Three diverse events in Tooting celebrating refugees and migration

We're continuing our 2017 Gardens of Refuge project with local refugees and asylum-seekers with workshops during May and into June.
Alongside that long-term project, we want to share three diverse and fascinating events in Tooting which celebrate refugees and migration:

To celebrate Refugee Week in June:

1. Queens of Syria - free film Sunday 18th June

We're showing this thrilling and absorbing film about 50 Syrian refugee women joining together to prepare to perform an ancient Greek play about women and their families in war. It's definitely NOT simply a 'film of the play' - it's all about how the women explore telling their shared stories with passion and creativity. It's a moving and positive film. Click here to see the flier, and save the date!

• Date: Sunday 18th June
• Timings: Doors open 4:00 pm for tea and samosas, film at 5:00.
• Venue: Mushkil Aasaan, 220 Upper Tooting Road, SW17 7EW

2. Midsummer Merriment with CARAS on Thursday 22nd June 22nd
Book now for CARAS' comedy night in Tooting Market. The host will be Arthur Smith - the Night Mayor of Balham.
A third of the tickets have been sold already, here's the link.

• Date: Thursday 22nd June
• Timings: 7:30 to 10:30
• Venue: Tooting Market, 21-23 Tooting High Street, SW17 0SN 

'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

Work & Play Scrapstore in Tooting

I made a visit to the recently re-opened Work and Play Scrapstore in Blackshaw Rd this week. Running for over 20 years, the Scrapstore promotes the re-use of resources for environmental and community benefit and has a great collection of card, trimmings, fabric, plastics, carpet pieces and costumes.  The Scrapstore is a registered charity and provides resources to  schools, community groups and local artists - TTT's art making group SMArT visits regularly.  

Many thanks to Scrapstore volunteers Alison, Elizabeth, Lucy & Susan (all pictured) for showing me around.  The ethos of the Scrapstore seems a good fit with Transition ideas, and would be a great resource for future events.  

Meanwhile can anyone out there assist the Scrapstore with donations?  I was given a wishlist of desirable items so please do take any of the following down there on a Tuesday if you are able. dt

Wishlist:
finer fabrics, felt, metal bottle tops, coloured card and paper, ribbon, laces, haberdashery, buttons, sewing tape, zips, elastic, knitting wool, plastic offcuts, plastic foam in sheets (2mm thick and up), wine corks, paper cups and plates.

Find out more at http://workandplayscrapstore.org.uk

Storytelling and music in the Community Garden Sunday 30th June - and more

During the afternoon of Sunday 30th June, lay down your trowels and spades and come to the Tooting Community Garden for a couple of hours of outdoor storytelling, music and cakes with Emily Duizend and friends. (Emily also took part in the Garden Open Day on June 9th).  All welcome, and we'll be collecting for Macmillan Cancer Support.  We'll start at 2:30 and finish by 4:15 - all the details are in the Events Calendar to the right on this blog.

Sustainability & Corporate Responsibility, 26th June
In a totally different setting, compared to the Garden, TTT is taking part in a workshop in Camden about Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility on 26th June from 12:30-4:00. 
The event is aimed at people involved with current policy and practice linking jobs, organisations, training and sustainability - and it's free and open to all. For details, please click here.

For us at TTT, this topic relates to our projects with the Furzedown Low Carbon Zone and South Thames College. 
Click here to have a look at our recent student-led video: 'Better Choices for a Better Tomorrow'. 


A special prize for anyone who comes to both days!

Tooting and Wandsworth bursting with activity

I'll let the pictures do the talking: 48 hours of local creative activities by the Wandle, in the Community Garden, on Tooting Common.



The 'Cabinet of Curiosities' by the
Wandle opposite the Ram Brewery

'It's a Wandleful Life': opening
the Wandsworth Arts Festival

The climbing frame:
freshly painted by Gatton School

'Wish you were here' in
Tooting, with Crafty Pint





We've put this off for a year- thanks loads!

Potatoes spouting: planted on 
TTT's 'Fresh & Refresh' walk in April

Conversation, with weeding

A beautiful sight: telling The Jigsaw Horse story today

We'll share a report soon on last week's TTT AGM & 5th Birthday party. Next weekend it's the Day of Stories on Saturday, and a picnic at the Community Garden on Sunday. Details in the calendar....all welcome.

Re-SPARKLE! and SewVember

TTT's last two monthly public sessions in Tooting have both been         all about making - creating things, making time with other people, learning some new skills.

SewVember was a great success, and here's some pictures from last Saturday's Reduce, Re-use, Re-Sparkle! crafts event run together with colleagues in the beautiful Tooting Library:

 

You'll see we made bird decorations, reindeer, wallets from juice cartons, scrap paper bags for gifts (or to keep), and small worlds in jam jars....and more. We'll post a slide show of more photos soon...it was a great afternoon, and thanks to all the helpers and participants.

Looking forward to the next time!

 



Reduce, Re-use, ReSPARKLE!

Please join us on Saturday 15th December from 1:00 pm to 4:00 pm for an exciting afternoon of Christmas making in Tooting Library, 75 Mitcham Road. This time we'll be focusing on what we can do with paper: folding, cutting, glueing, decorating...
All welcome: drop-in activities for all ages. No need to book. For flyer, please click here.

Coming up: arts and energy - last weekend it was food and growing

Starting on Saturday 20th October, there's an interactive installation developed by local school children and artists at Sprout Arts, 74 Moyser Rd. Details here.

Come along this weekend if you would like to get involved with making and creating, and from Monday 22nd, this story of the Three Little Pigs continues as an exciting exhibition.

Coming up on Monday 22nd October, there's the latest meeting of the Furzedown Low Carbon Zone, at 7pm at the Furzedown Project, Moyser Road. Details here

One exciting project we'll report on is the brand-new Archimedes screw turbine that is now producing power in the River Wandle at Morden Hall: enough for 16 households' annual power use.

What can we do locally to generate some community energy?

Please do come along!

Last weekend, TTT had a stand at St George's Community Open Day on Sat 13th October. We displayed pictures of the community garden, met many interested people, and played the carbon food-chain game made of recycled boxes.
Come and try it at another event...here are two groups of young people arranging the boxes in rank order of 'food miles':

Sustainable Making and the Arts - on the map!

Following the success of the Trashcatchers' Carnival in 2010, and a strong arts and making presence at the yearly Foodival and in this year's Treasuring Tooting wellbeing walk, Tooting is gearing up to discover and acknowledge just how important arts and making is to Tooting's transition steps.

Smart stands for Sustainable Making and Arts Tooting.

We're a branch group of Transition Town Tooting, and had our first meeting last week.

Mapping making and the arts in Tooting

We shared some of our work, and then mapped out what we have happening in the arts in Tooting (which as you can see in the picture is rather a lot), and finished by imagining what we could do in the future and how we might achieve it.

We will need to get making for this year's Foodival which is on the 22nd & 23rd September.

Smart are meeting again on the 16th August (venue to be announced), and if you think you would be interested to join us for the Foodival or beyond please drop an email to me: jeniannewalker@yahoo.co.uk

- Jeni

Gaia - the Cabaret

At short notice, Peter Horton of Gaia's Company is offering an extra night of his current cabaret tour of songs, sketches and curiosity.  Transition Town Tooting is delighted to support Gaia the Cabaret at the Wheatsheaf in Tooting Bec next Tues 25th Oct at 8pm.  Come along!

Artistic Regeneration in Tooting

After a really fantastic Mind How You Go Walking event last night (write-up coming shortly), which encouraged us to draw breath, take time, notice and listen to the sounds around and within, and of course in the wake of the epic Trashcatcher's Carnival of 2010, TTT's attention is drawn to further seeds of creative renewal in Tooting. Once packed with cinemas, but recently lacking any creative public space, Tooting has two exciting new artistic ventures taking flight this week.

Tooting Market Project to be found at Unit 32 in the market for the next 3 months launches on Friday 14th at 4.30 p.m.  Local artists are joining forces with Tooting Market to regenerate some of the empty space into a thriving art gallery and studio between January & March 2011, creating an innovative “Heritage Wall” with the immediate community of stall holders and market users and facilitating the wider community in arts and heritage workshops.  More on facebook here

Tooting Arts Club, meanwhile, launches on Saturday 15th with a party at Tooting Bec's revamped Wheatsheaf (promising a bill including both Sadiq Khan and Arthur Smith - a new double act?) and states its aim to "produce plays both old and new, in various venues in Tooting" which sounds great!  A debut play "Invasion" will run at the Selkirk from 1st to 19th February.

What next?  Not the return of Tooting cinema, surely?  DT