Transition Town Tooting

Tag: Sustainability

  • TootingCAN: A Day of Skill-Sharing, Connection, and Hope

    TootingCAN: A Day of Skill-Sharing, Connection, and Hope

    All Photos credit: George Dixon

    What a day! On 9 May 2026, the United Reformed Church in Rookstone Road buzzed with energy, creativity, and a shared passion for making Tooting a better place. TootingCAN, organized by Transition Town Tooting (TTT) and funded by the Wandsworth Grant Fund, brought together 108 participants from all walks of life to celebrate the skills, resilience, and kindness that make our community thrive.

    From the moment you walked in, you could feel that this was more than just an event. It was a testament to what happens when we come together to learn, share, and care for one another. Whether you were trying your hand at British Sign Language (BSL), crafting a comic book, or whipping up date balls in the kitchen, there was something for everyone, and everyone had something to give.

    Stitching the Totes

    A Celebration of Skills and Community

    TTT’s mission is to tackle the climate and ecological emergency through volunteer-led, community-driven action right here in Tooting. TootingCAN is our moment to convene the people with skills and experiences from our locality to do exactly that through sharing, showcasing that our work is nothing without the vibrant and diverse community right here in Tooting. Participants left with new experiences, fresh ideas, and a sense of belonging that’s vital to build a flourishing sustainable future.:

    • 108 participants engaged across 15 activities.
    • 15+ workshops delivered, from worm composting to AI sustainability and Indian dance.
    • Around 75% of attendees were Wandsworth residents, proving that the best solutions start right where we live.

    But the real magic was in the story we all started to weave:

    • 9 out of 10 participants praised the event’s warmth and inclusivity, with many highlighting the friendliness and the diverse, healthy food as standout features.
    • Activities like the BSL workshop and Creation Station, led by children and supervised by Core Group member Abby, (where attendees crafted badges, mugs, and comic book stories) were particularly beloved, with participants calling them “inspiring” and “connected to family heritage.”
    • Special mention for Kelly’s cooking class for children; firstly as it enabled children to experience the joy of cooking nutritious meals from scratch, secondly as it introduced them to cooking sustainably through plant based recipes. It is hoped that this will plant the seeds for these children to enjoy cooking and cook meals that are good for the planet – potential huge long term gains if they can be sustained (through more Tooting CANs!)
    • The event closed with a community meal, performances of the fresh BSL skills and slick Indian dance moves before a collective sing song with the Lido Choir which brought the room to life, proving that joy is a skill we all share.

    Lap around a Laptop, take a look inside…

    Feedback That Warms the Heart and nourishes our work

    This year, we had an engaging and creative way to gather feedback on the walls of the entrance corridors. One attendee, a 70-year-old singer, said:

    “I loved the community atmosphere, anyone can sing! I’d love to see more singing in future events.”

    Another, a 50-year-old stitching enthusiast, shared:

    “I connected sewing to my family heritage and loved the Lido Choir. The whole event felt so welcoming.”

    Contributors (our 30+ volunteers) echoed this sentiment. They loved seeing the diversity of skills on display and the buzz of activity, and the collective effort of hosting TootingCAN.

    Indian dance, clack! clack!

    What’s Next?

    Transition Town Toting have run TootingCAN for the last 3 years and the enthusiasm for it grows each time. This year, we received loads of ideas for workshops at future TootingCANs, such as:

    • More singing and creative workshops (think choral singing, book clubs and dance)
    • Deeper dives into IT topics like AI and sustainability.
    • Arts and Crafts from crochet to lino printing, collage to painting & sketching
    • Food and cooking workshops like fermentation, kimchi and baking
    • Finally, the practical stuff: gardening, bike maintenance and woodwork.

    Most importantly, TootingCAN proved that community resilience isn’t just a buzzword, it’s something we build, day by day, skill by skill, in community. Let’s see how next year’s tootingCAN develops!

    Serving lunch

    A Huge Thank You

    To every participant, volunteer, and contributor, thank you for making TootingCAN a day to remember. Your energy, creativity, and kindness are what make Tooting special. Huge thanks to Amy and the United Reformed Church, our home from home. And to the Wandsworth Grant Fund, thank you for believing in this vision and helping us bring it to life.

    The future is bright, and it starts right here in Tooting. Let’s keep sharing, learning, and growing together—because when we do, there’s no limit to what we can achieve.

    Want to get involved? Perhaps you have something to offer for next year’s TootingCAN? Transition Town Tooting is always looking for volunteers and new ideas. Get in touch at [TransitionTownTooting@gmail.com] to join the movement!

    Close with a sing song

    Tooting can!

    By Rich Couldrey

    Step in to the creation station, stick, squeeze, badge
    Take a lap around a laptop, who knew AI was…
    Stitching ties, totes to carry your prize, whirrr, prick, chat, chat
    Chaat chaat, making chaat, spiced cascade,
    A taste of tooting in date …
    balls and pizzas made, squeeze, need and dough 
    The meal begins to assemble ...

    But wait, we dive underground, dark, as worms wriggle and squirm outside, 
    Past quests for reflection,
    to planters repaired and hands in the soil, plants go in... grow, grow!

    In community, we relate, a rainbow human family,
    What did you say? Hands sway and flow, in letters made as we move, my name, your name, hello hello. 

    Gestures turn to dance, sticks clack clack! As Ragini moves, with such grace and poise, we follow, Kathak, Kathak.

    And back, to find a way into a digital world, clickety clack of fingers on keyboards learning to excel, nearly time to relax... 

    Wooosh! A gleeful child runs and newspaper kites fly out back, time to rise up...     up...  up... to see a drawn map of us all, BAT BAT. 

    Enough of all that, 
    Take a breath, in and sing, 
    feel the healing, "hold on, my dear, here comes the dawn" rings,
    And stop, pause, time to eat and reflect,
    A leek and potatoes soup to fill the...head… 
    heart and hands, and celebrate...
    Tooting's rainbow soul, 
    ‘til next time we gather and change the world once more.
  • Living with the climate crisis / carbon conversations

    Living with the climate crisis / carbon conversations

    Would you like to join local residents for a programme of facilitated workshops exploring our responses to the climate crisis -personally and collectively?

    Living with the climate crisis is a programme of workshops which offer a mix of psychologically-based groupwork and experiential learning which support people in managing their feelings, experiences and actions towards this complex issue. 

    Anxiety, distress, burnout and despair are common responses to struggling with climate change. The workshops provide a space for people to talk, to share, to express what they feel and to reflect, but they also offer tools, ideas and skills for action. They focus on:

    • support and understanding
    • communication
    • finding pathways to carbon reduction and community and political action

    The programme was designed by the same team who designed Carbon Conversations, which we ran in Tooting for several years – you can read more here.

    We will be running a programme of these workshops in the Tooting area during June and July 2023.

    If you are interested in taking part please email Ben Cuddon to learn more: bencuddon@gmail.com

  • Mailout 30th August 2021

    This is a copy of the mail tot TTT mailing list of 30th August 2021. Open this mail in your browser

  • Climate Chaos … & Local Food

    So yesterday’s IPCC’s latest report says human activity is changing the climate in unprecedented and sometimes irreversible ways. [BBC Report]. The Guardian gives its verdict on the climate crimes of humanity as “guilty as hell”. The report itself is likely to be conservative, having been signed up to by all the world’s governments based on a review of thousands of scientific studies.

    pollution

    As we know politicians are much better at talking than taking any meaningful action to halt the Climate Crisis. As we approach COP 26 in Glasgow at the end of October, it has never been more imperative for the world to find a way to stop burning fossil fuels as soon as possible.

    While this seems highly unlikely, here in south London, we can continue to make our own small contribution to reducing the impact of humans on the planet.

    Coming up soon we have this year’s Tooting Foodival, our annual sustainable food festival taking place on 4th September 2021. We started this event in 2008 as a small way to combat the industrial homogenised food culture, to bring local and sustainable back into people’s consciousness. To get food miles to NEAR ZERO!

    The premise of Foodival revolves around using home grown fruit and vegatables donated by local growers to create tasty dishes for all to sample. The event has been running since 2008 and always includes some new ideas and strands.

    This year we are also focussing on some of the great initiatives that have emerged during lockdown that embrace sustainable living developed by local people such as recycling and upcycling, repairing, mending and re-creating.

    Fast fashion for example has a huge environmental impact on the planet, leading many to think about buying less, caring more and making the clothes we love last longer. Why not get involved with our clothes upcycling event and maybe brave the catwalk with a repurposed creation?!

    See our the Foodival blog and Instagram for more detail on this and other happenings at this year’s Foodival street festival.

  • Foodival

    Foodival

    Our 2021 Tooting Foodival was again a great success, with Volker and team serving locally grown street-cooked food throughout the day to a constant stream of visitors.

    The sustainable theme was more congruent than ever with many relevant stalls selling handmade local produce, a variety of workshops and attractions utilising a larger road space, the music drawing people in, well integrated with interesting speakers on climate topics. The sustainable fashion restyling and catwalk were great new additions.

    Thanks as ever to Naseem at Mushkil Aasaan, Brian at BJ Hardware and the residents of Hereward Rd for the use of their spaces and especially to all the volunteers who came to help set up, take down, decorate, serve and recycle.

    Could Foodival #14 have been the best yet? Quite possibly! 

    Here’s a short video to give you a taste of the day!

    All about our Annual Foodival

    View Post

    Tooting Foodival is a community festival celebrating all things locally grown, cooked, re-created and re-imagined. Shining a light on how we can try to live sustainably in a time of global climate change.

    Running since 2008, the event showcases all things locally grown, cooked and produced with stalls selling local produce, music, dancers, speakers, competitions, a soap box and much more. Find out more https://tootingfoodival.blogspot.com/

    Keep an eye on this page for the date of our 2022 Foodival or follow the social media channels below…

    Tooting Foodival Blog

    [instagram-feed]

    Contact Mal via transitiontowntooting@gmail.com for more information.

    [catlist tags=foodival thumbnail=yes excerpt=yes posts_morelink=”Read more…” template=perfectlist]

  • Growing Community across London – Part 2

    Our previous blog post describes Growing Community Part 1 – and to recap in the last week of July our long-planned collaboration between Ravenstone School and Tooting Community Garden offered two interlinked local ‘Growing Community in the Heart of the City’ workshops as part of The Mayor of London’s National Park City Festival

    The common green thread running through both events was celebrating city growing and the outdoors, creating an environment which is good for ourselves, for the community and for nature.

    Blog post Part 1 describes the Ravenstone School event on July 22.
    Here we’re sharing what we did together in the second of the two events, the Tooting Community Garden open day on July 28th.

    The garden team of a dozen volunteers met early (no Sunday lie-ins) to put up signs, hang our TTT bunting, set up activities and then provide a warm welcome and an invitation to join in the day in any way people wished. We wanted to demonstrate that being outdoors together is accessible and enjoyable.

    Over 80 people came along on a Sunday with an on-off forecast for rain. We decided to not put up gazebos, and we were all rewarded with a lovely afternoon.

    The welcome table gave a focus for saying hello and having a chance to talk with visitors who either explored the garden, relaxed or joined one of our fun and practical activity workshops:

    1. Creating vertical wall planters with Paul: sharing environmental, DIY, creativity and urban growing benefits.

    2. Being guided by Sharon to select plants and re-purposed containers to take home – building growing skills and wellbeing.

    3. Joining Jane’s ‘Drawn to Nature’ drawing workshop: enjoying taking time to observe and be present, with wellbeing and drawing practice benefits.

    4. Annie’s creative workshops in the family zone: sharing benefits of creating together in unusual ways across generations or with people new to you and learning fun techniques to take home.

    Feedback from visitors included:
    ‘A lovely place, and lovely people’ ‘A lovely celebration of nature and community spirit’ ‘The day was beautiful, well thought-out and sustainable’ ‘A nice peaceful day and a great community feel’ ‘Loved the community feeling and how positive and welcoming everyone has been’ ‘What a lovely garden, and such friendly people. We’ll be back’

    Our own responses to the day?
    It was very affirming for the Community Garden team to welcome so many people who enjoyed what we offered together. Sundays in the Garden are fun and informal, and it was a good challenge to do something different, facilitating an engaging and outward-looking day.
    Plus, it was our 8th birthday as a garden project since being generously offered use of the land by Naseem Aboobaker.  

    Many volunteers have opened the Garden space on over 400 Sundays. 
    That’s worth celebrating!

    Thanks to all the volunteers: Amanda, Annie, Chuck, Deb, Jane, Kay, Keith, Paul, Ryan, Sharon & Tom. A big shout out to our new friends and qualified first aiders Alice & Charlie who joined us on the day to provide that cover – thankfully they had no cause to leap into action. Kudos to photographer Bryony Williams for images used here (plus more for another time) and to Kay and Chuck for other pictures in this blog.

    Everyone is welcome to join us at the Community Garden every Sunday from 11:00 to 1:00 (sometimes later into the afternoon). No experience necessary and we share any updates or changes on our Tooting Community Garden Facebook and Instagram pages.

    The annual Tooting Foodival – our twelfth! – is TTT’s next big community event! It’s taking place on Saturday 14th September and we hope to see you there – it’s going to be great!

  • TTT’s next series of Carbon Conversations is postponed until early 2019 – in time for New Year’s resolutions!

    We’re postponing our new series of Carbon Conversations until the New Year.
    Tonight’s first session is cancelled, as are the following 5 meetings. The series of meetings needs a critical mass of local people to join in so we have rich and diverse discussions – we are nearly there but not quite for the series due to start this evening. So we will find new dates early in 2019 with that existing participant group, and encourage more people to sign up and join them. Let us know if you are interested!
    Very early New Year’s resolutions, anyone?
    All the info on the six free meetings organised by TTT’s Ben Cuddon in a recent blog post here. Just ignore the dates.

    The facilitated workshops enable individuals to explore the areas of our lives where we can reduce our own carbon emissions: travel, food, domestic energy, consumption and waste.
    During the six weekly sessions you’ll discuss in a supportive atmosphere all the practicalities of making your own ‘low-carbon lifestyle’ changes. Making these changes is never one size fits all. 

    A quote from a past participant:  
    “The beauty of Carbon Conversations is the 
    optimism, creativity and shared ideas” 

  • Local Stories of Sustainability Success – four vivid can-do examples of reducing carbon footprints and increasing wellbeing

    We’re hosting a new free event: Local Stories of Sustainability Success in the afternoon of Saturday 20th October, from 2:00 to 4:00 at the Mushkil Aasaan Hall, 220 Upper Tooting Road SW17 7EW.

    The event will illustrate vivid can-do stories by local people who have reduced their carbon footprints and increased their wellbeing 

    Martin, Susan, Tanya & Dermot – clockwise from top left
    • Martin Cobley and several hundred worms will demonstrate why he is the borough guru for how worm composting
    • Susan Venner will share the steps to make a 19th century family house in Balham warm and cosy, emphasising how to tackle the high-impact things first. More detail on Susan’s experience on the Superhome Database at https://tinyurl.com/y94mqnsb
    • Dermot Jones will share his experience of switching to an electric vehicle. Dermot also tweets as @ElecticVanMan about the story of his first 4000 miles – and the myths and memes
    • Tanya de Afonseca will share her own experience of reducing (refusing?) household plastics. Tanya’s BYO Zero Waste Shop is in Tooting Market https://byo.london/
    We’ll discuss these inspiring examples of what can be done, share ideas, be energised, make some new resolutions & links.
    For the ‘Local Stories’ flyer, please click here.

    The session is designed for anyone who is interested in these lively local stories. You do not need to be an expert!
    Please share with friends and colleagues who you think would appreciate the event.
    Bring the family! We’ll have a crafts table alongside for some making.

    Thanks to the Zero Waste Shop for sharing this diagram of five core elements of zero waste.

    We’ll also introduce the next run of Carbon Conversations starting on Thursday November 1st. For details, click here. Please encourage friends to join in with this 13th series!

  • Inviting you to our series of free local events this autumn exploring sustainability in Tooting!

    We’re thrilled with the fun and buzz at the Tooting Foodival last Saturday! Thanks to all who contributed their time, equipment, skills and produce to make it a success (see the I Grew This 2018 blog post).  Over 600 people took part on a sunny Tooting afternoon!
    Much more to share about it soon on this blog.

    The Tooting Foodival was the first in a series of free local events this autumn, all about exploring, influencing and creating sustainability in Tooting, together.

    All invited to all of them!

    Click here for a copy of the flyer.

    The next event is a Tooting Debate on Weds 19th Sept:

    ‘Local Food is an Expensive Luxury’.

    Yes, we know…..that’s intended to be provocative after the success of the community Foodival based on locally-grown food, local cooking and local eating together. 
    Come along and share what you think! Details to come here on the blog.
    The debate is on Weds 19th Sept from 7:00 pm – 10:00 pm at The Selkirk Pub, SW17 0ES

    We’ll promote and share details of all the other events in good time.

  • Join us at the London National Park City Fair on 21st July to co-create a Greener, Healthier and Wilder London!

    We’re thrilled to be invited to contribute to the London National Park City Fair on Saturday July 21st 11:00 – 5:00 – all the details here.

    The purpose of the Fair is to celebrate’s London’s potential to be Greener, Healthier and Wilder.
    Two dozen stands & an A-Z of short talks will show how that potential can be an imagined & achieved right now.

    Our stand focuses on our partnership projects and facilitation since 2015 with CARAS the Tooting charity who work with refugees and asylum-seekers: all about social sustainability in the community.

    We’ll be sharing our thoughtful, creative and fun Signs of Welcome making workshop – come and join in: any ages, any languages welcome and you can take your signs home to brighten up your neighbourhood.

    We’ll share 5 short case studies that explore our work in partnership with CARAS beneficiaries, and explore options with stand visitors who are interested to get involved as volunteers.
    You can read the case studies here.

    There’s also a more formal description of the history and impact of the partnership since 2015 – read it here.

    Finally on sharing learning, there’s an article on our Stay With Love pallet-benches on the London National Park City website in the Making a Difference section here.

    We’ll have a prize draw to attract a lucky winner plus family or friends to Tooting for a Taste of Tooting experience! You’ll enjoy our diverse food culture, try recipes from CARAS participants and cook on an open fire on the Tooting Community Garden. Here’s a copy of the prize draw details: you have to come along to the Fair to enter!

    Please join in the fun of the Fair and meet us at the stand – we look forward to seeing you and we’re proud to be contributing alongside so many fascinating London groups.