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.

Sunday Aug 2nd: Make a day of it with the Community Garden and Tooting Field Day

All welcome to make a FREE day of it together this Sunday - with an outdoor focus:

Tooting Community Garden will be open to all from 11:00 to 1:00
There's lots to do, from sowing autumn crops to sculpting our bramble bushes (there's going to be a lot of fruit for the Tooting Foodival on 12 & 13 September (click on FOODIVAL in the Quick Links above for info).

Tooting Field Day starts at Sprout Community Arts at 1:30 and runs until 5:00
The theme of this month's Field Day is 'Shelter'. 
We'll start off in Sprout making recycled-bottle insect hotels to take home, in this case specifically for ladybirds and lacewings (both these families of bugs eat lots of garden pests, particularly aphids).



Then we'll move outdoors to practice making some family-size 'human' shelters out of natural materials. 
Can't take these home, but we can imagine....
All the details here: http://www.fanshen.org.uk/current/tooting-field-days.html

Tooting Field Days - Free Family fun - Starting Sunday 19 April

Tooting Field Days are local safaris based in and around Tooting; a chance to get outside and play, walk or make something. We can't promise lions and zebras but you might discover something you've never seen before, think something new or have a mini adventure!

Tooting Field Days will happen every month on a Sunday afternoon from April until September. The first Field Day is Sunday 19 April.

The theme for the April Field Day is "Natural Neighbours." Make a pine cone bird feeder, discover voices of Tooting past and do scavenger hunts in Streatham Cemetry. Drop in for part of the day or join us for the whole event.

2pm: Meet at Tooting Library (75 Mitcham Road, SW17 9PD) to make a pine cone bird feeder that you can hang in your garden or balcony to encourage more feathered friends to visit you. Materials provided.

3pm: Depart Tooting Library to do Tootingwalks 1, a specially-made audio walk packed full of music and the voices of local people, talking about Tooting past and present and Tooting’s love of food. MP3 players and maps provided.

3.45 - 5.30: Treasure Trails, Scavenger Hunts and honey tasting in Streatham Cemetery (enter through gate on Broadwater Road).

You can join us for the whole afternoon or drop in for just one section.

All activities are suitable (and fun) for children and adults.

Tooting Field Day is a collaboration between Transition Town Tooting and local arts organisation fanSHEN.

To book a (free) place or for more information, click here

It was a Wild Afternoon in Tooting, and worth it

The games:
A beautiful sunny Tooting morning.....,
.....and guess what time the really cold rain started yesterday? 

Yes, exactly as we started the games. 

Nevertheless, adults were seen and heard up trees, and a 2-year old was soon playing hug-tag (come next time to find out how to play that game..). That brave family deserves our respect!

There will be a next time, with the monthly Tooting Field Days starting on Sunday April 19th - we will share all the details soon. 
Many thanks to Rachel and Dan from fanSHEN Theatre...brrrr.

The Project Wild Thing film:
It was great to see this - the film covers many current opportunities and challenges in getting us all outdoors more, through the storyline of our hero having a few months to become 'Marketing Manager for Nature'. Why? What's the product? What are young people's perceptions? Who wants to be involved? Who can advise and help? The result became the 'Project Wild Thing' group, with good resources for all here.

Meeting local groups: 
A nice extra outcome of the afternoon was meeting Anthony & Kirsty, trustees from The Woodfield Project. The project is restoring a building, and making new relationships, and offering new outdoor-oriented courses right by Tooting Common.
It's really valuable for TTT to meet local allies, so we can work together on these important objectives which are good for Tooting people and the whole neighbourhood.

Courses are being developed with Fabiola from Groundwork London.
She gave us a hand-made poster of some of the local events being offered in April and May.

We'll put it up at the Community Garden, Fabiola. Really great topics, and we'll keep in close touch and promote these events.
For more detailed information, contact her here. 

Thanks again to the supporters for this event: The Wandsworth Council Eco-Fund, Mushkil Aasaan, and the Friends of Streatham Cemetery.

WHY we're offering our 'Wild Afternoon in Tooting' this Sunday 22nd Feb: Part 1

All welcome to the two parts of our free half term Wild Afternoon in Tooting:
at 1400: participative outdoor games for all the family
at 1600: showing 'Project Wild Thing' film  

All the details on our events calendar to the right of this blog page.
It's going to be a fun and engaging afternoon, even if it's damp outdoors in the first part when we try out some games.
  
Being outdoors in the city should be fun, available and accessible, and is valuable for us all. 

For the next 3 days, we want to illustrate some different aspects of why we believe it's important to offer ways to enjoy being outdoors - including the personal and informal as well as more formal examples.

Why go outdoors in Tooting? Part 1 
Rachel from fanSHEN Theatre will be helping run the games this Sunday. fanSHEN are also developing a 6-month series of free Tooting Field Days, which kick off in April in partnership with TTT.

"As a warm-up to the Tooting Field Days, we’ll be helping out at Wild Afternoon, playing some games invented by the awesome San Francisco New Games Foundation. 

Why? In August last year, our fanSHEN team spent almost every Saturday walking around Tooting, looking for good routes for the audio walks we were making. We had some ideas about what the routes might be, landmarks they might take in, how long they might take - but mostly we walked around to see where might be fun or interesting. 

 When we got tired, we stopped at one of Tooting’s brilliant restaurants or cafes and refueled on egg kothu or samosas or 

coffee while we pored over a map to see where we hadn’t tried yet. 

We stumbled on places and met people 

we wouldn’t normally. 

Maybe because it was August and 

everyone else was away, it felt a bit like a holiday, exploring a place without the pressure of needing to be in a 

certain place at a particular time.