IPSWICH: 30-mile Food Challenge- 18/19 August

Transition Ipswich, working with Transition Woodbridge, have been gearing up to organise a 30-Mile Local Food Challenge this September, The challenge participants will be embarking upon is to eat only food that has been produced and processed within a 30 mile radius of the centre of Ipswich – for 30 whole days. Here’s a rough idea of the challenge radius.


We want you to join in with us and find out all about the exciting food available locally, which we’ll be mapping up until September and beyond to help you find sources of local food. Let’s support local producers and eat more of what’s grown right here in Suffolk!

If you’re with us – sign up to pledge your support, using the sign-up button on the right. Once you’ve signed up we’ll send you email updates about the challenge, including the events we’re organising and promoting between now and the end of September.Interested in joining in? Want to find out more? Challenge guidelines and more information are on the FAQs page.

Check out our website http://30milefood.transitionipswich.org.uk/ especially growing lists and maps of Retailers, Producers and Eating Out places.

We have a stall this month at the inaugural Ipswich Food Festival on 18/19 Aug (Maritime Weekend) and on Monday 3rd September are showing ‘In Transition 2.0’ film, 7.30pm, at Suffolk Coastal District Council Offices, Melton Hill, Woodbridge, IP12 1AU. Followed by coffee and cake and presentation on the 30-Mile Food Challenge.

For contact information and questions please leave a comment and we will get back to you: 30milefoodchallenge@gmail.com.

IPSWICH: Festival of Ideas and 30-mile Food Challenge- 12 May

Interested in green issues – from fixing your bike (bring it along!) or growing your own food to global concerns about climate change and population? Then come to Ipswich’s second Festival of Green Ideas on Saturday 12^th May at the Quaker Meeting House, on Fonnereau Rd, opposite Christchurch Park, 10am-5pm. Entrance is free and the whole family is welcome.

With a wide variety of stalls, talks, films and children’s activities throughout the day there will be plenty to get everyone engaged. Our Local Food Café will be serving delicious local produce and challenging you to Eat Local. During the afternoon there will be a Question Time style discussion, where everyone is encouraged share their thoughts and feelings on the many issues that the Festival embraces.

Transition Ipswich will be 'launching' our 30-Mile Food Challenge, which will be taking place this September. If you want more information about that - several Transition Groups are thinking of doing a similar Challenge - do get in touch we me as we are more than happy to share our resources (our new website will be going live in early May) and get ideas from others who have done it before.

Further information at http://www.suffolkquakers.org.uk/green-ideas.htm or contact Heather Bruce on: 01473 257 649 or hbbruce@hotmail.co.uk

Training for Transition comes to Suffolk

Last call for the few remaining places on the official Training for Transition course running in Ipswich from 9.30 to 5.30 on 4th and 5th December. Thanks to support from Suffolk Climate Change Partnership we’ve been able to keep the course fee down to £30.

The venue is the Reg Driver Centre, in Christchurch Park. We feel its environmentally efficient design makes it a perfect venue for such an event! Here’s a link to Google Maps: http://bit.ly/cOniuv - just zoom out of street level and click “map” to plan your route.

The course will be along the lines described here, though adjusted to meet participants’ needs and updated to cover the new Transition ingredients, or pattern language.

The trainers are Naresh Giangrande, a founder member of Transition Totnes and the Transition Network, and Marina O’Connell who runs the Apricot Centre just over the border in Essex. Naresh’s details can be found here. As Marina’s recently qualified as a Transition Trainer her name’s not on the Transition website yet, but she’s also a highly experienced trainer and lecturer in permaculture, horticulture and sustainability.

To register email steve_marsdenbtopenworldcom or call/txt 07889 751578.

Ipswich/Beccles: Survival Tales performances

Hey everyone

This is short notice but I've been asked to secure a venue and date for a last appearance in this lady's first East Anglian tour - thankyou to residents of the Spinney for agreeing to host her! Please come to the performance next Thursday in Ipswich - it doesn't clash with anything! It's an intimate, interactive show. Circulate to your friends!

There are other performances on Wednesday night (Norwich) and Thursday afternoon (Ilketshall St Andrew) but for details of those contact Jo Chitty www.jochitty@yahoo.com

See you there, Gemma x
___________________________________

Survival Tales
a performance and workshop by Eirlys Rhiannon

Thursday 24 June 2010 7.30pm*
The Spinney, 108 Westerfield Road, Ipswich
£5 (no-one turned away for lack of funds)
Places need to be booked in advance – sayersgemma@googlemail.com

* please note no admission to the show later than 8pm

What's it all about? See information below or visit http://www.survivaltales.org.uk/

========================================

To survive in this world, we each create stories.

Our stories affect people around us, and in turn we get affected by the stories we hear and see every day.

But there’s a new – and old – challenge looming: to realise that ‘how we live’ is also ‘how we kill’.

This challenge is phenomenally frightening.

To protect ourselves, we create safe stories: ‘the scientists are lying’, ‘the government will sort it out’, ‘this product will help’.

But the challenge remains.

We need to decide how we live – but how do we make decisions? Is this version of democracy the best we can do? Who’s in charge? Can we trust any of our solutions?
Can we learn anything from history? And does anyone have a super-hero cape in my size?

How do we tell the noose and the lifebelt apart?

=========================================

Survival Tales is a series of small, intimate performance events, designed to take place in unusual venues, including living rooms, community gardens and social centres. Each event has two parts:

- a performance featuring personal stories and songs

- a short workshop about how we make our survival stories

Touring selected parts of the UK during Summer 2010. Contact us for booking details:
http://www.survivaltales.org.uk/

Produced in association with Natasha Machin and Trapese Popular Education Collective, with assistance from Artist Project Earth http://www.trapese.org/ http://www.apeuk.org/

Calling Transition Food Groups

The Making Local Food Work programme has taken on regional advisers to support and promote community food co-operatives, out of a belief that they build social cohesion, encourage healthier eating, raise awareness of seasonality, benefit the local economy, keep growing skills alive, bolster local resilience by opting out of the multinational supermarket hegemony...

The adviser for East of England is me - Gemma Sayers - hi! I want to see lots of new food co-ops set up! And to improve the sustainability of those that exist. My role involves finding existing food co-ops and mapping them on the Food Co-ops Finder website: http://www.foodcoops.org/
My definition of 'food co-op' encompasses small wholefood buying groups, veg box/bag schemes, veggie van deliveries, markets - anything where a community comes together in a non-profit way to meet their dietary needs.

Online mapping will hopefully make it easier for people seeking a food co-op to join, as they can stick in their postcode and a map appears with what co-ops exist nearby.

If you're in a food co-op, please go ahead and add your details to the Food Co-ops Finder website. Even if you don't want more members, please consider adding yourselves without contact details, for the map's sake! East Anglia is looking skimpy!

If you're a member of a food co-op i'd love to come see how it's run, how you're set up, so i have a chance to learn from different models, and also i can offer you specialist advice both myself and through the partners on the MLFW programme - Co-ops UK, the Soil Association...
Perhaps you want to expand your customer base, or to learn consensus decision making because those interminable meetings are driving you mad?

If you don't have a food co-op near you but you want to join one or set one up, I would like to help you!
Setting up a food co-op can be a really easy first step for communities to start taking control.


What i can offer for FREE is:

*The Food Co-ops Toolkit: www.sustainweb.org/foodcoopstoolkit/
This is a comprehensive guide to setting up and running a food co-op in all manner of forms. There is a paper version on request.
*Coming to do presentations like 'How to set up a food co-op' to your group
*Access to specialist advice on business plans, governance and legal structures, co-operative principles in practice, marketing, financial sustainability
*Training days, workshops, exchange visits to other food co-ops and mentoring
*Local food newsletters
*Colourful leaflets, posters and banners to promote your food co-op

Please do get in touch.

If you are part of or know organisations in your area dealing with local food or communities and food access, i'd love to have their contact details!

Thanks,
Gemma Sayers
East of England Food Co-ops Adviser
(Transition Ipswich)

gemma@sustainweb.org
07971863586

www.foodcoops.org
www.sustainweb.org
http://www.makinglocalfoodwork.co.uk/