Turning the Tide (A carbon fantasy in one act) By Peppy Barlow

Showing at Halesworth Library on 21 March 2010 starting at 11 0’clock.

Showing at other local venues: Framlingham at St Michaels Rooms at 7:30pm on 6th April and Woodbridge Library at 2:00pm and Bungay Library at 6:30pm on 11th April.

The idea behind the project is to use drama as a novel means of communication in trying to encourage action over carbon reduction. Many people seem to feel “burnt out” following the first wave of enthusiasm as a result of doom and gloom climate change stories in the media and the play is designed to re-stimulate interest through entertainment.

The play sets out to hold a mirror up to what is happening in our society, without being preachy.
Halesworth in Transition (HinT) are preparing to form an Energy Group to explore ways of reducing our energy output.

Created with sponsorship from the East of England Development Agency. Tour funded by the Green Suffolk Fund, the Suffolk Coast & Heaths Sustainability Fund & The Adnams Charity.

The play is aimed towards children 8 upwards and their families, if you are interested please just come along.

Linda Owen

Halesworth in Transition (HinT)

Permaculture Weekend with Sustainable Bungay

Since forming in November 2007, Transition initiative Sustainable Bungay have hosted several successful community events, including a local food conference, a give and take day, two carfree days and an energy day. In 2010 the group plans to transform Bungay library courtyard into an inviting and sustainable green space and ‘living library’ with raised beds, compost bins, wormery and rainwater harvesting.

Graham Burnett teaching

With this in mind we asked permaculture teacher and author Graham Burnett http://www.spiralseed.co.uk/ from Southend in Transition to run a weekend introduction to permaculture at the library in January. 15 of us from Bungay and other local Transition initiatives immersed ourselves in two full-on days of theory and practical group exercises.

Considering the territory

The basis of the Transition movement (founder Rob Hopkins taught permaculture for many years), this approach is about “designing sustainable human communities by following nature’s patterns”. It works with the shapes of the living world (e.g. branches, waves, the spiral of snail shells, the scattering of dandelion seeds), rather than imposing artificial straight lines and boxes on it. Key before starting our project was how to take time to observe nature’s rhythms and cycles, rather than rushing for a quick fix.

Paul talks about caring for fruit trees in his allotment-type garden

During the course we also learned how this ecological design system offers low carbon and energy saving solutions to food growing, transport, waste, the economy and community spaces.

After the weekend it was my turn to write for the Transition Norwich community blog (18-22 January), and I go into more detail about the weekend there, so do have a look.

Sustainable Bungay meets on the third and fourth Tuesday of every month at The Green Dragon, and the Bungay Library. All welcome.
To get involved with the library courtyard project, email Nick: transitionnick@gmail.com
To contact Sustainable Bungay email Sustainablebungay@gmail.com or call Josiah on 01986 897097

Pics by Josiah Meldrum (top and bottom) and Mark Watson (middle)

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/

Colchester - Transition Talk Training 9 February

Colchester Borough Council is hosting the 1 day "Transition Talk Training" for those wishing to learn how to give an effective talk on Transition.

When - 9th February 2010, 9am – 5pm
Where – Old Library, Colchester Town Hall, High Street, CO1 1FR
The cost of the course is £50 per person
(including lunch, tea/coffee, cold drinks).

The course is aimed at people in a Transition Initiative* to help them raise awareness and inspire others.

The training will cover;

• Peak Oil
• Climate Change
• The mechanics of Transition
• The inner transition
• Skills for good and effective public talks.

By the end of the training day, you'll be armed with a solid presentation that you can adopt to your own style, a set of facts and figures to underpin your talk, an understanding of some of the deeper aspects of transition, and a new level of confidence to deliver presentations with flair, authority and maybe a bit of humour too.

*A Transition Initiative is a community working together to respond to the challenges, and opportunities, of Peak Oil and Climate Change - http://www.transitiontowns.org/.

The trainers are from the Transition Network, further details can be found on
http://transitiontowns.org/TransitionNetwork/TransitionTraining#TransitionTraining

To book a place please contact Sam Preston on samantha.preston@colchester.gov.uk or 01206 282707 Please note – all deposits must be received by 22nd January 2010.

Blue Saturday, Green Saturday

• Some weekends you just can’t stay at home and dig the garden. You have to go out and find your people. And sometimes those people don’t live in the community in which you have rooted yourself. Sometimes you find yourself travelling across the region because you need to know you’re not on your own. Charlotte Du Cann reports on two away weekends.
  
  Blue: This Saturday (5 December) Sustainable Bungay travelled from East Anglia down to The Wave in London and I went with them. We had come to take part in the biggest climate march in history, bringing attention to the planetary crisis that is being discussed this week by the nations of the world at Copenhagen.
  
  It was a big march with 50,ooo people dressed in all shades of blue: royal blue dragons, turquoise wigs, indigo-striped faces. While MPs and campaigners spoke eloquently and passionately at Speakers' Corner, thousands gathered in Grosvenor Square before moving through the great shopping and political highways of the West End towards Parliament. Placards supplied by political and religious organisations declared an end to climate chaos, poverty and capitalism, brightly coloured homemade ones (including our own) from all round the UK declared Climate Emergency, Cardiff is Ready and There is No Planet B. Along the way and as we circled the Houses of Parliament both sides of the Thames I met fellow Transitioners - from Ipswich and Norwich at Speakers' Corner, from Berkhamsted by the Houses of Parliament, from Brixton, who were carrying a banner over Westminster Bridge. At three o’clock Big Ben sounded and a great cheer went up from us all. Was anyone listening? Is this the time when ordinary people get to speak out about the 101 issues that climate change brings to light, rather than give the authorial voice to the scientists and politicians and the corporations who pay for them behind the scenes? It was a beginning. Our voices were quiet, but we were there nevertheless.
  
  You can find a full report on the day on http://www.transitionnorwich.blogspot.com and check out the big blue pictures taken by Josiah Meldrum on flickr (http://tinyurl.com/ye2xjvv)
  
  Green: How do we get from those fossil-fuelled buildings of our past to these solar and wind powered dwellings of the future? Last Saturday (28 November) I went to Framlingham for a day organised by Greener Fram in a local primary school. While downstairs stalls were busily demonstrating everything from cycle-powered smoothies to free insulation, upstairs in a classroom we learned about greening a listed building, buying a wind turbine for a school, the ins and outs of apple heritage, the ethics behind permaculture. In between these short talks and Transition films there was a presentation by Kate Edwards about cob building, an ancient method of building houses that needs only natural materials and the earth it is rooted in to make and the sun to warm it. I once lived in the desert in Arizona in an adobe roundhouse and know it’s the best way to live on this earth. One day I’m going to live in one again I said to myself.
  
  If you told me a year ago I would have sat riveted listening to the finer details about insulation materials (crude oil, wood chip and sheeps wool) I would not have believed you and yet here I was. Here we all were, Transition towns from all over Suffolk – Halesworth, Saxmundham, Ipswich, Bungay, Debenham. Meeting up and exchanging our stories. Creating a network, making our presence felt, quietly, invisibly, asking questions (about the silica in solar panels), noting down statistics (£76, ooo a year to power a school). Dreaming of living one day in a cob house, built with our own hands, or, if not ourselves, forging a way in our imaginations and our hearts for those who follow in our wake.
  
  Greener Fram: town of the future. Illustration by Jem Seeley
  
  

Transition takes to the Streets

STOP PRESS! The notes of our Second Regional Gathering are up on the Transition East website and this blog has now gone officially regional! You can find notes on the day, plus individual reports of our open space and Transition Troubleshooting sessions on http://tinyurl.com/yl9ys3t. (see post and list below)

Meanwhile everything is hotting up (as it were) for the world's biggest Climate Action march, The Wave in London next Saturday. Coaches from all over the region are heading down to the city, and initatives from all over East Anglia are on board waving banners and wearing blue!

On Saturday 21 as part of the build up to Copenhagen, Transition Norwich and Sustainable Bungay took part of a lively and colourful demonstration and rally in the central streets of Norwich. Christine Way, core member of TN reports: "On Saturday 21st November several transitioners gathered in Chapelfield Gardens to join the biggest ever Norwich Climate March while Tom (Harper) set up the TN stall on Millennium Plain ready for the Climate Emergency rally. There was a buzz in the air as the organisers and police negotiated the route which had already been agreed. At last the Samba Band with its drums and colourful dancers started and we were on the move, but not for long as the traffic ahead of us came to a standstill on St Stephen’s Street. This gave us lots more time to hand out leaflets and get the message across to the fascinated shoppers that climate change is real and we need to act now. The Transition Norwich banner was up there near the front and was clearly visible on the TV News bulletins that went out over the weekend.

Then hundreds of people gathered outside the Forum for the Climate Emergency Rally where speakers including Dr Ian Gibson warned of the dangers of runaway climate change and of this being the “biggest issue of our time”. County Councillor Andrew Boswell said: "Gordon Brown should declare a National Climate Emergency and tell it like it is” and our very own Tully and Kate spoke about some of the solutions and all the positive things that are already happening in Transition Norwich and Bungay."

Meanwhile Maria Price and Mark Crutchley from Transition Norwich (Buildings and Energy) and Kate Jackson of Sustainable Bungay were interviewed by the Politics Show (East). TN were filmed conducting a light audit in various city centre shops, whilst Kate was hard at work on her allotment! The report is scheduled to be broadcast on Sunday 6th December in a programme on Climate Change which will also include an interview with Professor Kevin Anderson, head of the Tyndall Centre at UEA.

Watch this space for reports on The Wave and all other news and reviews of the region (including a report from last Sat's Greener Fram event!)

Notes from the Gathering

Over the last week the Transition East Support Group have been compiling notes taken at our Second Regional Gathering in Diss on November 14. They have just been uploaded onto the Transition East website if you would like to have a closer look.

There is still work to do and we're missing notes from a couple of the sessions and don't yet have the transcripts of the Transition Troubleshooting post-it notes. Over the next week or so, as well as adding these missing sessions and notes, pictures and a more complete introduction will be up-loaded.

To whet your appetite the titles of the sessions are listed below!

Meanwhile news of our activities has gone nationwide. On Nov 17 a glowing report of the regional document was posted by Rob Hopkins on his Transition Culture blog entitled A Brilliant Look at What’s Rising in the East of England (that’s all 29 of us!).

Open Space sessions

Transition East Talks: attract speakers from outside a specific Transition Town, to give Transition a wider appeal. (John Webb - Letchworth)
Making the Most of Food: exploring initiatives similar to the Fife diet, raising awareness about where our food comes from; supermarket waste; schools initiatives; Abundance schemes, foraging (James Lockley and Pippa Vine - Diss and Cambridge)
Complexity of insulation schemes: this was about making sense of the bureaucracy surrounding lots of well-meaning council initiatives. (Glenn - Debenham)
Moving from core group to community involvement: what actions need to be taken? (David Greenacre - Framlingham)
Making the most of renewable energy (John Taylor – Ipswich)
Converting talk into action (Nick Watts - Bungay) notes in
Scope of Transition groups (James Thomas – Cambridge)
How many people are enough? (Carol Hunter – Downham Market and Villages)
On-line Communications (Gary Alexander- Diss)
How best to tell the story of Transition thorugh the present media/culture (Charlotte Du Cann– Norwich)

Transition Troubleshooting
Run by the Transition East Support Group

Burn out and fall out (Nigel McKean - Woodbridge)
Group Dynamics (Gary Alexander - Diss)
Facing Difficult Lifestyle Challenges (Mark Watson – Norwich/Bungay)
Engaging with Local Councils (Jane Chittenden – Norwich)
Communications between groups and the media (Charlotte Du Cann – Norwich/Bungay)