On Sunday 5th June Transition Town Stoke Newington will be organising some fun events at the Boiler House Community Space on the George Downing Estate. 

The day starts with the monthly jumble sale from 9.30 til 12.30, where we have a stall and where there will be lots of interesting things on offer. 

Then from 1pm we will be hosting a Big Lunch. This is an annual event, held nationwide, which sees communities getting together to meet, socialise and share a meal together.  There'll be a good crowd of TTSN folk there and we'd love to meet a load of new people so please come along and bring a dish to share with friends from all over Stoke Newington.

After the Big Lunch, from 2pm, we will be running our first community mapping event. The community map will be an online resource which will bring together and publicise all of the resources that make  up the Stoke Newington community.  It will cover everything from local food to education, from culture to community spaces, from green spaces to local history - it's up to us what will be on it and there's a wealth of possibilities out there.  At the mapping event you will also be able to see maps of Stoke Newington through the ages (not the originals unfortunately!) and members from Pangea Chorus will be singing for us over the course of the afternoon. 

It promises to be a very fun day and we would love to see you there! 

On the 1st Sunday of every month there is a Jumble and Bric-a-Brac Sale @ The Boiler House Community Space, George Downing Estate on Cazenove Road.

The next monthly jumble will be 1st May 2011 9.30am - 1.30pm and there will be a mixture of tables selling vintage, toys, flowers, goods from moving house, clothes, plants and general hidden treasures! Some of the stalls are organised by charities raising money and others are members of the public selling on their treasures. 

There will also be food prepared by a local chef for very reasonable prices (to give you an idea - curry and rice £2.80, soup £1.50, drinks from 40p) through the new Boiler House 'Ad Hoc Cafe'. To book a table or for more information please click here or call 07942 858 956 come along and tell your friends, family and neighbours.

For all the gardeners out there, Hackney Council will be giving away compost at Petchey Academy on Saturday 7th of May:

Hackney Free Compost Day

Over the holidays the lovely people at the Dalston Eastern Curve Garden are organising free activities for children each afternoon:

Arcola Green Sunday has what looks like a fascinating line up of workshops, talks and films this Sunday:

Arcola Green Sunday- Beyond Economics
3rd April 3pm- 7.20pm
Arcola Theatre, 24 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London, E8 3DL

Join us for an exploration of sustainability beyond economics at the start of a new financial year. What would the world look like if money didn’t rule things? What possibilities could open up for different systems of exchange? What would we value?

Programme:
3pm Free workshop session exploring the intersection of sustainability and economics through discussions, games, an exhibition and craft.

5pm Films and Discussion hosted by Hali Healy from CEECEC (Civil Society Engagement with ECological Economics). Tickets £8/£5 (concessions)
Please contact Arcola Theatre box office to book tickets – 020 7503 1646.

‘Life After Growth’, Dir. Leah Temper and Claudia Medina, 2010, Canada,25mins
‘The Economics of Happiness’ Dir. Helena Norberg-Hodge, Steven Gorelick, John Page, 2010, US/UK, 67minsA new film that argues that the policies being implemented to deal with today’s economic turmoil will only temporarily shore up a global system that is fundamentally unstable and incapable of meeting the needs of people and the planet.

6.35- 7.20pm Post-screening discussion chaired by Hali Healy with Ruth Potts (Campaign Manager, The Great Transition- the new economics foundation) and Ian Mason Head of Law and Economics at theSchool of Economic Science.

Should be well worth popping down for.

Bike Bloc East is a critical mass ride from Hackney town hall to the demonstrations in town tomorrow. We leave from the town hall at 10am, hope to see you there!

The Simplicity Institute has put out a survey for people who are incorporating voluntary simplicity (or downshifting) into their lifestyle:

If you live a 'simple' lifestyle in one way or another, we need your help! The Simplicity Institute is an organization dedicated to research and policy analysis around the topic of simple living, downshifting, and similar lifestyles.  This research is profoundly important as it touches the core of global problems such as climate change, over-consumption, work-life balance and a host of other social and ecological issues.

The Simplicity Institute's current research project is focused on people who have chosen a 'simpler' lifestyle, including changes such as reduced or restrained income, reduced consumption or reduced working hours.

Results from the survey have now been published.

This is a cross-post from Hackney Harvest...

It’s lovely to see the leaves just starting to pop out on the trees once again, giving a hint of green to cheer up the winter grey. I was in Haggerston Park last weekend where the white blossom of the wild plum trees near Hackney City Farm was coming out beautifully.

After a very busy summer of mapping and autumn of harvesting around the Stoke Newington area, culminating with the Growing Communities Apple Day at Stokey Farmers Market, things have been fairly quiet at Hackney Harvest over the winter but that’s going to change.

We haven’t been entirely dormant this winter though as we’ve been helping our friends at the London Orchard Project. They’ve been busy planting community orchards all over London, including one in Haggerston Park, and have big and exciting plans coming up (all of which will be explained in a post from Carina very soon).

Now that the blossom is coming out, we can start up some gentle mapping. If you spot any trees with blossom anywhere in Hackney, please let us know – it might be difficult to know what kind of fruit tree it is, but we can make a note of it and come back later in the year to check it out when it’s fruiting. In the summer we’ll get properly stuck in to the mapping and then before we know it we’ll be back into the harvesting again.

This year we are looking to cover other parts of Hackney and we would be very interested to hear from individuals or community groups who are interested in mapping and harvesting their local area. We’ve made a good start in Stoke Newington and our friends up at Transition Finsbury Park have been adding their trees to the fruit tree map, but Hackney is a big borough! We can help out with tips on how to go about it, equipment and volunteers, so drop us a line if you would like to get this started near you.

Equally if there are communities out there in Hackney interested in planting a new orchard or if you have a fruit tree in your garden that produces more fruit than you can deal with, then please get in touch. We’d really love to hear from you.

Justice in the Green is an action learning platform aiming at contributing to the generation and sharing of action and reflection on the use and appropriation of Hackney Marsh and connected green spaces by the surrounding communities, in the light of the Olympic Legacy process. 
The project started as an assignment for two consecutive years (2008 and 2009) for the students of the MSc in Environment and Sustainable Development of the Development Planning Unit (DPU), University College London (UCL). A variety of partners were involved, including two UCL departments, community groups, Hackney 2012 Legacy Team, Hackney Olympic and Paralympics Games Unit of Hackney Council, and the Hackney based NGO Social Action for Health. 

The students’ engagement took place in six areas located in the King’s Park Ward and Wick Ward: Hackney Green March, Wick Field, Kingsmead Estate, Hackney Wick State, Lea Bridge & Millfields and Clapton States.
While being a learning opportunity for the students to have hands on experience on issues related to environmental justice in the city, this initiative also generated outputs that hope to contribute to the use and appropriation of green spaces by local residents and organisations. These outputs or community resources aim at supporting the engagement of local residents and organisations in the planning process affecting these areas and to strengthen their participation on the changes brought about by the 2012 Olympics Games.The Justice in the Green website aims at disseminating the outputs generated by the students and continue the exchange of information among organizations and individuals interested in expanding and deepening the right to the city of local communities through the use of green spaces in Hackney.

A group of TTSN members will be giving a short talk about what motivates the Transition Town movement, and what practical action is being taken in Stoke Newington at the next meeting of the Shakespeare Residents' Association (SRA) on 9th March.

Please do join us if you're interested in hearing more about TTSN or the SRA. The meeting will be held in Coffee Corner, 102 Belgrade Road N16 from 7:30pm.

For more information on the SRA see http://www.shakespeareresidents.org.uk/

(They have a "screening on the green" (outdoor cinema) coming up on Butterfield Green in March, and we'll hopefully be joining up with them for a bicycle powered event later in the year.)