benefits such as the value of amenity and beauty, and harder evidence including faster recovery times. The University Hospital’s Sustainable Development Manager gave us a tour of some of the easy-to-see elements of working with nature: the Hospital has created a wild space of reeds and young trees, next to a small river newly-populated by otters.

    We have some good new contacts and ideas for taking forward these possibilities in Tooting – in a very different setting from a new-build hospital, but still with plenty of potential.

    Please get in contact with TTT if you would like to join us to explore the links between local wildlife, and our health and wellbeing.

    PS: have a look at our short report from a Forum meeting last year. The Forum is developing its website, in the short term info can be found here.

    And, from last Sunday in the Community Garden – when the sun was out for the exact timings of the session:

    Graham was given this
    birch seedling at the
    Environmental Association for
    Universites and Colleges conference
    several years ago. It’s new home is
    the Community Garden – thanks!
    Four ‘new’ people came along to
    the Garden having heard about us
    at the Foodival. Welcome!
    And we also gathered more leaves
    to experiment with for
    papermaking

    

  • Be creative in Tooting! ‘Day of Stories 2013’ on Saturday 11th May, plus two events this weekend

    Saturday 4th May: ‘Wish You Were Here’ Crafty Pint’s workshop printing souvenirs of Tooting, at the Tooting Tram, 12:00 – 6:00. For details click click here

    Sunday 5th May: ‘The Jigsaw Horse’ storytelling and art promenade leaves Sprout Arts in Furzedown at 1:00. For details click here
    Saturday May 11th: Welcome to the 2nd Tooting Library and Transition Town Tooting ‘Day of Stories’
    This free, exciting and diverse day is on Saturday May 11th, 10:00 to 4:00, in Tooting Children’s Library, 75 Mitcham Road, SW17 9PD

    No need to book – just pop in any time to join in some stories and make creative nature prints and stay as long as you like. This is a family day for children and their parents / carers – all welcome to take part.



    10:00-11:00 ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’+ Bill. …see below!

    11:15- 1:45 ‘Stories of Wonder’ + Alison
    12:00-2:30  ‘Nature printing ‘+ Chuck and Jane from TTT
    2:30-3:00  ‘Snakes, Lizards and Giants!’ Stories on sharing + Emily
    3:15-4:00  ‘Adventures of the Jumping Mouse’ + Marika and Hannah


    More details:

    Going on a Bear Hunt with Bill!  A great way to bring a book to life is by making sound effects to go along with your favourite story, and even recording these sounds to play the next time.
    Join Tooting Children’s Librarian Bill Bawden for a fun creative workshop with the aim of making a recording of Michael Rosen’s classic “We’re going on a Bear Hunt“. Learn how to use everyday objects to make sounds such as splashing through rivers, squelching through mud and stumbling through forests!
    The final recording will be made available to download for free and can be used to bring the story to life again and again!

    Nature Printing  Come and try an unusual, historic and magical technique: printing directly from leaves and plants. It is quick to learn, and it is not hard to get very beautiful results.




    We’ll collect springtime leaves in advance from across Tooting – or you can bring some in.          Then we’ll pass on this historic method for creating surprising and detailed prints.


    You’ll enjoy this:

    Ø if you like trying new things
    Ø if you are interested in looking at plants in a new way
    Ø if you like experimenting with textures, shapes, and patterns 
    Ø if you want to make cards, posters or presents to take home
    Come at 12:00 for an introduction, and we’ll show you how to print, or drop in anytime until 2:30. Materials provided, and we’ll adapt this to all ages and abilities: all welcome!
    There’s a blog for the Day of Stories: click here 

  • Outdoor Learning in the Tooting Community Garden

    We’re learning with Gatton School
    We are really delighted to be hosting an exciting new programme of visits by children and staff from Gatton School in Tooting to our Community Garden near Tooting Common.
    This project has developed quickly since the first meetings in February: there is a lot of goodwill on all sides, and everyone is keen for it to work and to see how it develops.

    Before the Spring holidays, we completed the first four weeks of visits.

    Measuring around the big tree


    What’s the purpose?
    The School is keen to provide weekly experiences of outdoor learning to children – time outside, in nature, where many different projects can be planned and tried out – all influenced by the weather and the season.

    

    Inspecting a woodlouse

    There will be space in the programme for reflecting, observing, listening and appreciating time in the garden. 







    

    Digging the new plot

    Experience outdoors can link to many aspects of the School’s curriculum and community, and be enhanced by activities in School: displays, maps, assemblies, writing, art, growing seedlings to transplant back to the garden. Maybe there will be a forest of sunflowers?

    Some of the activities will explore growing food and flowers, or looking at the garden’s special landscape and developing some new features – such as making a circle of tree-stump seats for storytelling, tucked away in a quiet corner. The play furniture will be sanded and painted.

     Who is taking part?
    Each week, a quarter of the Reception age children come for an hour, and a quarter of Year Six comes for a separate hour. Others from the same year groups come in the following weeks, and then after four weeks the first groups come again, to do new things and see what has changed.

    School staff accompany the children so they can be fully supported in small groups. Members of our voluntary Community Garden group are there as well to help with planned (and maybe some surprise) activities.

    What is it? A disk of ice from the water butt

    Three weeks later: getting ready to plant potatoes

    The next months
    We’re planning to keep this weekly rotation of children going through to July. The project can have a display at the BATCA fun day held at Gatton School on June 8thand we will report monthly here on this blog. Next year we all hope we can start again in September with new school year groups.

    And: the Community Garden also continues to be open regularly for anyone who wants to come along and join in our activities each Sunday from 11:00 to 1:00, at 5 North Drive.

    Please email transitiontowntooting@gmail.comfor info: all welcome!