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Bike Maintenance Workshop
This was one of the projects which sprang to life from the open space event. If you haven't heard, we're planning on running bike maintenance workshops where the idea is to teach people how to look after and maintain their bicycles (rather than actually do it for you). The amazing Hackney Cycling Campaign have been running workshops along these lines very successfully in east Hackney for some time now and have offered us expertise in getting ours up and running and to help out with tools.
The venue is likely to be St Michael & All Angels Church on Northwold Rd. We're hoping to hold our first workshop in September and then on on a monthly basis. If you're interested, drop Kate a line on
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(who will be at the Inclusion rounders game on the 15th).
Levi Memorial Garden
The spring plantings have flourished into a vibrant, colourful demonstration of what can be achieved in urban, public spaces. Last weekend saw carrots, winter lettuces and radishes planted for the coming months. Freya will be giving short talk about the garden on 8th September at Hackney City Farm along with other groups developing new green spaces in Hackney.
Inclusion Group
The Inclusion Group has had a number of meetings over the past few months to explore at ways of involving a wider audience in Transition. In the near term they're looking at events which appeal to a wider range of people. On that note, one final reminder of the of the event they've organised this weekend happening from 2pm on Sunday, in Clissold Park, somewhere near the ponds (look out for the fabulous recycled home-made signs). If you're keen bring a dish to share and maybe a rug to sit on.
Hackney Harvest
Another project which sprang to life from the open space event is already off to a flying start. This project aims to map the fruit trees in public and private spaces around Stoke Newington and Hackney and then making the best use of the fruit and ensure that it doesn't go to waste. We will achieve this by helping with the harvesting and then redistributing the excess fruit around the community via community groups, local businesses and other partners. We are being supported by the magnificent London Orchard Project (http://www.thelondonorchardproject.org/) who are going to be planting a community orchard in Haggerston Park this autumn.
So far we have had some very successful mapping days where groups of eager mappers have hit the streets and found a huge number of fruit and nut trees (http://hackneyharvest.com/2010/06/30/first-stoke-newington-fruit-tree-mapping-day/).
Quite simply they're everywhere and when you start looking for them you can't stop spotting them. One of the reasons for this is that Stoke Newington has a long history as a market garden for London (see http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=10548#s3)
Next phase is to start harvesting and redistributing the fruit. We have harvesting and processing weekends planned (http://hackneyharvest.com/events/) throughout the Autumn, culminating in an Apple Day in the farmers market in Stoke Newington in October.
There is a lot of work to be done in the coming weeks and we need your help! If you can spare any time on the harvesting weekends (and if anyone out there owns some sort of cargo bike or trailer) then we'd love to hear from you (http://hackneyharvest.com/contact/). Alternatively you can help by spreading the word about the project and encouraging friends and neighbours to register their fruit tree with us (http://hackneyharvest.com/tree-submission/)/
You can read more about the project on our website, hackneyharvest.com where you will also find a map of the trees uncovered so far (http://hackneyharvest.com/fruit-tree-map/).
Buildings Group
After a relatively quiet summer, the Buildings Group will be back up and running as usual for the new heating season which is now just a couple of months away (sorry!). Now it the time to be thinking about the energy efficency measures which you will be doing this year so that you get them done early and maximise the savings.
We'll be starting up our monthly meetings again where you will be able to seek advice on how to cut your home's energy consumption. As ever we're very
keen to find people in the area who are considering improving their home's energy performance so if you are thinking about doing this or know of anyone in Stoke Newington who is toying with the idea, please put them in touch.
The RefurbN16 <http://refurbn16.com/> website is growing all the time with practical tips on cutting carbon in our homes and if there is any subject
that you feel we should add then please let us know. There's lots of useful information up there already so please check it out and feel free to add
comments or queries below any article.
After the success of the first Draught Busting Saturday (http://refurbn16.com/2010/04/02/first-stoke-newington-draught-busting-saturday/), we're going to be rolling these out again this autumn. If you live in a leaky house and are interested in learning how to make it much more snug and comfortable, as well as saving money on your energy bills, then please come along to one of these sessions. You'll be shown how to install draught proofing (it's very easy) and will be given an opportunity to buy cost price
draught proofing materials
We are particularly interested in finding people who would be interested in hosting a session in their home - please get in contact if you can help out in this way.
We have other ideas for this winter bubbling away and we're very happy to hear your ideas too so please get in contact via the website (http://refurbn16.com/contact/) or email
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.
London Transition Networking Event at London Permaculture Festival
The London Permaculture Festival will be taking place on Sunday 22nd August right by Regent's Park at Cecil Sharp House.
As part of programme there will be an informal networking event for Transition Town groups from 11am to 1pm. If you are interested in meeting up and sharing
experiences with other Transition groups in London then please come along.
As part of the event there is a survey in progress to help get an overall picture of Transition in London. A summary of results will be presented at the
start of the event (see http://www.london-transition.org.uk/survey-090810.html for details).
The festival itself will be continuing until 11pm with a full programme of workshops, talks, demonstrations, films, music and food and drink. For more information please visit:
http://www.LondonPermaculture.com
Get Growing at Home Workshops
We've been talking so Hedvig Murray about running a series of practical home vegetable growing workshops in the spring. Hedvig runs Get Growing (http://www.getgrowing.org.uk/) and is an experienced Permaculture and organic gardening teacher. The idea is we start early spring next with a workshop about planning and preparing, followed by a more hands on workshop getting the garden ready and then workshops on maintaining and developing the garden.
If you would be interested in participating in these workshops or have a garden or space you would like to develop early next year (and would be prepared for some TTSN people to come along help) please get in touch.
Events
The events group have taken a bit of a summer holiday but will be back later in the year. Some of us went on a tour of to the Friends of Tottenham Mashes Permaculture garden a few weeks ago, which was a fascinating demonstration of the application of permaculture principles - letting nature do all the work - in an unlikely setting. Many thanks to Phil for showing us around.
One event which is currently being looked at is a workshop/talk on home brewing.
Documentary Feature Project
Rowan asked if we could mention Just Do It, a feature length documentary in production about climate change activism. It's an experiment in crowd-funding, group production and community-engaged documentary filmmaking. See http://just-do-it.org.uk/ for more information.
Education Officer Job at EcoActive
Some of you might also be interested in Part-time Education Officer position at Eco Active (see http://www.ecoactive.org.uk). |
