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Hello all and it’s four weeks until the Tooting #Foodival2017 on Saturday 16th September!

In last week’s blog post we shared Part One of the Foodival plans: all about food and cooking (surprise, surprise). We’re inviting you to:

• donate locally grown produce
• enter the Top Tooting Cook Competition
• come along to The Big Feast

Today we’re sharing Part Two of the plans: all the other wonderful activities that are happening right in the heart of Tooting as part of the 2017 Foodival. These activities are all about:

• growing
• sustainability
• creativity
• community 
• and fun 

All these activities are complementary to the Foodival’s purpose of celebrating local growing, sustainable food, local cooking and the local community (the whole community including nature as well as people) – all done in diverse creative, refreshing and participative ways.

Timings to follow as the schedule comes together across the twin venues of Mushkil Aasaan at 222 Upper Tooting Road SW17 7EW and part of Hereward Road right next door.

What are we offering for all ages to come and enjoy and explore?
As well as Donating Local Produce (appear in our traditional ‘I Grew This’ poster!), the Top Tooting Cook Competition and The Big Feast, we’re grateful to all our partners who are offering:

Stalls
Sales of locally-made Jams and Chutneys; Upcycled Crafts; Local Honey (plus an observation hive of 16,000 bees – nearly the same as Tooting Ward’s population).

Jeni’s Crafty Arts
There will be a series of hands-on creative workshops led by local makers.
In one workshop you can come and make ladybird and lacewing hotels out of plastic bottles…learn about beneficial insects and create a safe place for them to roost and overwinter.

Music
By artists from The Sound Lounge.
 

A sculpture to help check in with nature

The Story of Rewilding
A hands-on and imaginative storytelling event that introduces children to environmental thinking.
Join Andy to create amazing props with recycled materials and become part of the Story of Rewilding narrated by Emily our local storyteller.
Families are particularly welcome to participate together.

Spoken Word
With a food and growing theme – you can join in, surprise us!

The Green Stage
Three 45 minute workshops: Composting and Power of the Humble Earthworm; Autumn and Winter Gardening; Seed Saving and Propagation (with some more topics up our sleeves if we need them…).

Stands for meeting and discussion with local projects
Stands for Tooting Community Garden (explore how to make teas from your garden plants); for the Wandsworth Food Partnership, Carbon Conversations and more. Hear about 2017’s Pollinator Paths Wandsworth project that has sown the seed for creating a growing network across the borough. Learn about the Gardens of Refuge project with our partners CARAS, and about Transition Town Tooting’s plans (bring us your ideas!).

Our pop-up Big Bed
Made from a big recycled shipping container, the Big Bed will showcase vegetables and flowers grown in Tooting by the beneficiaries of Share Community garden. And you can help decorate the planter on the spot.

Whew!
There’s bound to be lots here to catch your interest – we’ll share the schedule soon and you can plan your day.
Or just come along and see what you find, have a chat and enjoy the atmosphere.

Woven through all these activities and more will be judging for the Top Tooting Cook, cooking and eating together at The Big Feast and admiring the displays of locally-grown produce. See last week’s post for the timings for those events.

If you have any questions, or would like to volunteer in preparation or on the day or in follow up, please email Malsara Thorne at transitiontowntooting@gmail.com
Please share the #Foodival2017 plans by following Transition Town Tooting on Facebook and Twitter – thank you!

‘I Grew This!’

Saturday, 16 September 11am – 5pm at Mushkil Aasaan, 220 Upper Tooting Road (close to Nando’s) 
We are thrilled that the award-winning and free Tooting Foodival organised by Transition Town Tooting will be celebrating its 10th year this September.

The Foodival highlights the diversity of healthy and sustainable produce that can be grown, cooked and enjoyed in Tooting & nearby.
We welcome all growers and cooks and everyone of all ages who comes to take part!
All the Foodival events will be inside Mushkil Aasaan and also outside on part of Hereward Road right in the heart of Tooting.

There are several exciting strands to the Foodival:

• We invite you to donate some fresh local produce which you’ve grown – timings below
• There’s the Top Tooting Cook competition for local individuals and cooks, using the donated local produce (info below)
• There’s The Big Feast which will be cooked live by our fab chef Volker, also using the lovely local produce (info below)
• There will be a great range of practical and fun growing, sustainability and creative activities (more info soon) 

Donating locally-grown produce:
There are wonderful crops being grown right here by many people!
Foodival is about sharing the love, not necessarily donating big volumes – so please don’t be shy to share some of what you’ve grown.
All donations gratefully received from 5pm to 9pm Friday 15th Sept, or from 10am to 11am Saturday 16th Sept at Mushkil Aasaan, 222 Upper Tooting Road, SW17 7EW.
Or let us know when you would like us to collect.

See The Big Feast below for some special donation requests.
There are still five weeks to go, so get out the watering can, the nettle tea or whatever it takes! Ready, steady, GROW!

The Top Tooting Cook competition: 
Open to anyone living, growing or cooking nearby & free to enter. 
Full details about collecting ingredients and how to enter – click here for the flyer

Why enter? It’s a fun way to celebrate local food; you can try out your skills; you meet others who are interested and share recipes; it will be fun; there’ll be media coverage..and there are prizes!

Prize categories:
1. A dish made with apples and pears
2. A savoury dish
3. A pudding, dessert or cake
4. Pickles, preserves, jam, jelly or chutney

Foodival produce donors will supply the seasonal ingredients (or grow your own!) for you to cook and serve to our panel of hungry judges. You can collect ingredients at Mushkil Aasaan from 7pm to 9pm on Friday 15th Sept, or from 10 to 11am on Saturday 16th Sept.

Dishes need to be delivered by 2:00 pm on Saturday 16th, and judging follows.
Winners announced at 3:30pm!
Then the audience can taste as well – and get the recipes soon after.

  
The Big Feast:

Volker, our very own in-house gourmet chef at the Foodival has created a very special seasonal 3 course menu for this year’s Tooting Foodival. He’s asking the green-fingered of the great South West London public to donate their locally grown produce.

• Starter: Sizzling Pakoras Ingredients needed: Onions, cauliflower, courgette, spinach 

• Main course: Rainbow vegetable stir fry Ingredients needed: Onions, carrots, potatoes, turnips, peas and any other vegetables including tomatoes, garlic, herbs

• Dessert: Fruity Crumble Ingredients needed: Any fruit – apples, pears, plums, berries, grapes, bananas (yes we’ve had them donated, locally-grown!)

Volker will cook the dishes live and answer questions so you are able to make these at home

Details of the growing, sustainability and creative activities to follow.

Contacts
For more info on Foodival, please contact Malsara Thorne via email
There’s more info at the Foodival blog – click here
Please share on social media, and use the hashtag #Foodival2017

We hope to see you, and thank you very much – The #Foodival2017 Team.

Transition Town Tooting asked the buses and cars to budge over for the day and created a pop-up village green on the Bus Turning Circle. With lots on offer and nothing for sale, we invited everybody to re-imagine this space in a spirit of peace and celebration, what if it was something different? What opportunity would that create?

Over the afternoon, we played music with The Sound Lounge (thank you!), made things, whittled wood with The Furzedown Oak (thank you!), talked on benches made by Caras (thank you!), ate tremendous food from Dawat Restaurant (thank you!), got our bikes fixed with Dr.Bike (thank you!), drank Ethiopian coffee with Mona (thank you!) and gently and deeply asked the question, what if this place was something other than a Bus Turning Circle?!?!?

Our friend Rob, co-founder of the Transition Town Movement, came along from Totnes, he’s written great blog and podcast about the event with reflections on the meaning of doing things like this for communities, you can read Rob’s blog here

Huge thanks to all who supported the crowdfunding campaign via Fundsurfer and to Wandsworth Council, London Buses, Tooting Town Centre Management, London Sport, Batca, Khalsa Centre, Mushkil Aasaan, Work and Play Scrapstore, SLSC, Furzedown Community Network, Tooting Daily PRSS, Tooting Town Centre Business Partnership, Centre for Catholic Formation, Crowdfund 360, Tooting Bec & Broadway Neighbourhood Plan and all who supported and enjoyed the day. Let’s keep the conversation going!

Here’s some photos…

Along the way, there was a lot of making…

And workshops imagining our Village Green…

Jeni presents… and the fruits of making at Franciscan Primary School

Jeni presents… a mini-make at Ravenstock! Summer Fair

Once the van was packed… we headed off to The Bus Turning Circle and did a bit of this…

Let nobody say after today that its not possible… Lucy, Jeni and Richard

Have you got electrical or electronic items that you don’t want to throw away?

Got a sewing machine that is broken or you’re not sure how to use?

Have a favourite piece of clothing that needs mending or altering and you’d like to learn how?

Simply good at fixing and mending stuff?

Fancy a cup of tea, a piece of cake and a chance to find out more about Transition Tooting and what we get up to?

Whatever the reason – come along on next Wednesday (we’re back in October too!)

Wed 19th July –   6.30 – 9.00pm
Sat 21st October – 2.00 – 5.00pm

Mushkil Aasaan, 220 – 222 Upper Tooting Road, SW17 7EW (next to Nando’s)

                                                         
(Restart Parties are a community self-repair space where you take responsibility for your own gadgets and data, so please don’t forget to take any back-ups beforehand, if relevant – and if possible arrive during the first two hours to allow time for fixing!   More info about Restart including details of regular skillshares at www,therestartproject.org)

Imagine if the buses moved over for the day in Tooting’s busy town centre to create a pop-up village green where children could dance and play and families and friends could share a picnic and watch the world go by?

The Tour de Tooting, 2016

Pledge to our crowdfunding campaign! bit.ly/TootingTwirl

Transition Town Tooting has launched a crowdfunding campaign on Fundsurfer for The Tooting Twirl. The crowdfunding campaign runs until Tuesday 11th July. We’d love you to contribute so we can create space for the community to come together in a spirit of peace and celebration.

Can you pledge to support the campaign? bit.ly/TootingTwirl

What’s going to happen? Read on to see how you can get involved…

The Tooting Twirl will take place on Sunday 16th July from 12noon to 4pm, we’re going to create a pop-up village green in a surprising location – The Bus Turning Circle on Longmead Road behind Primark. But, we don’t want to do it alone – this is where you come in…

In a town that’s full of traffic, we have this one opportunity to re-open the street for play, so lets make a pop-up village green, and make it as twirly and wonderful as we can.

We’ve asked nicely if the buses and cars can budge over for the day and we’d like to invite you to bring all of your creativity and endeavour to make magic happen! You can…

• Dress twirly on the day
• Bring a colourful potted plant to adorn the Giant Twirly Flowerbed
• Decorate your wheels and go for a twirl around Tooting before arriving
• Bring a street game to share!
• Come to a workshop to learn how to twirl!

Here they come!

Meet the team! Jeni, Lucy and Rich

Thumbs Up!

Two timely and exciting conversations for Green Drinks next Wednesday – Foodival 2017 and the General Election! 7.30pm – 9.30pm at The Selkirk Pub, Selkirk Road

Have you ever been interested in our annual Food Festival – Foodival!?! Perhaps you’ve participated? Grown chillies on a balcony or visited Tooting Community Garden one Sunday lunchtime? Perhaps you have an allotment…

We’ll be having an open Foodival discussion on the evening of with 8 Tooting folks who have brought energy and ideas to the table for Foodival 2017 – our tenth one!

Connecting with local food businesses, cooking with Be Enriched Bike kitchen? Taking part in Top Tooting Cook anyone??? How about a soup disco? Sounds mad? it did happen last year and was a hoot!

Foodival can be lots of different things to lots of different people, but at its heart is a celebration of the food culture of Tooting which brings together all the communities living in this Town we call home.

Do come if you’d like to hear more! And check out our blog for previous Foodival stories HERE

In the second part of Green Drinks, we’ll look at what the political parties are saying about sustainability, perhaps loads? perhaps nothing? A useful document to help us is the Greener Jobs Alliance top 10 demands for out new Government, you can read them HERE

Those of all political persuasions are welcome, this is about discussion and understanding of issues that matter, to plant seeds for the future…

Join an evolving and collaborative team making change in how we live, where we live, in light of climate change. 

There’s a spirit of celebration and creativity in everything we do, be it south London’s biggest sustainable food festival, urban growing in the community garden, carbon reduction workshops, restart parties or neighbourhood planning. 

We open up spaces for local people to connect with each other, imagine possibilities and make positive changes for the community and the environment.

Want to get involved?

Join in as a volunteer, join the Core Group who coordinate projects, or apply to become Co-Chair or Co-Treasurer and help shape and re-imagine our activities and impact over the next two years.  You’ll be joining a great team.

Read on for more information about the Co-Chair and Co-Treasurer roles.

To apply:

1. Read the role description
2. Ask a member of Transition Town Tooting to second you
3. Send a note about yourself and what you’d bring to the group to transitiontowntooting@gmail.com by Saturday, 15th April, along with an indication of who is seconding you.
4. If you’re not sure, but want to find out more, get in touch to meet the current co-chairs for a coffee.

We’ll be voting in our new co-chairs at our Annual Celebratory Extravaganza in Tooting on Friday, 28th April from 7pm (location TBC).

Current Co-Chairs, Richard Couldrey & Jenny Teasdale

Co-Chairs

The Co-Chairs are part of the Core Group. You will be supported by a Secretary and a Treasurer or Co-Treasurers.  10-15 people form the Core Group – a mix of project leaders, long-term volunteers and former co-chairs.

The Co-Chair’s role has three key responsibilities:

1. To over see ‘good governance’ of TTT activities i.e. to ensure and oversee sound practice legally and financially.
2. To ‘hold’ and oversee the constitution, mission, purpose and vision of TTT.
3. To ‘hold’ the organisation together and ensure it doesn’t ‘overstretch or spread itself out too thin’

Other practical responsibilities involve:

• Chairing of Co-ordination group meetings and TTT meetings such as AGM’s
• Building good local relationships and maintaining good working links to wider community and groups
• Liaison and good relationship with other co chair

TTT activity is ever changing. Projects adapt to harness possibilities for wider social change. Most activities are run purely by volunteers. So it is useful for the Co-Chairs to recognise leadership of the organisation in terms of personal attributes.

Attributes of the co-chair:

• Honesty
• Willingness to work transparently with the group and all TTT partners, making clear the overall purpose and mission of TTT all times
• Willingness to build partnerships and recognition of the value of TTT’s work being represented by positive collaborations and willingness to work with others
• Maintaining an ethos of ‘care of self; care of each other; care of earth’
• As far as is possible ensuring that personal ‘values’ are in line with personal actions ecologically
• Respectful attitude towards volunteers and members of the core group
• Being mindful of the joy, pleasure, playfulness and enthusiasm
• Valuing that the answer can be yes and enabling positive attitudes to new ideas

David, current Treasurer and former Co-Chair

Co-Treasurers

Key responsibilities:

1. To maintain sound finances as part of good governance of TTT
2. Responsible for accounts and banking and overseeing matters relating to taxation and returns to HMRC etc. (as required etc) as well as reporting to core team and members
3. To advise the Core Group and support the group in making sound financial decisions – highlighting funding opportunities, support in the development of funding bids, support in project forecasting, budgeting and reporting
4. Ensure that the organization has adequate resources to carry out its purposes

Other practical responsibilities involve:

• Keep a back-up of all financial transactions (invoices, receipts, cash transactions)
• Maintain a set of basic financial records for TTT inc Trial Balance, Profit & Loss Account, & Balance Sheet
• Record spend against individual grants and report back to granting bodies as required
• Manage Cash Flow
• Act as a signatory on the TTT bank account
• Authorize and send payments
• Keep and manage petty cash
• Liaise with bank when necessary
• Setting up audit where appropriate
• Giving clear instructions to all TTT group members on accounts system

How to Apply

To apply:

1. Read the role description
2. Ask a member of Transition Town Tooting to second you
3. Send a note about yourself and what you’d bring to the group to transitiontowntooting@gmail.com by Saturday, 15th April, along with an indication of who is seconding you.
4. If you’re not sure, but want to find out more, get in touch to meet the current co-chairs for a coffee.

We’ll be voting in our new co-chairs at our Annual Celebratory Extravaganza in Tooting on Friday, 28th April from 7pm (location TBC).

Zoom forward a year, what are you going to have started now to become part of your everyday in Jan ’18?? 

Looking out onto a cool, crisp morning, layered in frost, I wonder how many of you are taking on New Year challenges? Perhaps you’re cutting back on the booze, getting fitter… or learning a new language, or perhaps you’d like to check out Transition Town Tooting?!?!? Maybe…

So here’s an invitation, to come and say hi and peek behind the curtain of TTT, it’s magical! Local people coming together to re-imagine and rebuild our world – one Restart Party, one Community Garden session, one Green Drink at a time…

Here’s what’s going on in January for you to get involved in, please do come & say hi:

This Saturday, 7th January. Tooting Green Coffee Club, 4pm – 6.30pm, Tartine Artisanal Cafe, Tooting Bec.
Families most welcome at this informal coffee at Tartine. It’s a great way to chat, agenda-free, about local green issues. We’ll be talking about 2017, sharing project ideas at very early stages – a perfect way to find out more about TTT and what’s going on in Tooting.

This Sunday 8th January and every Sunday. The first Garden session of the year, 11am – 1pm, Tooting Community Garden, Behind 5 North Drive, SW16 1RN. 
If you are a complete gardening beginner or have lots of skills to share, if you fancy coming along and relaxing in a green oasis or want to use the garden as a green gym, all welcome on Sundays!

Tuesday 10th January. TTT Open Meeting, 7 for a 7.30 start – 9pm. Mushkil Aasaan, 222 Upper Tooting Road. 

This is our monthly activity and planning meeting – we’ll be looking more closely at resourcing our plans for the year – a great bird’s eye view if you’re interested in seeing the whole.

Wednesday 18th January. Green Drinks! 7.30pm – 10pm The Selkirk Pub, 60 Selkirk Road, SW17 0ES.
If you like a drink and a chat about local green issues, this is the one for you – what’s the one thing that you really want to take action on? Do you have an inspiring article or a breathtaking concern to share? Or just listen&relax in the lovely Selkirk.

And one online…

Vegetanuary! David blogged about this challenge below, would you like to join a growing group of people in trying out vegetarian cooking for a month? Could you give up meat & fish for the next 4 weeks? If you like a challenge and want to learn new recipes, this Facebook group is for you! Just request to join and see what & how & why everyone’s been cooking veggie – Veggies and Vegans welcome to add a tbsp of expertise.

So, zoom forward a year, what are you going to have started now to become part of your everyday in Jan ’18??

By the way… this is me, Richard, so you can recognise a face in a crowd… I’m the older one… the other two are Benji and Dominic…

  The Restart project is a London-based social enterprise that encourages and empowers people to use their electronics longer in order to reduce waste.

And so for 3 hours on a very wet afternoon tooting residents brought their broken electronics to be fixed. Around 30 items were brought in to the event and the Restarters worked hard to get things up and running again or identify the problem and give advice on how the residents themselves could solve the problem if it needed parts.

 The rain didn’t deter anyone from turning up, it was busy all day right until closing, good thing there were plenty of refreshments to keep people going at the TTT cafe.

 With both restart and Sewvember the great things is that the people bringing the items are an integral part of solving the issues so they learned new skills and hopefully they will be able to be applied to other items they own that could be reused.

Can’t wait till the next one. Look out for more Restart parties here https://therestartproject. org/parties/ and more crafty events here https://www.facebook.com/meetmakeswl/

Come and join us on Saturday November the 12th for an afternoon of fixing and mending!

Whether it’s electrical or electronic items that you don’t want to throw away

or a sewing machine that is broken or you’re not sure how to use.

Have a favourite piece of clothing that needs mending or altering and you’d like to learn how?  Or simply good at fixing and mending stuff.

Or maybe you fancy a cup of tea, a piece of cake and a chance to find out more about Transition Tooting and what we get up to?

Come along on

Saturday 12th November, 2 – 5pm

Mushkil Aasaan, 220 – 222 Upper Tooting Road, SW17 7EW (next to Nando’s)    

(Restart Parties are a community self-repair space where you take responsibility for your own gadgets and data, so please don’t forget to take any back-ups beforehand, if relevant – and if possible arrive during the first two hours to allow time for fixing!   More info about Restart including details of regular skillshares at www,therestartproject.org)