'The future is dappled in the present': green sky thinking now

This post is a round-up of eight imaginative projects and developments that are happening now, in Tooting and beyond. 
It's a selection of what we've spotted in the past month.

My title comes from Paul Allen of Zero Carbon Britain at the Centre for Alternative Technology, one of the contributors to Playing for Time (see below). Paul's natural-world image means that the opportunities for making a sustainable future are all around us...if we look.

We hope there is something here to catch your interest and inspire on the Bank Holiday. 
(Plus, in three posts from last week: there's our plastic bottle greenhouse to build in the garden 1200-1600 this Thursday and Friday, and then Restart and the first Tooting Field Day later in April.)

1  Playing for Time
Lucy Neal, who founded TTT in 2008, has been spending the past two years writing Playing for Time, her book about making art as if the world mattered.
Playing for Time joins the dots between key drivers of change in energy, finance, climate change, food and community resilience – and offers ‘recipes for action’ for readers to try.

It's a wonderful collection of how artists round the globe are at the same time imagining the future and working in the real world on what matters to us all.  

The book is not only for artists, and one of the points of the book is to encourage us to look out and across our silos of specialism. 
Dip into the 400 pages...you'll be hooked!

It's Lucy's book, and it's also a collaboration with sixty other contributors...so it's a great representation of the spirit of joint action, connecting with others and local solutions that we can share as 'Transition' values. And yes, there is quite a lot about Tooting in the book!

Playing for Time was published last week, and TTT blog readers can order the book from the publishers now, and get £5.00 off the price.
To order, enter this discount code: ONPFT2015 at Oberon Books.
Offer valid until 31 Dec 2015...but no need to wait until then.

2  Energy from the kinetic force of footsteps (or footballers) 
“My idea was a floor tile that would convert the kinetic energy from a footstep into electricity" says engineer Robert Kemball-Cook about his invention that provides off-grid power anywhere. It's expensive now - but "We are establishing a whole industry that never existed before.”  
Read about Pavegen here

Seize Your Pension Power To Save The Planet

Your pension can change the world! 

Right now, it's funding climate change…

On December 9th we are running an event with Share Action looking at how the gazillions sloshing around in the UK's pension funds are invested in fossil fuel companies and other high-carbon industries which are driving the world towards dangerous climate change.

This is our money and we should have a say in how it is used shouldn't we? 

By taking back control over the cash invested in pensions, we can make sure it’s supporting a better future.

This workshop will cover the basics of how your pension is invested and how pension savers can take action to effect change. Join us for the evening to learn about your pension power can save the planet!

Tuesday 9th December 2014, 7-9pm at Mushkil Aasaan, 222 Upper Tooting Rd, SW17 7EW [poster to download]