Transition Town Tooting

Tag: Refugees & Asylum

  • ‘Stay With Love’: Gardens of Refuge Project update

    We’re reporting back every six weeks on the Gardens of Refuge Project. That’s our local project running throughout 2017 with refugees and asylum-seekers living in and nearby Tooting, alongside our project partners CARAS and The Grange.

    Our previous summary at the end of May can be read here.
    In June and July we’ve worked with the CARAS Saturday Youth Club. 

    Elly Brown, MD at CARAS says:

    “We’ve already witnessed the
    transformations that take place
    when people from far and wide
    can use their skills and knowledge
    to create something shared.”
    What have we been doing together?
    ‘Stay with Love’ Making instant pallet benches:

    In one mighty 4-hour session, a loose and changing group from the CARAS Youth Club co-designed, shared ideas, problem solved and brought in new team members to make four of these pallet benches.
    Hats off to that dedicated group whose pride meant they insisted on eating their communal lunch sitting on the new benches.
    Part of the production line was to write messages of welcome and invitation on the seat backs. 
    These are in many languages.
    These young people have come to the UK in search of a welcome, safety and to put down new roots. It’s poignant that they felt comfortable to contribute their own personal invitations so directly to all-comers.

    These benches went on to the pop-up village green of the Tooting Twirl and now they’re in the Community Garden. Come and have a seat!
    ‘Stay with love’ as one young man wrote
    on a bench.

     

    Beetles and Bees 
    Making planters for Hillbrook School:

    Construction was more straightforward than the benches. With carpentry finished quickly, in June we painted the new planters cream.

    In parallel we spent time drawing insects (real and imagined) – offering this in the crowded hall alongside ping pong, pool and games. It was a fun experiment to have youth clubbers drop by the ‘insect table’ to sketch….a new experience for everyone.

    Our plan was to scan these drawings to make laser-cut plaques and cut-out insects to fix  onto the planters as fascinating decoration.
    It worked! Many thanks for patience & persistence to Dermot, the South London Makerspace and Nicola.

    Passing around these 3-D cutouts at the start of the following sessions, everyone could see the young people’s feelings of ownership and achievement.

    The planters were delivered to Hillbrook School this week. In September we’ll have a celebration there with youth club members to ‘cut the ribbon’ to launch children’s growing in the beautiful planters.

    PLUS: We’ve continued to work alongside young people looking after the planting done over 3 years at the CARAS office and the Hall around the corner. Thanks Rose, it’s looking very good!

    Now we’re planning the next steps for the Family Days we’re facilitating in August in the Community Garden.

    We’ve also begun to explore what we can do together with a new CARAS beneficiary group – single adults who don’t join the family days or the youth club.

    If you would like to co-facilitate or contribute your time or materials to the Gardens of Refuge project – please email us, we’d love to discuss it.
    – Charles

  • Refugee Week 2017: Tooting activities starting Sunday 18th June

    Refugee Week is a nationwide programme of arts, cultural and educational events that celebrate the contribution of refugees to the UK, and encourages a better understanding between communities. 

    Refugee Week 2017 starts in under a fortnight, and there are plenty of London activities to choose from.

    Plus here are two local events to share:

    1. Queens of Syria – free film Sunday 18th June

    We’re showing this thrilling and absorbing film about 50 Syrian refugee women joining together to prepare to perform an ancient Greek play about women and their families in war. It’s definitely NOT simply a ‘film of the play’ – it’s all about how the women explore telling their shared stories with passion and creativity. It’s a moving and positive film.
    Click here to see the flier, and save the date! Here’s the listing on the Refugee Week site.
    We’re showing the film in the Hall at Mushkil Aasaan, the local charity supporting families, young people and the elderly.

    • Date: Sunday 18th June
    • Timings: Doors open 4:00 pm for tea and samosas, film at 5:00.
    • Venue: Mushkil Aasaan, 220 Upper Tooting Road, SW17 7EW

    2. Midsummer Merriment with CARAS
    – Thursday 22nd June
    Book now for the comedy night in Tooting Market, put on by TTT’s partner CARAS. The host will be Arthur Smith – the Night Mayor of Balham. Many of the tickets have been sold already, here’s the link.

    • Date: Thursday 22nd June
    • Timings: 7:30 to 10:30
    • Venue: Tooting Market, 21-23 Tooting High Street, SW17 0SN

    Images from past Refugee Week activities:

  • Three diverse events in Tooting celebrating refugees and migration

    We’re continuing our 2017 Gardens of Refuge project with local refugees and asylum-seekers with workshops during May and into June.
    Alongside that long-term project, we want to share three diverse and fascinating events in Tooting which celebrate refugees and migration:

    To celebrate Refugee Week in June:

    1. Queens of Syria – free film Sunday 18th June

    We’re showing this thrilling and absorbing film about 50 Syrian refugee women joining together to prepare to perform an ancient Greek play about women and their families in war. It’s definitely NOT simply a ‘film of the play’ – it’s all about how the women explore telling their shared stories with passion and creativity. It’s a moving and positive film. Click here to see the flier, and save the date!

    • Date: Sunday 18th June
    • Timings: Doors open 4:00 pm for tea and samosas, film at 5:00.
    • Venue: Mushkil Aasaan, 220 Upper Tooting Road, SW17 7EW

    2. Midsummer Merriment with CARAS on Thursday 22nd June 22nd
    Book now for CARAS’ comedy night in Tooting Market. The host will be Arthur Smith – the Night Mayor of Balham.
    A third of the tickets have been sold already, here’s the link.

    • Date: Thursday 22nd June
    • Timings: 7:30 to 10:30
    • Venue: Tooting Market, 21-23 Tooting High Street, SW17 0SN 


      Refugee Week is the annual festival which celebrates the contribution of refugees to the UK and encourages a better understanding between communities. We’ll share more & there’s online info here.

      Plus: this New Union Flag event has already happened but it worth looking up the project online 

      3. The New Union Flag project at Tooting Market
      Imagine what a British flag could look like if it reflected today’s multi-cultural society…
      Artist Gil Mualem-Doron brought this participative project to Tooting Market as part of the Wandsworth Fringe. Here is the link to the project on facebook.
      Gil is also took the project to Tara Arts on Sat May 20th.

    • 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

    • Gardens of Refuge project – February 2017 monthly update as we start with a Family Activity Day

      After the long haul of communicating near and far for voting in the Aviva Community Fund last year, winning funding in January, and getting on with the planning for 2017…we’ve begun the project!

      Our first session with the CARAS refugee and asylum-seekers has been a Family Activity Day on Valentine’s Day..
      It was a familiar mother-and-children event like many repeated all across Britain when it’s half term, and that everyday normalness was exactly the point: creating a safe and friendly space for some fun and practical family time together as a community.
      That’s the purpose of Gardens of Refuge: to create with asylum-seekers and refugees a therapeutic sense of wellbeing and feeling at home, plus growing activities and meeting members of the wider local community.

      Run by CARAS staff and volunteers, plus more from TTT, by 11:30 the church hall at All Saints Tooting was transformed with friendly faces and drop-in games and toys for all ages.

      Egle from CARAS ran a 90-minute programme while lunch was being prepared:

      • In a circle of chairs: welcome, introductions & ground rules for inclusion and safety.
      • In a big burst of energy – playing ‘fruit salad’ to get us all interacting, adults and children alike.
      • At 3 tables: looking at images from the Tooting Community Garden and saying which kind of activities individuals would like to try out this year- gardening, picnicking & cooking on a fire; garden crafts; and enjoying nature. Everyone had 5 votes to distribute using sticky stars…results to be shared.
      • Continuing at the tables to decorate flower pots using stickers, feathers and pipe cleaners.
      Carefully writing a plant label
      • Transplanting growing pots of supermarket herbs (donated by Waitrose Balham). Each pot was divided into 5 or 6 smaller pots, so the roots of basil, parsley, coriander, and greek basil have room to grow on windowsills back at home, and so they could all be shared out between 45 people.  
      • Meanwhile lunch was being cooked by Rama, one of the Chickpea Sisters, plus Georgie and Sara from Abel & Cole (who donated fresh salad).
      • To really get an appetite, we played another active circle game: ‘change places if you are wearing stripes…’
      • Then everyone sat down together to enjoy a hot meal.
      • Departure at 2:45 was a balancing act as there were a lot of plants to carry home – some families had three buses to catch – and another time we’ll bring some extra paper bags.

        Thanks to the CARAS volunteers: Rama, Vicky, Ruby, Susan, Nadia.
        And to the TTT volunteers: Resina and her children, Rose, Georgie, Sara, Chuck and Chris from the Royal Horticultural Society. Chris helped us through 2015 and 2016 with ‘Rooting in Tooting’ our first project with CARAS, and is continuing as a mentor in 2017.

        We’re making plans for Gardens of Refuge activities both with the CARAS Women’s Group and the Youth Club. Yesterday we met the Club’s Youth Council to see how they can be involved in guiding the project. The Council is great – 8 young people from 3 countries who are gaining experience of leadership, communication and self-confidence. More on that group later.

        PS – CARAS and TTT both share other updates on our respective facebook pages and on twitter – do follow if you want to be closer to the action! And, do get in contact by email if you want to offer volunteering time or resources – or ideas – to the whole project; we’d love to hear from you.

        In the kitchen
        Our motorscootering mentor

      • ‘Gardens of Refuge’ project wins 2017 funding from the Aviva Community Fund

        We are thrilled that Gardens of Refuge, the 2017 project working with Tooting refugees and asylum-seekers, has been awarded funding by Aviva. The project application was made by the local charity CARAS (Community Action for Refugees and Asylum-Seekers) and TTT are the partners along with The Grange respite centre in Norfolk.

        Thank you for all your votes and support! 

        Here’s our vision for the Gardens of Refuge project: please click here to read

        This funding award lets us look forward to a fascinating 2017, developing and delivering the new project and building on our learning and experience from our previous project together.  

        We want to do some things that we know work well, and also some new things.

        Plus we’ll invite ideas (and resources) from the many well-wishers who voted for Gardens of Refuge last November.

        A new feature that will add value is the new CARAS Youth Council. This governance group will help provide a voice for project beneficiaries in the youth club.
        We’ll also be working with other members of the CARAS community.

        We all expect to learn and benefit. One of our first reactions, apart from joy at the award and making the project real, is that this award gives profile and visibility to the fact that refugees’ lives matter, and that they have much to contribute in our shared communities.

        We’ll post more information on project plans as they develop.
        Yes, we all worked hard to get to this stage, so it’s great to have the affirmation from the Aviva Fund judges.
        It took us a while to be sure on announcement day: students of communication will be interested that Aviva made the ‘Project Winner’ info available online and by twitter…and it was 24 hours before CARAS received a direct email saying ‘You’ve won!’. By then we’d taken the public messages at face value and trusted that it was all true.

        And there are some extra surprises – such as a reception at Parliament in late January where all the funded projects can meet each other and their constituency MPs.

        We’ve worked since early 2015 with CARAS – that was on the ‘Rooting in Tooting’ project, supported by the Royal Horticultural Society’s ‘Greening Grey Britain’ campaign and by Sir Walter St John’s Educational Charity – more info here. That project brought new volunteers to CARAS & TTT; we’re really delighted with that.

        Thanks again for all your interest and support – 
        this is a very motivating start to the New Year!

      • Gardens of Refuge: yes we are through to the finals of the Aviva Community Fund!

        Brilliant success at the voting stage: Aviva Community Fund has just confirmed that we’re through to the finals for the Gardens of Refuge project! 
         
        We now do some further application steps by December 7th, and then there’s judging and then the results are announced January 10th ’17.
        Great news & thanks for all the support!
         

        To see the project description, click here: https://goo.gl/y6b66Y

      • First feedback after voting closed Friday 18th on Gardens of Refuge via Aviva Community Fund

        We’re proud to share where we reached when voting closed yesterday on the Gardens of Refuge campaign with CARAS.   
        Over 600 people supported the project online.
        We believe we came THIRD, with over 6200 votes. 
        WHICH IS WONDERFUL!

        Our formal ranking will be confirmed on 22nd Nov by Aviva & we’ll communicate wider after then. 

        If we’re in the top 4 in our project category, we go through to the next round – to a more familiar bid process.

        By the way votes went from 3400 on Weds morning to 6200 by lunchtime yesterday!

        Thanks for your votes, patience and energy in this period of repeated messages and nudges in every medium possible, dominating the TTT airwaves.

        Normal service can soon be resumed on communicating the rest of TTT’s rolling projects.

        Every vote really did count!

      • Please vote by 12:00 Friday November 18th for ‘Gardens of Refuge’ project funding from Aviva

        This week is the home straight for voting online for funding support for Gardens of Refuge at the Aviva Community Fund. It will come down to our tally of votes at the end of 18th November, and of course the other ‘Aviva projects’ are also doing a push this week.

        Please vote by Friday 12:00 for Gardens of Refuge, and ask your family and friends to vote too. Together we can support this creative and forward-looking Tooting partnership project with the refugee and asylum-seeker community centred on the Tooting charity CARAS.
        Every Vote Counts, and every vote is appreciated!

        How to vote?
        You have to register individually before you can vote. To register, please click here for the Aviva webpage
        Then search for CARAS or Gardens of Refuge to vote!

        Project Details:
        Read the description of the project online here.

        For the future: bulbs for 2017

        You’ll see that the project is all about growing the therapeutic benefits of gardening plus greening the community we share in Tooting.
        And it’s about building ways to enable refugees to share their own knowledge and skills locally.
        Together we’ll imagine and create a more beautiful neighbourhood as a legacy for all.

        Legacy: flourishing from 2015’s cuttings
        There are three partners in Gardens of Refuge:

        CARAS – with whom we have worked in depth for 18 months on Rooting in Tooting.

        The Grange – a residential respite and permaculture centre in Norfolk who work with CARAS. Please see The Grange.

        & Transition Town Tooting


         Thank you so much for your support & please vote by 12:00 on 18th Nov!

      • Celebrating and sharing learning from our experience of ‘Rooting in Tooting’

        This autumn TTT is delighted to be able to contribute to events to share our learning from Rooting in Tooting (our joint project with the refugee and asylum seeker community served by CARAS)
        It’s brilliant to be meeting new people and groups, and sharing in different ways: thank you for the invitations!
        We certainly don’t ‘have all the answers’ but we would like to join others in asking questions and sharing practice.

        There are 4 very diverse autumn 2016 events where we’re celebrating or telling the Rooting in Tooting story:

        1 The Royal Horticultural Society OneRHS managers conference

                          Credit: RHS / Julian Weigall

        CARAS & TTT were honoured to be the only outside speakers at this event for 175 RHS managers. We had fascinating discussions about how the RHS can most effectively engage with community projects.

        2 Team London Volunteer Awards 2016
        TTT is thrilled to be on the awards shortlist in the Greening & Cleaning category of the Awards. We’ll be joining other voluntary groups for the ceremony. Here’s the Mayor’s tweet on Monday morning: @MayorofLondon @SadiqKhan will celebrate the capital’s volunteering heroes at tonight’s #TeamLdnAwards at City Hall.

         

        3 Cause2Create: “where we find specific, targeted solutions to challenges posed by the refugee crisis”
        We’re invited to Cause2Create’s ‘hack’ weekend. “We know we’re not going to solve the refugee crisis in one weekend, but we can explore some of the specific challenges and develop scalable and actionable solutions.”

        4 International Volunteering Conference at City Hall, celebrating London as European Volunteering Capital 2016
        CARAS & TTT are co-facilitating one of the conference workshops in December. Joining in with the Greek volunteering NGO Ethelon, the aim is to explore training and community engagement aspects of working well with refugees. What benefits do both refugees and communities experience when working together?
        During the year we also:

        • Explored the project in an Outdoor Learning workshop at the Transition Network International Conference in Sept ’15 (linked to experience with Gatton School, NCS The Challenge, Tooting Field Days & the Tooting Community Garden).
        • Described the project at the Transition Network Day in Paris alongside the COP 21 climate change talks in December ’15.

        Interesting learning about project management is that none of these events was specifically planned when we started out in spring 2015. In the project plan we agreed that we wanted to share learning, and then be ready for serendipity and emerging opportunity.

        It was good luck and being flexible that we were able to link refugee Youth Club young people with Border Control, the concept garden at the RHS Hampton Court Flower Show

        Rooting in Tooting has involved over 20 local individuals who freely gave their time and experience alongside CARAS staff and volunteers: thank you all!
        We also want to say a big thank-you to two project funders:

        • The Royal Horticultural Society’s Greening Grey Britain Campaign gave us materials and expert advice, and opened doors to new opportunities to add value to the project
        • Sir Walter St John’s Educational Charity voted funds which helped us recognise the contributions of key session facilitators, and paid for art materials

        Finally – you will have spotted that we now have a new project with refugees and asylum-seekers under development: a 3-way partnership called Gardens of Refuge.

        We’re asking for public votes from our friends and supporters (and their friends!) for funding via the Aviva Community Fund. 

        All the details are here, and thank you so much if you can take the time to register and vote for the project!