Tooting Sakura April 2009

I paid an interesting visit to the Tooting Commons MAC last night, a group who act as a consultation partner for Wandsworth Council, and for other bodies who carry out work on or near the Commons with a diverse range of interested parties attending. Discussion ranged from wind turbines and road closures to guided walks and plum trees! Gave me some ideas which I'll bring along to tomorrow night's meeting. Aren't we lucky to have such a great open space right on our doorstep? Just in case any of you have been stodging inside too much of late and missed this April's cherry blossom, here are two fine examples from Tooting Graveney Common, dt.

Guess who's coming to dinner..

Transition Town Tooting were pleased to be invited to join Sadiq Khan MP who hosted Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change at a supper in Tooting last week. I attended on behalf of TTT and was invited to join Mr Miliband's table where I was quizzed by him about the transition movement. As well as an opportunity to hear him speak, it was great to have a chance to share with him my personal enthsuiasm for TTT and for the growing community response to climate change and peak oil which is developing in Tooting. It also provided an opportunity to invite both he and Sadiq Khan to attend the upcoming transition network conference in Battersea in May. A short video clip of them in conversation appears here on Sadiq's blog. http://www.sadiqkhan.co.uk/index.php/blog/5-general/319-dinner-with-ed-miliband?4bcca4bd673637b028d7767aee95d1b6=e59ba59755b55c5fb5e3f25ddb9c4e08 - I managed to remain out of the limelight just left of shot...

Hilary

London transitioners flock to Wandsworth

Around 50 members of 15 different London transition networks met on Monday 23rd at Battersea Arts Centre (venue for the upcoming network conference in May) for the first ever London-wide transition event. We were welcomed by one of BAC's co-Artistic Directors, David Micklem who gave us some insight in to the venue's history as a centre for radical thought and action.

The evening started with a World Cafe event run by Asha Bee which focused on the particular challenges and benefits of transitioning in cities. Asha was then going on to run simliar events in other cities including Bristol and Brighton - all the input from which will feed into the new book on Transitioning Cities which Asha will be writing over the coming months.

After this there was a chance to meet and chat with other London TT networkers and to discuss the conference and plans for London beyond May. It was a great opportunity to share experiences and Finsbury TT has already stepped up and offered to host a future event possibly in June.

Happy Birthday TTT

Transition Town Tooting tonight celebrated its 1st birthday at Mushkil Aasaan! Lucy & Hilary led a good discussion with a review of what's been achieved, a creative visualisation of the future, working groups and a birthday cake with its own rocket launcher!

Local Heroes Community Awards

Tooting really is an inspiring,  quirky, humorous, resilient, inventive and diverse place. Just returned from an incredible evening at Jasmin's Club on Tooting High St, host to this year's Community Awards. A full house organised by the indominatable Balham and Tooting Community Association recognising the work done by 'ordinary' people on the ground. Transition Town Tooting had its moment: Iqbal Turk and I presented a snap-shot picture of the Tooting Earth Talk Walk as a prelude to Tara Art Pauline Nakirya's one woman performance of The Animal's Lawsuit (based on a 10th century Basra poem). Iqbal, Mary Boley and I were also nominated for TTT related community awards which was humbling given a) the short time TTT has been around and b) the company we were in: long-serving health workers, choir leaders, community champions for the elderly, children and women's groups. Great Gustos singing and all topped by MP Sadiq Khan's triumphant arrival at 11th hour with news Springfield Hospital Mega-Development Plans have been turned down by a Wandsworth Council meeting tonight.Hurray! All to play for now on a Sustainable Tooting front.  LN

The Age of Stupid

The Age of Stupid - join us at Wimbledon Odeon on 15th March

'The first succesful dramatisation of Climate Change to hit the big screen' - The Guardian A new film, The Age of Stupid (http://www.ageofstupid.net/ and attached), looks like its going to be a fantastic vehicle to raise public awareness of the issue of climate change. The film makers are trying to get into the Guinness Book of records for the biggest premiere ever and so on 15th March at 5.30pm it is being screened simultaneously in cinemas across the UK. Sustainable Merton have managed to secure a screening at the Wimbledon Odeon and all TTT members are encouraged to attend. If it is a packed showing the Odeon have promised to hold a further free screening of the film! Tickets are available online here - looks like they are selling fast http://www.odeon.co.uk/fanatic/film_info/s142/Wimbledon/m11958/The_Age_Of_Stupid_/

More Earth Talk Walk Photos

Thanks to Sara for these photos

May Transition Town National Conference lands in a town near you...

Really Exciting News! The National Transition Town Conference will be held in Wandsworth! May 22nd-24th at our very own Battersea Arts Centre. Check this link to Rob Hopkins' blog in Transition Culture to find out more. A chance for you to really see with your own eyes how transitioning work is transforming communities all over the UK. Booking for the conference opens on March 2nd. Be ready to book!! Transition Town Tooting will play a role in helping to host transitioners from all over the country (and visitors from further afield as well). Lots of workshops, inspiring talks, practical activities. Exciting news. Change-making brought nearly to your own front door.

LN

Earth Hour

I like this idea that everyone could stop using energy for just one hour. On Saturday 28 March 2009 at 8.30pm, WWF will stage their 3rd Earth Hour, when they hope up to a billion people, businesses and iconic buildings around the world will switch off their lights for an hour and send an important message to the world's leaders.

What creative ways can we think of for spending an hour in Tooting without our fossil fuel driven power?

OK I'll start.
Um ... take a picnic down to TB Common and see if I can see some stars in the anticipated absence of light pollution! DT

Earth Talk Walk Photos

I am afraid that this montage is the best I have been able to cobble together from the Earth Talk Walk on 31st January. Any other photos gratefully received.

Anyway ... well done to Hilary for organising a really interesting day meandering between Tooting's different places of worship. What was striking was how similarly the different faiths look at care of the earth and how much the residents of our diverse community have in common.

On a personal level, the slightly daunting prospect of a hastily arranged address to the faithful at evening prayers in the mosque was survived without incident! Thanks for the opportunity. DT

Tooting In The Snow

Far from being a crisis or a terrible blow to the economy as some sections of our media would like us to think, the snow has been great!

On Monday, Tooting Bec Common was mobbed with people enjoying the snow, making snowmen and ... talking to each other! Yes can you believe it? I talked to lots of people I had never met before and even got invited back for a cuppa and cake by some newly discovered neighbours.

The power of communication, in evidence again after the weekend's successful Earth Talk Walk.


Glad to see that there is quite a bit of creativity out there in our community. Which snowman is your favourite?

Next Sunday Swap

The Selkirk on 60 Selkirk Road, SW17 0ES, has kindly let use use one of their upstairs room for our next Sunday Swap, so put Sunday the 1st of March, 1-4pm in your diary now!

The swaps are a great opportunity to arrive with something you don't want, and leave with something you do. The previous ones has seen anything from books to fragranced candles and doorstops being swapped, and the sky is the limit.

As spring is upon us (really!) and it's time to get those seeds in the ground I thought it might be a nice idea to bring along unwanted seeds, gardening tools, swap ideas and advice on what to put in the ground this year. Anything else unwanted from that spring clean is of course also welcome.

So come along, grab a drink or a bite to eat with us, chat away and swap some stuff on 1st of March!

For any further info please email transitiontowntooting@gmail.com

Sara

Earth Talk Walk

For your very own, lovely, souvenir edition, print out, keep and collect autographs map of the Earth Talk Walk route on Sat 31 Jan, click here

The Wandsworth Guardian will consider printing any interesting shots of the day so ... will Lucy be dressing up? Will Hilary be using her thespian skills? Who has a good digital camera?! We await the day with excited anticipation! DT

Earth Talk Walk - 31st January

The focus of the walk will be a dialogue between different faith and community groups’ about the responsibility towards the earth and its conservation. The walk will address concerns about climate change, oil prices and the potential scarcity of the earth’s resources. It will help to build up a common set of beliefs and values in this exceptional part of multifaith London and make a powerful affirmation of shared values and writings around the guardianship of the earth. We will be joined by Tara Arts Centre’s youth theatre group, Arts Beat, with a performance based on an ancient text from the Basra region about a council of animals taking ownership of the earth.

For more details and a map for the day please email transitiontowntooting@gmail.com

Barack Offers Hope For Better

Barack Obama speaks so eloquently and his message of hope is so uplifting and revitalising that I just hope that our expectations of him are not too high.

In yesterday’s inauguration speech I was particularly happy to see that he gave several nods to the environmental issues facing our world:

“each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet”

“We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories”

“We will work tirelessly… to roll back the spectre of a warming planet”

“We can no longer afford indifference to suffering beyond our borders; nor can we consume the world’s resources without regard to effect”

If he can live up to the soaring rhetoric and has the will to leap the inevitable obstacles in the way, we have the possibility of a real change for good in the world’s attitude to climate chaos and our monumentally unsustainable ways of living.

Best of luck to you Mr Obama!

DT

Hats off to the Hens

I have been feeling very sorry for them. Everytime I go out in the morning to let them out and fill up their food, the ice on their water bowl has thickened. As they rush out to peck at the unforgiving stone hard ground I worry about them. To make things more lively for them I have taken to boiling up our vegetable peelings for a few minutes to put out - a kind of bird broth which is much appreciated. After evolving for 1000s of years, they have clearly got resilience down to a fine art and are the hardiest of creatures. The next day the youngest produces her first very small egg. It's 1.5 inches long, a lovely brown and we serve it up for breakfast to pack a little goodness into our daughter returning to university that day.

A really excellent first TTT meeting of 2009 on Jan 5th. As someone said, 2008 was all about coming to terms with the enormity of the world's challenges, reading loads, feeling somewhat overwhelmed by it all. 2009 can be a year of doing and actions.
More soon on all this.
LN

Carols in Tooting

A Buddhist and her non-aligned friend dropped into the New Testament Assembly in Beechcroft Road for their Imagine Hope Gospel Carol Concert on Saturday, not knowing exactly what to expect and left pleasantly surprised, moved and uplifted! Some of the singing was so good it brought ecstatic responses from the congregation, particularly "Blessed Voices", a four piece gospel a capella group who literally blew the crowd away with their harmonies. The power of the collective and unrestrained joy in the communal were evident for all to experience. Vital ingredients for any community in the coming post oil age - aren't we lucky to have such a melting pot on our doorstep? I can't wait for the Tooting Earth Talk Walk in January to discover more of Tooting's hidden gems.
Merry Christmas to everyone and here's looking forward to TTT going from strength to strength in 2009. DT

Cities of Community!

Lucy and I headed off to Nottingham for the Transition City Conference last week - held specially for communities working to set up Transition Initiatives in Cities and attended by about 150 good people from cities across the UK and beyond. It proved to be a fantastic opportunity to meet with and hear the experiences and ideas of others facing the same issues and challenges and culminated in an open space session at which we thrashed out a revised 12 step transition model for the city environment.

Highlights for me included finally getting my head around the potential of The Sustainable Communities Act - hearing inspiring stories of community engagement from the Akashi Project in Cambridge - revisiting Beeston where I lived as a student and sharing a wonderful South Indian curry for lunch which made me homesick for Tooting.

One thing that struck both Lucy and I was the need to shout out about and celebrate the strength of community in cities. Often people talk about the breakdown of communities in urban areas but our experience - and those of many others at the conference - is of cities teeming with multi-layered communities around race, faith, politics, sport, art, social support, geographical locality, health and many many more. These communities may not leap out at you physically as you walk down the streets of London (and you won't be able to find them all meeting up in the village hall) but if you look closely at the buildings you walk past every day you start to notice how many house a community group. On a regular daily journey in Tooting I pass a sea scout group, a nursery, schools, many places of worship, a constitutional club, a yoga centre, a swimming club a political party and a gym. Many many others have no physical home - but are no less strong for that - a road with its own composting group, an improvisation group that meets in a pub weekly, a weight loss support group at the local community centre.....

Certainly engaging with a vast, multi-layered and often invisible web of communities presents challenges for Transitioning in cities - but like a physical web, the multiplicity of strands and connections should give our urban areas a strength of community and diversity which we should celebrate.

HJ

Sunshine on a yellowed oak tree

Has anyone noticed what a remarkable autumn we have experienced in London this year? It compensates for the slightly disappointing summer tenfold; we have had wonderful glowing mornings filled with scents, colour and sounds. Yes, there have been more than a couple of rainy days. But they have rarely lasted more than a day, and once the rain has passed the sun has cast its’ admiring glances at us yet again, filling the world with unusual warmth.

I like to think of this autumn as the autumn of a way of living we have all taken for granted for so long. There’s been remarkable destruction, as there always is in autumn. And winter will bring even harsher times still. But we all know that at the end of winter sprouts will penetrate the solid ground yet again.

I think this wonderful autumn we’ve seen has encouraged us to enjoy the small things: sunshine on a yellowed oak tree, the wading though wilted leaves and the array of mushrooms in all sorts of spaces we think we’ll never know if we can eat or not. The late meals we share with our friends that turn out not being so late as it’s dark outside at 4pm. The log fire we all thought we’d have this year.

I think the small things we’ve come to enjoy this autumn have showed us what we’ll need to appreciate for the next few years. Until the spring.

Sara H

CLIMATE SAFTEY: FINAL REMINDER

The climate safety report will be officially launched on Thurs 27th Nov'08, with debate held at 7pm at Friends House, 173 Euston Road, London NW1 2BJ. Event is free,  open to general public. Speakers include Caroline Lucas, Tim Helweg-Larsen, Jeremy Leggett and others. Report available to download free from website, on or shortly after launch date. If you are in London, come to this important event, let others know it's happening and invite them along too!