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Next week Transition Tooting will join 100s of others at the Royal Festival Hall to make London the world’s first National Park City.

Hosted by comedian Josie Long, there is a great line-up of speakers. Former Gatton School (in Tooting) Headteacher Rifat Batool, now Principal of The Olive School, Birmingham will be talking about her experiences of outdoor learning and creativity with children at our Tooting Community Garden.

Come along on September 21st;  bring a group of family, friends, Tooting neighbours and colleagues. For tickets visit the Southbank website Tickets start at just £10.

Help make London the world’s first National Park City. A city where people and nature are better connected. A city that is rich with wildlife and every child benefits from exploring, playing and learning outdoors. Together we can make London a greener, healthier and fairer place to live. Together we can make London a National Park.

Tooting’s Fishponds Fields

Entertaining, provocative and proactive,The Making of a National Park City will be an evening to remember.

…and while we’re talking about London’s green spaces,  fantastic news that Tooting’s own Fishponds Fields is open for public use for a trial period into October.  More details and times here …http://enablelc.org/fishponds

As you may know, Crossrail 1 is currently under construction linking East London with West London and passing right through the centre of town – Tottenham Court Road perhaps being a known example  of the huge impact in time and space of the project.

Well, Crossrail 2 is a proposed new train line, broadly linking North London to South London from Southgate to Wimbledon, involving 50+ stations.

The project is just beginning its life, with construction and funding many years off. There’s already been 3 versions of the route that directly affects Tooting:

1. Tooting Broadway was a station along the route with a ventilation and emergency access shaft proposed by the Skylark Cafe, Wandsworth Common.
2. Due to public outcry, the ventilation and emergency access shaft was shifted to an overspill car park near Wandsworth Prison, with Tooting Broadway still the proposed station in our neighbourhood. Everything seemed good, until…
3. Due to more detailed geological surveys revealing challenging conditions underground at Tooting Broadway, Balham Station was proposed as a more practically feasible option with the ventilation and emergency access shaft returning to Wandsworth Common, this time adjacent to Bolingbroke Grove, because of track curvature constraints between Balham and Clapham Junction.

Still with me?  Critically, there is a consultation open NOW which is gathering public feedback on the Balham (and by association Tooting Broadway) plan.

This consultation closes on Friday 8th Jan. 
We encourage you all to contribute your views!

Please do fill in the questionnaire on TfL’s site following the hyperlink HERE , click on “Balham” as there is no Tooting Broadway option… tactics..?.. make your comment on Tooting Broadway in Question 23.

Here’s some useful information:

An EXCELLENT 6 minute video championing Tooting as a destination for the station and explaining why.

TfL’s site is HERE

the Save Wandsworth Common campaign page on Facebook and web

Conservative Parliamentary Spokesperson for Tooting Constituency, Dan Watkins carried out his own survey across the area, results and comments are HERE

And Sadiq Khan, Labour MP for Tooting and Mayoral candidate reported in the Wandsworth Guardian HERE and HERE

A dated, but useful video showing the Tooting Broadway option, useful because it shows the rest of the route and interconnections.

Crossrail 2 Managing Director, Michelle Dix, explains the benefit here, again dated by showing Tooting Broadway as the preferred option.

All best and look forward to seeing you soon,
Richard

Best wishes to all for 2013 from all of us in TTT!

And all welcome to the first event of the year, on Tuesday 8th January: ‘Designing the 2013 Tooting Foodival’ 

‘I grew this’ from Sept 2012

We’ve run the Foodival since 2008, and every year its design has developed.

 

Join us to focus on creative ways forward for the annual autumn Tooting Foodival.

 

 

Help us take stock of the Tooting Foodival’s purpose and design, and join in if you would like to be involved in the 2013 Foodival.

All welcome – lots of local people have contributed to the Foodival over 5 years – please do come along even if this is a new activity for you!

 

In the second part of the meeting we will look at a new proposal for a springtime day of activities in Tooting – please come along and find out more. Email transitiontowntooting@gmail.com if you have any queries.

Looking back at last year, here’s a ‘word cloud’ of recent posts on this blog:

The sizes of the words and phrases shown relate to how often the words occurred in the blog – so the whole image offers a visual, graphic summary of activities in the last 3 months of 2012. Try one yourself – this was done online at http://www.wordle.net/  It can be addictive!

On the evening of Wednesday 20th June a group in Tooting met to join in with the UK-wide Festival of Transition’s 24 Hours of Possibility. See http://www.festivaloftransition.net/experiments/67
Why go to Rio when you can come to Tooting?

For half the time we were catching up with the past and present.
We had a lot of discussion, clarification and questioning based on hearing a BBC World Service programme on the run-up to Rio+20. 
( http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00stn02/One_Planet_Rio20_The_future_we_want/ )
We explored the roles and representation at these summits – leaders, negotiators, lobbyists and NGOs, and ‘the people’: what is the quality of the exchanges and contacts?

Then we did travel to our desired future, in groups, choosing a future role and an issue that we envisioned and then acted out to the rest of the group. A future family talked about new habits in purchasing and consumption… the local council proudly described to a journalist their achievements with energy (yes, the wool from the sheep on Tooting Common is being used as insulation in 2032)…a local shopkeeper showed off seasonal and local stock, and a customer went away with potatoes when they were looking for mangoes…

It was great to see how much was covered and shared in a short time – when you are involved and listening.

Thanks to all who came along to explore Tooting’s future now!

Transition Town Tooting hold regular planning meetings – all are welcome. Here are the pictorial notes from our last meeting on the 15th May. 
Notes drawn by Jeni Walker – inspired by Alice Maggs. Click to enlarge.

Here are the notes from the April Core Group Meeting

On Tuesday evening, around 80 people gathered at Wimbledon’s  St. Mark’s Church to ask  four of the candidates for the London Assembly what they would do if they got into power on May 3rd.
The candidates fielding questions were Leonie Cooper (Labour), Shas Sheehan (Liberal Democrat), Richard Tracey (Conservative and current Assembly Member for Merton & Wandsworth) and Roy Vickery (Green).

This excellent meeting , ably chaired by the Rev Clive Gardner of St. Mark’s Church, got far beyond the personality politics of the Mayoral election. Lively questioning included how to make cycling in London safer, what to do about policing, the shortage of affordable housing, whether we need school buses, and how to make London more self-sufficient in energy.

The Hustings was hosted jointly by St Mark’s Church, Transition Town Wimbledon, Wimbledon Civic Forum and Transition Town Tooting.

The ‘Monthly Do’ on Sunday April 22nd at Wandsworth Borough Council’s Pump House Gallery in Battersea Park saw several of us from Transition Tooting join with gallery staff to offer a drop-in afternoon about on ‘Growing Successfully in the City’. Yes – that broad topic included different prompts for the ways ‘urban growing’ is expressed: growing food and flowers; developing green space and experiencing nature; building wellbeing and happiness; growing knowledge and skills; playing; and making new links across the community.

Just as Charles’ talk on urban growing and transition was about to kick off at 3:30, the sky went black and a strong gust capsized one of the gazebos. All the helpers and audience went out to sort it out in the driving rain – a great image of community spirit in action…
Difficult to plan, but I recommend it as a way to start a talk!  We began with a vivid sense of shared experience among a group who met as strangers: completely relevant to the topic.

Thanks loads to Laura, responsible for Participation & Education at the Gallery, for conceiving the idea and inviting us, and to all the Gallery staff & Justin for a lot of work on the day. The Pump House is a great venue, and we’d love to develop something else together in the future.        Charles

In the post below on ‘Community Approaches to the Green Deal’, we mention the video that was being made to accompany the project.
Now it’s finished and ready to enjoy on YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNRx6tNFG8U 
It’s seven minutes long – do have a look, and keep an eye out for the local locations and stars!
The partners in the project are meeting in early May to develop next steps to keep the momentum going.
We’ll keep you up to date with progress, and do get in contact via transitiontowntooting@gmail.com if you would like to be involved.