Two inspiring & successful sustainability projects!

Sharing two inspiring projects! 
Both projects aim to demonstrate and create something that is beautiful and functional, creating results which please people and show that sustainability is achievable and attractive now.

One is in Tooting: a front garden restoration that takes into account affordability and biodiversity.
One is north London-based: an bamboo bicycle enterprise which is imaginative and practical.

Tooting Front Garden Restoration
The project has been a partnership between a housing association, residents, project leader and a professional team including Community Gardener Rose deFalbe. The intention was to carry out the restoration in a way that is participatory, affordable, adaptable, biodiverse and with zero environmental footprint. There's a full description of the project downloadable here.
Here's the result photographed earlier this week. 37 Manville Road - go and have a look as it's a beautiful sight!

In April the restoration was Commended at the Wandsworth Design Awards. Here's the team in front of their display with the Mayor of Wandsworth who gave out the awards.
Congratulations!


Bamboo Bicycle Club
Engineer James Marr has established this business designing cycle frames out of bamboo (imported at the moment) and hemp (grown in Yorkshire). All the details online here.

A unique element is that BBC sells no finished bikes at all: the new owners and riders make the frames and fit out the bikes themselves. James want to offer cycles that are sustainable, recyclable and designed collaboratively according to need.
As a consumer, the maker-rider is in charge and makes all the decisions. Each maker practices or learns new skills.

Over 200 have been designed and built in all shapes and sizes (look at their Hall of Frames) - either from kits at home or on weekend courses where the output is a bamboo cycle frame that you then fit out with the drive train, wheels, handlebars, etc. Track bikes, tandems, balance bikes...and a new project in Africa where farmers will make their own bikes that can each carry 100kg.

TTT's experience of the Climate march weekend in London and Paris - our personal responses

We'd like to share our responses to the Sunday 29th Climate Justice march in London, and to actions that replaced the banned march in Paris. 
And we'd like to share news of the Transition Network day in Paris on Saturday 28th.
All these events and more are urgently linked with the COP21 Climate talks in Paris which are running until December 13th.

We're sharing three blog posts: 

• this post on some of our personal reactions
• then a post about community-level responses
• and finally a post about the global view 

This is a snapshot of the experience we felt as participants....

What did taking part mean to us personally?

London

Hilary: It was hugely reassuring to see so many other people willing to give up a cold and windy day to marching

The march began, for us, at Tooting Bec Tube. We didn't know how many would come, after putting out the invitation via our blog. On the day, 7 of us met, with the world on one head and giant sign saying, "urgent".

We emerged in the centre of London and spotted one or two other likely groups - I guess this is how a march begins, with intentional meeting of friends and colleagues with a common cause. By the time we arrived at Park Lane, we realised that there were many common causes to put under the banner of "Climate March" - vegans, community energy, anti-oil, anti-fracking, save the polar bears, Greenpeace, revolutionaries, drummers, fundraisers and photographers...

We even had apples thrust until our palms from those campaigning against waste food! Delicious they were too.

TTT's experience of the Climate march weekend in London and Paris - a sense of community

Here's our second blog post in response to the Climate march weekend, COP21 and Transition's contribution

Some 'community-level' responses

London
We marched with the Transition bloc. Inherently local, it is affirming to feel part of a wider community form time to time. Sunday gave space for us all to talk to each other in a different context compared with many other occasions. This wasn't about delivering a project, although ultimately it is, but did give space for strengthening bonds that will bear fruit in the future.

The Transition gang, including friends from Lewes, Crystal Palace and Kingston

Transition Town Huddle by Deborah Mason

Paris

Transition France and Transition groups in Paris co-hosted a free workshop day on Saturday 28th. 
Here, we met in the huge (and unheated....) 'La Générale' space for an afternoon of sharing experience, eating and drinking, and then an evening conference.
 

Charles: "For 13 hours I was immersed in a sharing community coming together with powerful intentions. The community included the everyday diversity of Paris with its mix of north african and mediterranean faces....different from the diversity we recognise at Tooting Broadway. It was affirming to feel that I could simply approach anyone and talk about shared ideas, ask for support or get some feedback.

TTT's experience of the Climate march weekend in London and Paris - the global view

Our third post in response to the Climate march weekend, COP21 and Transition's contribution

Thinking about impact and action - the global view

Paris 
Charles: Another of the replacements for the banned Paris march was the 'human chain' - a line kilometres long where participants linked hands (for a short while...until the stewards said 'C'est fini' as the whole action was ad-hoc and not police-approved).

Here's some of Transition links in the chain. We're holding copies of the pages of '21 Histoires de Transition', strung like bunting.

All along a street with several Metro stations - just like Balham to Tooting Broadway - there were theme clusters in the chain, where you could pop out of the Metro and group around global issues such as Energy, or Justice, or Nature, or Solutions. 

There were other chains worldwide - including Brussels, just emerging from 4 days of public lock-down, and also replacing a banned march.
The chain was ephemeral but we still came together to witness what we wanted to express in the planned march...along with a few mexican waves.

Transition Network International Conference

You may know that TTT is part of a network of Transition Towns round the world - community groups of all shapes and sizes who are each taking local action on environmental and social sustainability. TTT's motto is Making Change in How We Live, Where We Live, in Light of Climate Change. That encourages a wide range of activities, and inspires us to want to get on with it alongside local partners who are 'transitioning' to establish a better future now.

The Transition Network is hosting its first international conference for 3 years: hundreds of people are booked in from dozens of countries this weekend in Devon. 
Nine of us from the TTT family are attending. It's only a week after the Foodival - there are still many great and tired memories to share, and now we are about to make new ones.


 
As I post this blog four of us are zooming down the road towing a cute caravan. 

The others are packing or looking for their train tickets...


Between us we've been invited to facilitate three workshops, and we're proud to be able to do that: 

• Tomorrow Lucy is co-facilitating a day workshop on 'The Art of Invitation: creative engagement for ourselves and our communities'. Details are here.
• On Saturday morning, Charles, Jenny, Richard and Sharon are hosting a workshop on 'Outdoor Learning with Young People'. Details here.
• On Saturday afternoon, Dan and Rachel from fanSHEN are offering a workshop on 'Creative Facilitation'. Details here.

We'll all attend other sessions and there will be a lot of interaction and chatting in the lunch queues.

It's very inspiring to me that 'Transition' includes TTT's local Tooting focus and the wide international network. 


In the last month we've been lucky to welcome visitors from 2 overseas Transition initiatives - Catherine and Leonard from Transition Albany in the Bay Area of California...
...and Caroline from Transition XL in Ixelles, Brussels. 
We've learned a lot from them all, and also shared the joys of Tooting. 

At the conference we're looking forward to sharing ideas that encourage us and make our community projects more effective. 

We'll let you know all about it. -Charles