Transition Town Tooting

Tag: Outdoors

  • WHY ‘A Wild Afternoon in Tooting’? Part 2

    This is the second in our mini-series of 3 blogs about ‘why’ experiencing the urban outdoors can be valuable and significant for many people….something we’ll enjoy on Sunday (see the events listing opposite) in an informal way, based on fun and games.

    This blog is just a snapshot of a big subject, looking at another way for young people to experience the outdoors: participating in structured or formal programmes aimed at a very wide range of needs and using many methods. 

    One formal programme that happens right here in Wandsworth is The Challenge National Citizenship Scheme for 15-17 year olds. Read all about it at http://www.ncsthechallenge.org/ 
    There is still time to sign up for 2015!
    Tooting Community Garden has been involved with The Challenge for the past two years, providing practical experience of a community project, in our case in the outdoors.

    The 2013 group tackled our bread wheat – threshing, sifting and then grinding into flour to be baked into Foodival sourdough. It was an active day full of energy!

    The 2014 group had a damp day moving from “Am I expected to actually touch this earth..?” to “Wow, digging potatoes is like finding buried treasure” and putting their photos on Instagram.



    That group’s feedback was expressed tangibly when they donated over £30 to the Garden – cash they had raised in another part of their course and could have easily spent on themselves. We’re grateful –  much appreciated! 

    The Youth Club run by the Klevis Kola Foundation is another local programme. Details here: http://www.kleviskola.org/projects.php
    Alongside Club activities for young people in the asylum seeking and refugee community, a group of teenagers spent a few concentrated hours in the garden in January.  

    With english as the common language (we had five more to spare)…

    …we replanted the living willow yurt, a good wintertime job, and also tied in cut sycamore branches to bend over and define the future shape of the willow structure…so that it can come alive in our imaginations even if it will take a little while to get there

    While it was great to tick off an longstanding Garden job, the problem-solving and interchange between the young men was also rewarding. And that sense of shared achievement was extended to chatting while making tea in the volcano kettle, and sharing Steph’s cake.

    A longer-term structured outdoor programme (based in Brighton):
    Young substance abusers experiencing Forest School activities right in their neighbourhood
     Quoting a project leader:
    “Young people have come to a woodland site on a weekly basis for 10 weeks, and engaged in a whole range of activities based around a campfire setting. 
    The activities have included: fire lighting skills and fire management, using edged tools to make items from natural materials – wood, fibres – and cooking over the fire.

    The strength of the programme lay in the setting, which was, on the surface, very informal. The youngsters would essentially be joining in with the staff, who happened to be in the wood and engaged in activities themselves. There was freedom to choose to do other things, sit around the fire and chat, or make up their own ideas for things to do.”

    Some outcomes?

    • The focus on the the place and the activities on offer and not on ‘self improvement’ or the addressing of ‘issues’ allowed the young people some emotional room to become self-managing, and to make the relationships they needed in a neutral environment.
    • Each young person had their own personal sense of achievement and this was sensitively recognised and encouraged by the trainers.

    If you would like to read the full case study of this Forest School project, click here. Please contact us if you would like to read the wider research project with another ten case studies.

    Thanks for reading: the possibilities for engaging local young people with the urban outdoors are very diverse, the benefits are well known, and there is creative experience to share. Informal or formal, there is a green thread in exploring how powerful the outdoors can be, and it’s useful to get that conversation going locally. 

    See you Sunday for a very informal trial run!
    – Charles

  • WHY we’re offering our ‘Wild Afternoon in Tooting’ this Sunday 22nd Feb: Part 1

    All welcome to the two parts of our free half term Wild Afternoon in Tooting:
    at 1400: participative outdoor games for all the family
    at 1600: showing ‘Project Wild Thing’ film  

    All the details on our events calendar to the right of this blog page.
    It’s going to be a fun and engaging afternoon, even if it’s damp outdoors in the first part when we try out some games.
      
    Being outdoors in the city should be fun, available and accessible, and is valuable for us all. 

    For the next 3 days, we want to illustrate some different aspects of why we believe it’s important to offer ways to enjoy being outdoors – including the personal and informal as well as more formal examples.

    Why go outdoors in Tooting? Part 1 
    Rachel from fanSHEN Theatre will be helping run the games this Sunday. fanSHEN are also developing a 6-month series of free Tooting Field Days, which kick off in April in partnership with TTT.

    “As a warm-up to the Tooting Field Days, we’ll be helping out at Wild Afternoon, playing some games invented by the awesome San Francisco New Games Foundation. 

    Why? In August last year, our fanSHEN team spent almost every Saturday walking around Tooting, looking for good routes for the audio walks we were making. We had some ideas about what the routes might be, landmarks they might take in, how long they might take – but mostly we walked around to see where might be fun or interesting. 

    Flourishing in February
     When we got tired, we stopped at one of Tooting’s brilliant restaurants or cafes and refueled on egg kothu or samosas or 
    coffee while we pored over a map to see where we hadn’t tried yet. 
    We stumbled on places and met people 
    we wouldn’t normally. 
    Maybe because it was August and 
    everyone else was away, it felt a bit like a holiday, exploring a place without the pressure of needing to be in a 
    certain place at a particular time.

    These days weren’t particularly sunny – if you remember, a lovely sunny June gave way to a pretty mediocre July and August last year. They weren’t days when I would have sat outside; I’d have looked out of my window and seen it being overcast and blowy and decided not to make a big effort to leave the flat. But doing this project meant that I spent over 4 hours a day walking around outside. And it was brilliant.

    I think I probably spend most of my life in front of a screen. I don’t think as a kid I ever thought my life as a grown up would be like this. I don’t even think there was a point as a young adult I decided that I was happy to be this screen person because it was worth it for career success or something like that. Somehow I slid into this screen-based existence. Of course, on my desktop I have a picture taken on a real holiday, of a beautiful sunset.
    Flowering in February (hazel)

    So at some point while we were making these walks, I made a promise to myself to spend more time outside. 
    It’s a promise I’ve broken over the last six months. Yeah, it’s been winter, and yeah, I’ve been busy, but the bottom line is that I’ve opted for screen over surroundings, even though I know how much happier I’d be being outside. 
    (And I’m not the only one – there’s a body of evidence to suggest that well-being is improved by getting outside).

    But things are going to change. So we’re making the Tooting Field Day project about being outside, allowing yourself to be surprised and having fun with a bunch of people you might not meet in your daily life. There’ll be walks and games and craftiness and samosas and coffee and maybe even egg kothu! More details to come.
    Hopefully you can make it to the Wild Afternoon on Sunday 22nd and then monthly from April – bet you a samosa it’ll make you happier than spending the afternoon in front of the computer”

    Rachel Briscoe fanshen.org.uk  @fanshentheatre 
    Thank you, Rachel! 
    And all welcome on Sunday…and from April-Sept for the Field Days.
    – Charles

  • A Wild Afternoon in Tooting 22nd Feb

    The film is a passionate and witty exploration about how to enable young people (and the adults who may not be sure how to help make this happen) to get outdoors – and swap screen time for wild time. More information on the Project Wild Thing website.

    Booking: Come for the whole afternoon, or for either of the two parts. So we can make plans for numbers of participants, please book in for free here. Or of course drop in on the day.

    More details on Project Dirt.

  • Insect Hotel – Project Complete, first invertebrates move in!

    A lot has happened since the insects last blogged: 3 sessions with Gatton Primary, Christmas, New Year and most all of January! High time we caught you up.

    The last 3 sessions with the school where filled with habitat creation. Each week we looked back at the 15 minute “mini-hotels” during the first 4 sessions and were delighted to find lots of tenants. Wood lice, worms, centipedes and millipedes had moved in to the nooks and crannies.

    On Tuesday January 20th, we convened a celebration with 7 student reps and 2 VIPs… our local Councillor from Wandsworth Council, Candida Jones and Chris Young from RHS Campaign for School Gardening. TTT contributors to the project also came along, as did teachers from Gatton School. We’re delighted you could all come, thank you for sparing the time.

    The Insect Hotel is named! The 7 Student Reps with Rifat Batool, Headteacher and Chris Young, RHS  Regional Campaign for School Gardening Advisor, London.

    Read on to read the words of the Student Reps, what was their experience?

    After a brief welcome, it was over to the students to tell us about the experience form their point of view before the official naming of… wait for it… “Bugs’R’Us” Insect Hotel! Here’s excerpts of what the 7 children said:

    “The project that we have been working on (The Insect Hotel) has helped us develop a sense of responsibility as well as a variety of hands on skills like sawing, drilling, construction and of course our weekly search for the “bugs” that have taken shelter in our mini hotels.”

    Of the mini-hotels, the children said…
    “…it was always interesting to come back the next week to see what creatures were visiting and which “rooms” they preferred. Darker, gloomier and smaller seems to be the attraction.”

    “We were amazed to discover the hidden crevices that bugs seem to enjoy visiting when we created our mini hotels, to get an idea of the habitats of different creatures in the garden.”

    And of being in a natural environment – not an everyday experience in our urban setting…

    “We were quite amazed with ourselves to know that we could actually hold a worm in our hands and not run for cover.”

    And of the experience as a whole…
    “We have learned the importance of being eco-friendly, recycling our waste and the amazing role that “bugs” play in our environment.”

    “Overall, we had a wonderful and memorable experience and hope we come back here to contribute towards another project very soon.”

    Over the next weeks and months we’ll gently add habitat to the Hotel and label up the different niches we have created. We’re also starting a conversation about how to share learning about the project. Should you want to hear our experience in more detail – do email transitiontowntooting@gmail.com.

    A big thank you to Naseem Aboobaker and all at Mushkil Aasaan, the local charity who own the site and continue to encourage us to garden and teach at Tooting Community Garden.

    And thank you to Ms Syeda and Ms Shazia at Gatton School for leading the Eco-Schools project and checking permissions for photos for this blog week in week out!

    And the teachers and teaching assistants from Gatton School, Mr.Amin, Ms.Fathima, Ms.Neelam for your engagement at the garden and parallel work in the classroom – the students were really well prepared!

    And finally, a big THANK YOU to all the volunteers from Transition Town Tooting who contributed their time, energy and application to the project.

  • Number 6 in TTT’s ’12 tweets to Christmas’

    Here is tweet number six:
    No.6 in @tttooting 12 tweets to Xmas. Swap screen time for #wildtime Ideas: @wearewildthing @wildlifetrusts @LoveOutdoorPlay @outdoor_nation

    Plus a bonus photograph for the blog only:
    Have a look at the Christmas stamp – obviously it’s showing Tooting, Furzedown or Fishponds…so that’s more encouragement to get outdoors! See you there.

  • Insect Hotel – trash to treasure (of sorts…)

    Have you ever thought about how much material gets used once and thrown away? Or is not financially worth re-using? Or how most people won’t be satisfied buying something second hand, it has to be new?

    Somewhat in tune with Transition Network’s December theme of “Less is More”  I thought it would be of interest to look at the materials we are using in the Insect Hotel build.

    The structure is supported on waste flag stones donated to the garden. The four uprights used to be fence that ran across the garden and was blown down in the gales a year or two ago, the horizontal shelf supports too. Those bracing pieces are temporary…

    Week 5 – all we need now is the habitats… and the bugs!

    Click below to read how the roof was put together…

    This week, the students from Gatton raised the roof, along with David, Sharon, Esther and I. The roof is made of amazing 4b2 timber – this particular stuff came out of our loft when we were lucky enough to convert it a year ago. The booming domestic renovation business is not set up at all to re-use or recycle. Time and money rule, and its cheaper to dump these timbers in a skip than de-nail and re-use – criminal if you ask me, imagine a waterfall system of being passed onto smaller and smaller projects, but that’s another idea for another blog. The tiles too came from our job.

    Detail showing roof structure and re-use timber and tile

    If you need any of these materials, just go for a bike ride and find a house wrapped in scaffolding and ask the builders. Chances are, they’d be more than happy to offload it too you (you might need a bigger vehicle than a bike to transport it!) as it reduces their waste costs and so increases their profit as this is already figured into a fixed price to the client.

    The only thing new so far on the build is the tile batons – I couldn’t find any re-use ones, unfortunately. However, when I went to buy them, I found out my local timber merchant has stacks and stacks of pallets, considered an inconvenient waste and were kind enough to drop 5 of them round to the garden – that’s the rest of the shelving material sorted! The simplest Insect Hotels are made from skips, so if you’re looking to do one… check out here for pallet-based inspiration.

    And here for a previous blogpost on innovation in building waste re-use.

  • Insect Hotel Wk3 – The Rising!

    Often with our work with Gatton, we’ll augment the sessions with the students with extra hours to maintain momentum as well as keep us on track. These augmenting sessions usually happen during normal garden hours on a Sunday, 11am to 1pm. So come down if you specifically want to contribute to this project. Send a message via transitiontowntooting@gmail.com

    Week 3 saw the Insect Hotel rise-up from raw timbers to an upright structure – a great moment. Luckily, we had a couple of load testers to immediately make sure it was suitable for grubs to climb up!

    1. Preparing the ground  
    2. Building the frames
    The timbers used were the
    ones Gatton School had
    cut in preceding weeks
    3. Laying flag stone foundations

    4. There she rises! With two eager 
    climbers waiting in the wings

    5. Bang on level…

    The timbers used to be a fence that passed across the site – a  priority for us is to re-use as much as possible.

    The team on the day was Diana (with the level), Gerard (with the sideburns) Benji with the yellow coat and Dominic with the smile! Jenny is on the camera and that’s me in the hat!

    6. Here come the load testers

    Click below to read about how Gatton continued the build…

    7. Shelf building

     The following Tuesday, Gatton returned and the  students cracked on with making the shelves  that will go into the structure. 

     For us, having these two sides to a project is  very interesting and valuable. The sense of  teamwork is palpable. With the three Year 6  projects of the Rainwater Catchment, the Cold  Frame and now the Insect Hotel, we really do  achieve more than we could on our own through  sharing the project.
    8. What do you think??
    Meanwhile, our experiments with insect habitats continued. This week, we looked at habitats for the solitary bee, as well as other critters. Using an old oversized drainpipe, we cut up some old bamboo and stuffed it full. The solitary bees crawl in there and make a nest for their young, stacked along the tubes – pretty cool and very easy to make… they like a sunny, warm, dry spot – which they’ll get in the final hotel.
    A first home
    Meanwhile, for the solitary bees…

  • 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.

  • Week 2 of the Insect Hotel

     On Tuesday 11th November, we enjoyed the second session of our Insect Hotel Project at the Community Garden, with Year 6 from Gatton Primary School in Tooting.
     Each week there is a new group of 10 students from the two classes of Year 6, so it’s always good to welcome them to the garden before cracking into our project work. Charlie showed the 4000 yr old flint tool and the sea urchin fossil – found when the original veg beds were dug, only 3 years ago. Come along to witness them yourself.

    Can you spot the eco-system Engineer?

    It’s always good to ask the simple questions for any TTT project we undertake and our schools work is no different.

     So why build an Insect Hotel? This week’s group thought it would help the insects, give them protection and shelter and be a place to hibernate – all good, thoughtful points we reflected on for the rest of the session.

    Cutting the corner posts for the Hotel

    The measure…
    …the cut…
     Each group of 3 students figured out how to mark out before cutting. In the session, we completed work on our 4 main supporting posts, made from re-purposed fence posts. 
    …success!
      This engages maths, logical  thought and, of course, safe tool  use with every child using the  saw.

     Our group were brilliant –  engaged and enthusiastic  throughout.

    St.Bug’s Hotel!
    Exploring Insect Habitat 
     Each week, we’re playing with habitat by making a quick and dirty floor level hotel to inform the habitats we will place in the final structure. This weeks theme was crevices – nooks and crannies to encourage invertebrates and ladybirds – and was mostly built with tiles, twigs and an earth mound for our master ecosystem engineers – the humble worm. 
     So come along to the community garden, see the Insect Hotel emerge and explore the temporary accommodation the students of Gatton are creating! The Garden is open every Sunday, 11am to 1pm at 5 North Drive, Tooting, SW16 1RN.

  • Enjoying the Outdoors in Tooting – one theme for our St George’s Open Day stand

    Come and talk to us at our stand at St George’s Community Open Day on Saturday 15th Nov. about opportunities to get outside in Tooting. Outdoor Tooting can be a surprising and rewarding place for all ages, and TTT want to encourage more young people and adults to get outside – for fun, to play, for exercise, to meet people, to learn – & more.

    Four glimpses of our outdoor project with Gatton School:                                                      


    This morning we hosted 70 
    Year 4 children, staff and parents who were investigating what’s living in six different Community Garden habitats – with the group braving showers and wind.

    The end of today’s session, under the holm oak.
    Time to go home, and now the sun has come out.

    Last week, in one of the weekly sessions with Reception children

     

    A year ago, Year Six made a practice DIY drainpipe system to learn about getting water from the roof to the butts for the rainwater harvesting build project. 
    It worked!

     

    Back in September, just before the Tooting Foodival, teenagers from The Challenge project helped to harvest potatoes at the Garden, and much more. 
    (The rainwater build now doubling as an outdoor room, nice…)

    Adults are welcome outdoors! 
    Another way to enjoy being outside is to try on of FanSHEN Theatre’s Tootingwalks: two audio tours of Tooting that you can download to your mobile, and then walk the guided tour – or load on your computer to preview at home, like a radio programme. 
    For all the details online, click here. 
    Chat with us about the Tootingwalks if you come to St George’s.

    Or, get ideas with Project Wild Thing: click here for info. Adults or young people can be bold and pledge to spend an hour outside for every hour spent looking at a screen…..try it!

    We’re going to plan some Wild Days Out(doors) in Tooting in 2015, and also show the  ‘Project Wild Thing’ film one evening – keep in touch, chat at St George’s, and come and get involved.