Jellybrella: TTT's invitation to be creative

A second set of photos of our Jellybrella creative workshop on May 11th. These  are all about the day as an invitation to be creative...welcoming people in new ways...and what participants thought about it.

All the background on this participative creative community sustainability project is in a past blog post - please click here It includes "what and why is a Jellybrella?" 

We asked for feedback and below there's a photo of two of the evaluation forms completed on May 11th (click here to enlarge):

We're proud that participants found the Jellybrella day welcoming and inviting.

Reaching parts we had not expected, David even wrote a very special Jellybrella song for one young girl who is a fan of Morrissey (think 'Jacky's Only Happy When She's Up On The Stage').

May 11th lyrics here

About 60 people came along on May 11th; over half were children. The participants were very diverse: half were english and half from many other places: several European and S Asian countries - and Mexico!




In our earlier adult workshops in March and April the balance was 2/3 of participants from countries other than the UK.
Lastly, everyone was from other countries in our February family workshop with CARAS refugee family participants. 65 took part in that workshop (2/3 were children).

A total of 140 people of all ages and cultures took part in our 5 Jellybrella workshops.

We're going to write up our collective reflections on the Jellybrella project, and we'll share our learning soon.

And we'll share our ideas for Jellybrella 2!

Making together to create a Jellybrella on Saturday

We were thrilled with the Jellybrella creative workshop on last Saturday May 11th which we facilitated at Sprout Arts in Furzedown as part of the Wandsworth Arts Fringe.
The weather was mostly kind and we did most of the day outdoors. Thanks for all the support and to Nikki, David, Jane & Chuck for facilitating.

Lots of people came and many of them worked together - parents and children, friends, siblings, grandparents and grandchildren - as well as others who created solo.
It was fascinating to experience the energy of all these different relationships expressed in making together. 

Do you work closely, or independently? Is there a plan or are you both developing the Jellybrella as you go along? Who's leading? What's the energy like - thoughtful, stimulated, quiet, noisy?
 

These photos celebrate making together - and we'll share some more sets of photos on other aspects: happiness, pride, fun, wellbeing, surprise, working with the re-purposed materials, the Jellybrella's message & story. 




Jellybrella has been fascinating and we have a lot to reflect on in terms of community participation and carrying off bold ideas.
We also have more to share on the adult workshops that led up to this public event on Saturday.
If you missed it, here's a link explaining the Jellybrella project which we've been working with throughout this spring: https://tinyurl.com/y6t9pb9o

What combines creativity, community participation, charity, fun, repurposing waste, wellbeing, inclusion & shopping for good?

Jellybrella does! (now we know...)
On the Bank Holiday weekend and all next week: combine your love of creativity and fun with shopping in a good cause.

Visit the super new Wandsworth Oasis shop at 61 Balham High Rd & admire windows full of Jellybrella creations. 

The Jellybrellas were created last week by local adults with sight loss from Thomas Pocklington Trust Balham Resource Centre nearby: these two photos are from that workshop.















Thanks so much to Gill the Balham Oasis shop manager for all the support collecting customers' umbrellas since February and saying 'yes, have the window!' as a wonderful opportunity to share the joy of Jellybrella! Thanks also to Michelle the manager at Oasis Trinity Road and Joy in Oasis Mitcham Lane.

Make your own Jellybrella on Saturday May 11th at our free public workshop at Sprout Community Arts - all the details at tinyurl.com/y6t9pb9o

What will your Jellybrella be like? 

We can't wait to find out!

 

Jellybrella creative workshop takes off on May 11th

We're thrilled to be running the Jellybrella creative workshop in a fortnight as part of Wandsworth Arts Fringe.
Free and for all ages: all welcome to join us!

We're holding the Jellybrella workshop from 10:00 to 4:00 on Saturday May 11 in Furzedown at Sprout Community Arts.
Bring an umbrella or two if you can - perhaps you can re-make a neglected one or celebrate your favourite loved brolly.

We'll get straight into making led by Nikki and Chuck, and at intervals our storyteller David will move us with tales of lost & found umbrellas & living with less waste. He'll be helping us be imaginative and thoughtful about the links between being artists for the day and taking care of the health and wellbeing of our neighbours, community and city.
We'll finish with a parade right outside Sprout - and if it rains, there's no problem as we'll have Jellybrellas.

To  book workshop places - don't hesitate to bring the family - please visit Transition Town Tooting & Jellybrella event pages on Facebook here and send us a message.

A bucket of donated brollies  - each of them waiting to be transformed by you into a Jellybrella.
Come on May 11th to our creative workshop and find out the difference!




 

We're very grateful to Wandsworth Grants Fund and the Wandsworth Arts Fringe team for supporting Jellybrella.
That's all the May 11th workshop details; please read on for more of what we have learned so far while doing the Jellybrella project.

What's happening with the knitted bees of Tooting? - Update #2 on our partnership project with CARAS

We've enjoyed and learned so much from our partnership project with CARAS which has been running since spring 2015.
Here's Update #2 on one more of the project strands - this one involving the CARAS Women's Group for refugees and asylum-seekers. We shared Update #1 a fortnight ago - read it here.

The knitted honeybees of Tooting
It's not often you can ask "what’s happening in the world of Tooting’s knitted & crocheted bees?" We’ve been busy since spring 2018 on a fascinating quest that started with our beekeeper friend Richard who is Chair of the London Beekepers Association asking "Do you know anyone who could make some model bees as teaching aids? Toy bees available online are all hopelessly inaccurate...we need about 50..."
I immediately said "yes!" and a new project was born...which has developed to include the CARAS Family Day and Women's Group, a wonderful local group of knitters, beekepers and TTT.

It's been so moving to us all that this novel partnership has come together: local craftspeople with experience and skill plus refugee women with skills and desire to create plus our own TTT colleagues. We've got together for the interest and challenge, in order to work with a London-wide group's own fascinating project in an imaginative way.

Attaching wings and legs at the CARAS Women's Group

Richard and the LBKA are developing participative classes for schools. The bee models would need to have the correct number of legs (6), eyes (5) and wings (4), with antennae (2) in just the right place on their heads ("not like antlers and not like whiskers"), triangular downward-facing heads, a waist: all giving the general look of a honeybee with correct details while also being imaginative prompts for LBKA workshops. The bees should definitely not have cartoon smiles.

'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.

Gardens of Refuge project: updating you on 4 fascinating strands at the end of May

We're sharing our monthly update about Gardens of Refuge.
Gardens of Refuge is our 2017 partnership project with CARAS and The Grange to provide therapeutic and positive experiences for people of refugee and asylum-seeking backgrounds who live in South-West London.
There are four interrelated project strands to share:
> Carpentry project with the Youth Club  
> Family Activity Days
> Vertical gardening with the Youth Club  
> A 4-day trip to The Grange in Norfolk 

1. Carpentry project with the Youth Club 
We've developed a relationship with a nearby primary school who need planters for their own outdoor space.

Led by Dermot, last weekend we began a series of 3 sessions to build and decorate these planters. The young people took on the design brief and modified the build based on other planters we have made together. In this case we're making beds that are low enough for young children to use, and also tough enough to stand up to inevitable playground clambering.

The session ran to twice its expected length because there was so much energy!
Later on we have access to laser-cutting equipment or 3D printing to make plaques to fix to the beds.



2. Family Activity Days
This half term we have helped facilitate the fourth Family Day of 2017 - partly social, partly to do an interesting activity, partly to join together for a meal (allowing for Ramadan).

Pedalista Workshop - This Tuesday!

Could you be a leader in making, could you become a Prime Pedalista? 

Hello Pedalistas*

Tour De Tooting is fast approaching.  Pedalistas of Tooting will be looking to get making and decorating throughout June in preparation for the Parade of Wheels on the 3rd July.

This Tuesday, Tour De Tooting are hosting a workshop of making and decorating to prepare you to share techniques with friends, family, community groups , school pupils and more.

Could you be a leader in making, could you become a Prime Pedalista?

*A Pedalista is anyone who is excited by the idea of celebrating the freedom and liberation of the wheels in their lives.

Tuesday 7th June
6:30 - 8:30
Work and Play Scrapstore, Hazelhurst Estate, 13 Blackshaw Road, London SW17 0DA

Resparkle! plus Meet & Make: Free upcycled crafts activities in Tooting next weekend

Two long-running TTT crafts projects which mix creativity and attractive recycled materials are coming together on December 12th at Tooting Library.

Reduce, Re-use, Resparkle! has been offered with our partners Tooting Library at Christmas for the past four years.
Meet & Make is community artist Jeni Walker's monthly project for local upcycling and making.
On Dec 12th we are bringing them together for a free event.

Resparkle! is all about making fun Christmas presents or decorations out of recycled materials - do come along from 2-4 at Tooting Library on the 12th. All ages, all welcome, all materials provided.

The regular attendees (and others!) at Meet & Make are invited to come along too - make some great upcycled festive decorations and also get some inspiration and encouragement on any making project of your own. All artists and makers welcome.

Three inviting photos from last year's Resparkle! -

More Meet & Make news:
Our newly formed connection with local charity Wandsworth Oasis was knitted a little closer last month with the generous hosting of our monthly Meet & Make in their new shop near Amen Corner. 

Helen brought along the finished shopper trolley started at last months M&M, Jeni whipped up a couple of tiny aprons for her toddler art classes and Martin chatted at length about the possibilities and challenges of starting a social enterprise based on up cycled making.

 
Elsewhere in the TTT arts story the power of making saw many hands came together to put paint, paper and glue to the Giant Saxophone. The friendly yellow giant was witness to young mums with their children, Pilates teachers, Meet & Makers, local arts practitioners, people claiming that they 'aren't any good at this art stuff' another saying they 'literally hadn't made anything in years' all creating a very pleasing result both visually and in the sense of connecting together.

We have plenty more participatory making planned - please come and get involved, and also do share your ideas for new projects or community groups and partners to join up with. 
Contact us at transitiontowntooting@gmail.com

Shelter - the theme for our 5th Tooting Field Day

On Sunday August 2nd we focused on Shelter.  
Each family Field Day safari has a theme that's about enjoying the local outdoors, creativity and also low-carbon living. We've explored Travel, Water, Nature and more...and had a lot of fun together, and discovered parts of Tooting we didn't know at all.

What did we do?
In the first part of the afternoon we met at Sprout Community Arts and made insect hotels out of re-purposed plastic bottles and cardboard (yes, packaging from Dan's kitchen furniture). 

These shelters are designed for ladybirds and lacewing flies - both are welcome predators on aphids. The results were fantastic!  Brilliantly decorated, with ideas zipping around the tables as children and adults thought of new techniques, and showed them off, and copied. Lucky bugs...we made over 3 dozen shelters.

The second part of the Field Day continued the theme. 
We walked to Tooting Graveney Common and built shelters and dens from willow branches (kindly donated by Lambeth Council).  Again, the creativity and healthy competitiveness that everyone displayed was inspiring. People also commented how much fun it was to hang out and play in the woods. 

After a picnic (courtesy of Pooja, Arena and The Collective Dairy) certificates were awarded to the best dens in different categories by our young judges Dominic and Benji.
At the end we followed the 'leave no trace principle', dismantling all the dens (after we’d taken photos to remember them by!).

But what's this on Airbnb? 

One of the bottle shelters may have been left behind!

It sleeps 16...and has 8 bathrooms...look it up and check out the spec.

And look out for other Shelter-themed surprises you may find in Furzedown and Tooting - let us know what you spot. Including any sleeping ladybirds

Thanks very much to all the helpers who prepared and led this wonderful day, and to participants for your energy!


The last Field Day is on September 13th, part of the Tooting Foodival. There's going to be a giant pea ... all the info is available online here. All welcome, all ages, and it's free.

Foodival, Making, Cinema, Restart, Field Day

Foodival in the Guardian

There are so many things you can get involved with over the next few days in Tooting, hopefully something for everyone! Why not start tonight at the Streatham Cemetery Chapel by helping Jeni & SMArT make the Bird with Borrowed Feathers for Sunday's Field Day.  It's a Mindful Making workshop where you can help to construct a giant bird and adorn it with “borrowed” feathers.

Then tomorrow you could check whether there are still tickets for Furzedown Low Carbon Zone's screening of The Emperor's New Clothes starring Russell Brand at Streatham Park Bowling Club, just off Tooting Common.

Tooting Restart in action

On Saturday, get your broken electronic items fixed at the Tooting Restart Party at Mushkil Aasaan.  And then join in a free puppet-making workshop, have a picnic, or walk all the way from Tooting to Clapham Junction only on the grass with fanSHEN on Sunday's Field Day.


Also this week we are very happy to have this September's Foodival featured in the Wandsworth Guardian.  What are you growing?  Want to help out?  Just email TTT to find out how to get involved.