Eco-checking, a memorial bench, school planters, knitted bees and Jellybrella - 2019 Update #1 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 a short update on several of the strands - taking the first three in the list above, each of which has involved the Youth Club for asylum-seekers and refugees. We'll share Update #2 soon.

As ever, if you are inspired to contribute to the projects - offering good ideas or simply your time, sharing specialist skills, as a donor in kind, as a partner group - you are very welcome to contact Chuck at TTT by email here.
Over 40 individuals and a dozen local organisations locally have been involved with the TTT + CARAS partnership in many ways over the past 4 years.

Eco-Checking the CARAS offices
CARAS has achieved a gold standard London Youth Quality Mark for carrying out participatory and youth-led eco-check of activities across 3 sets of sustainability criteria: Energy & Water; Healthy Living and Litter & Waste. Helped by Egle from CARAS and Sara from TTT, a team of young people identified relevant issues and then analysed how well the organisation as a whole deals with the challenges.

The intention was not to blame, but to make an action plan for 'things to change and put right' as well as 'things we do well already...and so we should keep doing them!'




Examples from the action plan:

• stop purchasing single use plastics for the many meals that are prepared as part of the CARAS programmes
• renew the planting boxes outside the offices for 2019 so that we're growing what we might like to eat, and so that there are beautiful plants that are welcoming, that we like and that are good for pollinating insects

Here are the brand new colourful plates, bowls and cutlery which will be used again and again at CARAS and on Family Days at other local venues.
You're welcome to read the eco-check detail - click here.
It's admirable because it is short, practical and understandable, and transferable to many other community voluntary settings.


Congratulations to the multi-language group who came together in Tooting to put the eco-check together!

'Even When I Fall' film showing to celebrate Refugee Week 2018 in Tooting

Join us to celebrate Refugee Week 2018 in Tooting!

It's the 20th annual Refugee Week, and in TTT's 10th anniversary year we're proud to be showing 'Even When I Fall' in partnership with CARAS and St. Mary Magdalene Church, Wandsworth Common.

 

 

When: Sunday 17th June. Doors open 7:00 for tea and a samosa and the film starts at 7:30

Where: St Mary Magdalene Church, in the Main Hall. 202 Trinity Road SW17 7HP - near Wandsworth Common

Free showing: we'll ask for voluntary donations to cover costs

Queries: please contact us by email

'Even When I Fall' is an intimate, beautiful film that harnesses the visual power of circus to give a unique perspective into the complex world of human trafficking.

‘Even When I Fall’ traces the journey of Sheetal and Saraswoti, two girls from Nepal. 

 

They met as teenagers in a Kathmandu refuge, survivors of child trafficking to corrupt Indian circuses and brought back to a country they could barely remember.

 

Inadvertently these girls were left with a secret weapon by their captors - their breath-taking skills as circus artists. 

With 11 other young trafficking survivors, the girls form Circus Kathmandu - Nepal’s first and only circus.

The group continues to take circus skills and trafficking awareness workshops all over Nepal.

All welcome to join in locally with our next five creative & thoughtful 'Signs of Welcome' workshops

Our Signs of Welcome series of ten local workshops is continuing now over the next two weeks.
Click here to read about the first five events and what we experienced together with our project partner CARAS.

We created these participatory workshops to provide a vivid, simple and accessible opportunity to imagine how to welcome people new to the community and then make decorative signs to take away. 
The workshops are for all ages and are free, fun, thoughtful and creative. 

Each workshop runs in a great local venue which offers the space for all comers to join in. Thank you to all the venues for partnering with us and supporting the project.

Signs of Welcome workshops in diverse places!

The remaining workshops (all details on the TTT Events Calendar here on the blog):

> Paradise Co-operative Garden, Earlsfield
   Sat 9th June, 10:00-12:00
 
> St Mary Magdalene Church, Trinity Road, Tooting
   Weds 13th June, 4:00-5:30
 
> Sprout Community Arts, Furzedown
   Fri 15th June, 4:00-5:30 

> The Migration Museum, Vauxhall
   Thurs 21st June, 6:00pm-7:45pm 
   Part of a drop-in evening of events at the Museum, 
   all celebrating Refugee Week

 












As we've run the events, new features have emerged. 
Recently we offered the workshop at a Family Visit Day in Wandsworth Prison. With four walls surrounding participants, the signs they created became a way to imagine new welcomes and relationships. One adult's sign simply stated 'Kids Matter'. A family created a sign together, a graphic recording of a live and positive conversation between themselves.

Our introductory script has developed. 
Now we're also saying "you can create signs to put up in the city spaces where you live - signs that don't just label places or limit us ('keep off the grass' or 'no ball games'). They're about welcoming people and what we value when we get together"

All welcome, all ages can join in 

and each workshop is different!

 Many thanks for funding support from ThriveLDN, an initiative by the Mayor Of London.

The simple invitations of our 'Signs of Welcome' workshops have brought vivid, compelling and complex results. More to come, please join in!

It's TTT's tenth anniversary, and we're facilitating ten free, fun, thoughtful and creative 'Signs of Welcome' workshops locally, along with our partner CARAS. We're in diverse venues that are themselves welcoming and interesting spaces to visit: cafes, shops, local enterprises.

We're half way through - five workshops completed since March and five more in the next few weeks.  

All welcome! 
See the TTT events calendar for all the dates and details. 


The NEXT 'Signs' workshop is in the wonderful surroundings of the Wandsworth Oasis shop at Amen Corner on Friday 1st June from 4:00-5:30. 
That's at 234-250 Mitcham Rd, Tooting SW17 9NT.
Have you ever done a creative workshop in a shop? Was it as amazing a place as the Amen Corner Oasis shop? You'll have time to browse....and it's half term, so all the family can join.

We have lots of 'Signs' in many languages - all responding to this open question: "What would you like to say to welcome people who are new to the community?"

They've been fascinating sessions which everyone seems to appreciate. Expressing ourselves, meeting others, making it visual and being creative by 'thinking with our hands' is a very powerful mix.

A brilliant and valuable extra is that young people from the CARAS youth club have been joining in to gain volunteering experience co-facilitating a creative community session. 

There's been inspiring communication across the cakes and mint tea on the cafe tables. Young people who are refugees and asylum-seekers have enjoyed friendly venues they may not have considered visiting, and met many local people they would not otherwise have encountered.  

Throughout there's been interwoven threads of self-expression plus a two-way invitation to ask questions and share experiences.

We have a vivid record of the sessions in the shape of the Signs themselves. They'll be included in a local exhibition during Refugee Week, June 18th-24th: details to come. The materials for the Signs are re-purposed from publicity boards from the wonderful Work and Play Scrapstore. We had one of our workshops there, and met this Japanese architect who joined in (with a translation on the back):

These workshops are part of our partnership with CARAS throughout 2018 - the partnership purpose throughout the year will be to facilitate events which draw refugees and asylum-seekers and the local community closer together. For more about the year's projects, please click here, and there are lots of pictures on our TTT Facebook pages. 

Many thanks to the partnership funder ThriveLDN, an initiative by the Mayor Of London .

'Signs of Welcome' free, creative, hands-on & local workshops from March to June 2018

In March we started our run of 'Signs of Welcome' creative workshops, and between now and June we're offering more public hands-on events with local project partners. 

In the workshops you'll explore your responses 

to this open question: 

“What would you like to say to welcome people who are new to the community?”

You'll imagine what message you would like to say to refugees, asylum-seekers or others new to the community.

You'll design and create signs to express your message.

You can take them home or loan them to us for exhibition during Refugee Week in June.

The next two events are in the Easter holidays:

Date:  Wednesday 11th April  
Venue: Tartine Artinasal
9 Upper Tooting Road, Tooting Bec, SW17 7TS 
Timings: 4:00 pm to 5:30 pm

Date:  Friday 13th April 

Venue: Home Community Cafe

St Andrew's Earlsfield, Garratt Lane SW18 4SR

Timings: 1:00 pm to 2:30 pm

What to expect: 

• All welcome to join us for a free, facilitated and fun crafts workshop using re-purposed materials – we’ll provide everything you need 
• Design and create your own messages of welcome to people new to the community
• Adults and children will all enjoy the workshop 
• No need to book
• We’ve included weekends and afternoons after school to allow children and families to take part together 
• Take the signs home, or leave them with us for exhibition during Refugee Week in June 2018
• Workshop run by Transition Town Tooting and CARAS (the Tooting charity serving refugees and asylum-seekers)

Thanks to our local partner the Work and Play Scrapstore in Tooting, the signs will always be made using materials saved from going to waste. 









Write your signs in any language!
Design a message using both sides of your sign!


Many thanks to all the local partners hosting free Signs of Welcome workshops, including:

• Fridays March 10th & 23rd. The Sound Lounge, Wimbledon
• Wednesday April 11th. Tartine Artinasal, Tooting Bec
• Friday April 13th. Home Community Cafe, Earlsfield
• Friday June 1st. Wandsworth Oasis shop, Amen Corner
• Saturday June 9th. Paradise Co-operative, Earlsfield
• Friday June 15th. Sprout Community Arts, Furzedown

We'll share the details of each workshop closer to the time. 

 

This project is a strand of the 2018 Welcoming Signs partnership between TTT and CARAS and local venues and other supporters. The purpose throughout the year will be to facilitate events which draw refugees & asylum-seekers closer together with the local community.

Funding awarded for 2018 'Welcoming Signs' partnership with CARAS. Plus: new creative community workshops running March-May.

We're planning the fourth year of TTT's partnership with CARAS the Tooting charity working with refugee and asylum-seekers. 
 
We're thrilled that the partnership has been awarded funding for 2018 from Team London and Thrive LDN's ‘Young London Inspired’ fund: "improving the lives and mental health of young Londoners by helping them to volunteer".

So, in 2018 one of our main focus areas will be enabling young people from CARAS to volunteer in the community. That means working with young people to imagine and design what they could contribute locally and what benefit that would have, as well as carrying out the voluntary time.

The whole 2018 young people's partnership is called 'Welcoming Signs'. Many elements of our CARAS project involved community benefit and relationships in the past: for example these pallet-benches made with the CARAS Youth Club with welcoming invitations written in many languages had starring roles at TTT's Tooting Twirl in July 2017:

 












We're fortunate and grateful that several local partner organisations in Tootings have been 'reaching in' to CARAS, seeking and offering voluntary projects. 
We'll share more very soon on the range of activities we're exploring. 

Plus we'll continue to work through 2018 with other age groups served by CARAS: families, the women's group, adults.

The first community events with young people from CARAS included as contributors are starting in the next few weeks: on March 16th and 23rd we're facilitating Signs of Welcome workshops across the border in Wimbledon, at The Sound Lounge pop-up venue. 
It's the same event run two times. 
Six other local venues have agreed to offer more Signs of Welcome sessions between March and May as project partners. 
The materials from the 'Signs' will always be re-purposed, saved from going to waste. Thanks to another partner, the Work and Play Scrapstore in Tooting for your support!

 

The details: Signs of Welcome creative workshops this March

“What would you like to say to welcome people who are new to the community?”

Dates: Friday 16^th March & Friday 23^rd March

Venue: The Sound Lounge, 8 The Broadway, Wimbledon SW19 1RE

Timings: 4:00 pm to 5:30 pm

What to expect: (download the flier here)

o   All welcome to join us for a free, facilitated and fun crafts workshop using re-purposed materials – we’ll provide everything you need

o   Create your own messages of welcome to people new to the community. You can write in any language!

o   Take the signs home, or leave them with us for exhibition during Refugee Week in June 2018

o   Adults and children will all enjoy the workshop

o   We’ve chosen afternoons after school to allow children and families to take part together

Tooting friends are welcome to come over to Wimbledon to enjoy the first workshops and the familiar faces at The Sound Lounge.








Please contact Charles by email here if you have any queries. Up-to-date news on the workshops will be on TTT's facebook page & shared by twitter.

A party marking the end of our Gardens of Refuge project year with asylum-seekers and refugees. Plus 'Signs of Welcome': to be continued in 2018.

It's the end of the project year for our partnership with the CARAS team and the refugees and asylum-seekers they serve.

Of course we are going to do more all together in 2018, and we're planning that now.

Yesterday was the end-of-year CARAS Saturday Youth Club party, enjoyed by over 50 young people and volunteers. 

It was a high-energy afternoon with continuous home-made food to keep us going.

 Alongside the ping pong and games:

• we did more carpentry on the big pallet-table we're making for the Tooting Community garden
• we made lots of Christmas baubles as gifts
• we made over 20 macramé knotted hanging planters, using offcuts of T shirts as the strings. We were thrilled to have Tooting spider plants and tradescantia from Share Community garden.
• we finished the party with a gift game of choice and chance from the roll of the dice to select, give, and swap presents

The youth club is always a wonderful few hours when lots is offered and appreciated - all at the same time. 

So we're sharing photos mixed together, like the day itself. Its impact and welcome always feels much more than the sum of all the separate activities spread over 3 or 4 hours.

Signs of Welcome workshop

Late in November we had the opportunity to facilitate a workshop at the Museum Of London. CARAS is included in the fascinating exhibition called The City is Ours. It's on until 2nd January and all ages would enjoy the mix of imagination, facts and ideas about living in complex diverse city like London. It's well worth visiting!

November update on our 'Gardens of Refuge' refugee & asylum project partnership with CARAS

This time last year we were in the middle of the voting period for the Aviva Community Fund, where the Gardens of Refuge joint project with the Tooting charity CARAS won £10,000 - thanks to the votes of many friends near and far. 

This time last year...the voting was hot!

We're nearing the end of 2017's diverse activities with refugee and asylum-seeker beneficiaries. TTT has co-facilitated over 20 workshops in 2017 with the project...there's two more to go before Xmas.

Here's an update of activities since the summer - and a view forwards as we plan for 2018. We've included notes about each of these: 

1. Family Group
2. Youth Club for unaccompanied young people
3. Adults Group
4. Stay With Love exhibition
5. 2018 plans
6. Would you like to contribute?

1 Family Group
With the CARAS team we co-facilitated a Family Activity Day over October half term in the Hall at All Saints, Tooting. 50 people joined in to meet and reconnect, do some fun creative activities for all ages and enjoy lunch cooked by members of the group.

 











The big activity was carving pumpkins - and before that of course you have to get hands-on to scoop out the seeds. Any reluctance to get sticky hands was very quickly lost...in fact this stage became an activity of its own as hollowing-out took over and the children shared their new skills (none had ever done this before). Then: sketching and designing, cutting and admiring, collecting candles to take home: adults and children made short work of 20 pumpkins.

We created more Signs of Welcome:
 

These narrow strips of timber - some of them are the slats from discarded bed frames - are a design challenge where the artist develops what they want to say as a message, works out the fit, and paints directly or uses stencils. 


The arttist can also tidy up an earlier sign...so it's a collective project too.
Thanks Jeni, Nikki, Chuck, Hannah, Isabel and more.
We're going to continue creating 'Signs' in other workshops with adults and children. The Signs evolved as a combination of our Community Garden crop markers and the welcoming words in many languages that decorate the four pallet-benches made by the Youth Club in July.

Opening night of Stay With Love exhibition - we celebrated with poetry, music and good company!

On October 3rd the opening night of the Stay With Love exhibition at The Sound Lounge in Tooting saw a very diverse group of 75 join in to celebrate the exhibition. There were teenagers, families and young children from the asylum-seeking and refugee community who are served by CARAS. There were many of the CARAS team of staff and volunteers, and lots of TTT volunteers. All have been contributing to the creative and expressive work that makes up the exhibiton.
Plus there were friends old and new from the wider community - it was a great welcoming mix from many countries!

Carrie was our MC for the night. She welcomed everyone and reminded us that the offer to 'Stay With Love' had been written in July on one of the pallet-benches made in the Youth Club. That's a poignant invitation for a young refugee to make.
  
We saw the delightful CARAS Youth Club short film: two minutes capturing the experience of sharing and value that many of us have enjoyed as volunteers over the past two and a half years. We'll add a weblink asap.

Hannah White, co-founder of the Sound Lounge, celebrated the work and good humour of the young people from CARAS who are doing certificated training as coffee baristas and as sound engineers at the café.

We shared poems and prose linked to the experiences of living in and valuing a new place, of changing perceptions and of new languages and relationships. Here is a poem read and written  by Resina Chowdhury:

Prayer

To move away from a land

We must break ourselves off it completely. 

The split leaves a wound

a loss of memory, huge and gaping

which nothing material can fill. 

O Mother of a false birth, 

you were not ready for me. 

Where was the milk to offer your baby, all drained of blood? 

Dying, I was taken to where

the milk was plentiful

where there was blood to give, rich and warm

and we survived, 

more or less, weaned by another. 

But cannot forget those who held us before. 

What is the treatment for the loss of a culture? 

To see oneself continue in history? 

What can be said when the spirit is forgotten? 

When a life is not nurtured

because it is not understood? 

Still we seek out a tongue that will define. 

Mother

Teach me who I am. 

Give me knowledge to recover myself. 

Give me understanding to fill the loss. 

Give me strength to withstand hostility. 

Give me love to endure.  

We had live music of many kinds -

Dermot and Gerri led half an hour where the children 

used all the percussion instruments we could find. 

They were the backing band for extempore songs with words taken from some of the CARAS participants' statements about their heroes or ambitions.

David sang about Cristiano Ronaldo, Carrie sang

'I Want to Be a Dentist', Emiliano drummed...all fantastic!

Shonar Spiral from London played two gutsy songs.

Fadhil Alfadly and Kaspar King from Iraq rapped in Arabic over iPhone tracks and live drumming. One of the children stayed on to accompany their songs: she was very composed.

Dermot played a solo set as conversation continued until it was time to tidy up and head home after a lovely evening together.

Please visit The Sound Lounge and enjoy the exhibition any time the café is open. There are two interactive pieces alongside the wide range of creative work done by the Youth Club, the Family Groups and the ESOL classes.
There's a comments book set up, you can take a CARAS or TTT leaflet and please get in touch with CARAS or TTT if you want to know more, or if you want to find out how to volunteer. 
Please take a #StayWithLove sticker or two and ask your friends to visit!

The Stay With Love exhibition is open and ready to visit. You can add your own views to the show.

We're thrilled that the Stay With Love exhibition has moved from concept to reality alongside our partners CARAS and The Sound Lounge. We experienced so much energy, creativity and patience from all the volunteers and staff involved in this experiment: Thank You!

We hung the show on the 2nd October, and then the exhibition opening was brilliant last evening. Now the show is available to enjoy whenever The Sound Lounge is open, until October 29th.

Drilling holes for hanging

Suspending the figure drawings

Two of the exhibition pieces ask for your views and ideas. 
We hope you get there and add to When I Dream and Thread Your Story devised by CARAS and the adult group. Of course, you can enjoy the whole show with coffee or a sandwich served by young people from CARAS who are engaged in certificated work training at The Sound Lounge.

'Thread Your Story'

'When I Dream'

The exhibition opening festivities yesterday included an afternoon family crafts workshop and then the main evening celebration - we'll report on the celebration in the next blog post.

Afternoon Family Crafts
Straight from school, two dozen children & adults launched into an hour and a half's making, all crowded around two long tables. It was a great scene and we admired their energy after a whole day in school. We offered two of our favourite and valuable projects. Both are related to the purpose and content of the creative work we have carried out alongside the refugees and aslyum-seekers from CARAS over the past two years in the Rooting in Tooting and Gardens of Refuge projects

"Tooting's insects need your love!"
We looked at photos of some local garden insects (predators and prey; garden crop-friendly and also less desirable) and then made plastic bottle insect shelters for beneficial ladybirds and lacewings in the garden.
With some clever planning, decorations onto the rolled-up corrugated cardboard could be protected from rain by being placed inside the bottle rather than stuck on the outside of the plastic (= design and technology for real).
Families took their bottle-houses home to hang in the trees in their own gardens or neighbourhoods.

She's added a #StayWithLove sticker

"Feel safe and breathe!"
Secondly, we painted garden row markers with messages of welcome on them. That's in the same spirit the CARAS Youth Club showed when they wrote inviting comments in many languages on the on four inscribed pallet-benches for the Tooting Twirl - one is in the show and two more are being used in the cafe.

Children and adults devised messages - another design and planning challenge - which they painted on narrow wooden slats we've rescued from discarded bed frames - very neat recycling as the slats are strong and a perfect size. The artists donated all the painted markers to the Tooting Community Garden, which we really appreciate.

All the new markers, laid out on one of the benches

More soon on the evening opening celebrations....