Click to enlarge

Climate Squad is a new project set up by environmental charity Global Action Plan to support young people with taking charge of their futures.

Our Community Leaders’ programme is aimed at 16-25 year olds who would like to get training on how to lead a project to tackle climate change, whilst also picking up some great tips on communication, teamwork, leadership and project management – really useful skills that employers look out for in their potential employees.

The next training course will be taking place in a central London venue this month, on Saturday 21st November and Sunday 22nd November, from 9am to 5.30pm each day.

After attending the training, you would then go on to run your very own carbon-cutting project in your local community, for which you would receive a UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) certificate. What’s more, you could work towards getting a BTEC WorkSkills qualification by taking part.

And the best part? The training’s absolutely FREE, and we’ll be covering your expenses, from your travel to your lunch and refreshments during the training course.

To find out more about the Climate Squad, please check out the website at www.climatesquad.org.uk.
If you have any questions at all, please contact us at climate.squad@globalactionplan.org.uk.

Or please contact Lisa Blatch on 07736 806379 or LisaBlatch@southendymca.com

• Tell Me How

  tags: DIY, transition, reskilling

• home page

  tags: transition, change, personaltransition

• Global Warming: Causes And Effects » Sociological Images

  tags: climatechange, visualization, transition

• Evolver.net | IT’S OUR WORLD TO CHANGE

  tags: culturalcreativity, transition

• Blake Morrison on the healing power of reading | Books | The Guardian

  “The idea that literature can make us emotionally and physically stronger goes back to Plato. But now book groups are proving that Shakespeare can be as beneficial as self-help guides. Blake Morrison investigates the rise of bibliotherapy”

  tags: transition, reading, wellbeing, mentalhealth

• Core values: It’s time to go scrumping – Features, Food & Drink – The Independent

  tags: food, scrumping, transition, news

• Fruit City : Design

  “Fruit City is a growing map and network of all the fruit trees in public spaces in London. Logged and mapped by the Fruit City team and you.”

  tags: transition, london, food, scrumping, commons

• Saps at Sea Home Page

  tags: fun, southend, transition, leisure

• The Wilderness Society — Home

  tags: transition, forest, biodiversity, wild, climatechange, au

• Small Business Engagement Accord Agreements Signed

  tags: transition, business, small, localgov

• Your Community needs you! :: News :: Southend-on-Sea Borough Council

  tags: transition, community, southend, parents, communitysolutions, volunteering

• Home – Ethical Junction, making ethical choices easy

  tags: transition, business, sustainability, ethical

• Passionately green – Natural Friends – a green oasis in a desert of dating

  tags: transition, dating, personaltransition

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Meet for the The Transition Drinks
• set up a Facebook Page for Rochford (District) in Transition – become fans and forward to friends over the border:)

• Forest Gardening Film Night report

• run a PERRMACULTURE INTRODUCTORY COURSE pictures

• visited the new Southend YMCA pop up shop – what a beauty!
  
• attended the Apple Day at St Laurence Orchard
• we were kind of thinking loud What we’ve achieved so far

SEEOG MONDAY 16 NOVEMBER – ‘Potatoes and their Varieties’ – With Alan coming from Hampshire, please let us welcome him

Grass Roots Reading Group – call the Southend Library for the next date.

Christmas Dinner Cooking Demonstration for the residents of St. Lukes Ward

14th December

Coaching for Communities is looking for 200 volunteers. Get free training, grow and contribute. Get in contact with Lucy and Chris

More events in HealthyLifeEssex

Organic Growing Month by Month by local expert. Why not become a recycling champion. Opening creative spaces with Emerge – Thursdays

Food Coop in St Marks Centre, Westcliff. Southend Credit Union – Helping the local economy and you. Keep your money safe and sound. Are you a member yet? Transition your life with the help of Southend Libraries and their energy monitors. Visit Southend Highstreet Farmers Market and Leigh Farmers Market. Bicycle safety tagging. Southend-on-Sea Freecycle – don’t throw it away, declutter, offer the things you don’t need anymore, ask for things you need. Come and see SEEWEN community allotment.

Grass Roots Reading Group – call the Southend Library for the next date. Volunteers for Metal – Kitchen Garden and visit Chalkwel Hall to see tour the low carbon building. Energy Usage Monitor available on loan from the Southend Library. St. Lukes Healthy Living Centre – variety of services offered: healthy walks, community allotments etc. Support a Woodland Resource Centre in South East Essex. New Southend YMCA concept shop starting up – bring your clutter and yourself.

Privacy clause

We respect your privacy. You can unsubscribe anytime by replying to this email with UNSUBSCRIBE in the Subject field.

We won’t share your details with any other organization and we respect your time and attention by controlling the frequency of our mailings.

You are receiving this emails because 1) you submitted your details to Southend-on-Sea in Transition so we can keep you up to date 2) or we thought that you personally/your organization might find the information we provide/work we do important and we could cooperate in making Southend-on-Sea and area a more pleasant, abundant and livable place and avoid climate disruption and energy shortages at the same time:)

Date:     Friday, November 27, 2009
Time:    7:00pm – 10:30pm
Location:     YMCA ETC Shop (next to Slug and Lettuce), 4a Southchurch Road, Southend-on-Sea, Essex, SS1 2NE

This is how you can support this event:

1) tell your friends about it and then bring them with you

2) forward it to your friends, Twitter it etc

3) visit the Facebook Event Page and use the “Invite People to Come” and “Share” button

4) print the poster or leaflet and put it up in a nice place at work, school, community center, church etc

leaflet A5

Poster

Thanks for that!

Description

• Post Peak Living | Your Guide to Post Peak Life

  tags: personaltransition, transition

• Transition Times

  tags: transition, news

• A Transition Food Strategy « Transition Network News

  tags: food, urban, transition

• Meeting the Challenge of Energy Descent « Transition Network News

  tags: transition, edap

• Film Review: “Earth Whisperers/Papatuanuku” « Transition Network News

  tags: transition, film, awarenessraising, nz

• Omställning Sverige – Transition Sweden – Svenska byar och städer ställer om

  tags: sweden, TransitionInitiative, transition

• Sweden in Transition « Transition Network News

  tags: sweden, TransitionInitiative, education, transition

• What Can Transition Learn From Other Cultures? « Transition Network News

  tags: culture, transition, diversity

• Weebly Site – Home

  tags: youngpeople, socialenterprise, funding, transition

• Home page

  tags: transition, youngpeople, reskilling

• The Appreciative Inquiry Commons

  tags: facilitation, transition

• Appreciative Inquiry

  tags: facilitation, transition

• Trafford Eco-House

  tags: buildingslivelihoods, food, transition

• Transition Westcliff and Regae music – Transition TV

  tags: transition, tv, news

• Doug Richard’s School for Startups

  tags: transition, business, creativity

• The Village – Building Sustainable Community – Home

  tags: buildingslivelihoods, sustainability, ie, transition

• NextGEN Home Page

  “Next Generation of the Global Ecovillage Network “

  tags: ecovillage, transition, sustainability

• Facebook | Sustainable Table

  “We celebrate local sustainable food, educate consumers on food-related issues and work to build community through food. “

  tags: food, transition, sustainability, community

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

This review originally appeared in ‘Permaculture Magazine’

The Community Orchards Handbook by Sue Clifford and Angela King

• Spiral-bound: 226 pages

• Publisher: Common Ground (12 May 2008)

• Language English

• ISBN-10: 1870364260

• ISBN-13: 978-1870364263

• Product Dimensions: 20.8 x 16 x 2 cm

Common Ground have consistently championed Community Orchards as both a living celebration of local distinctiveness and a reminder of a more resilient age in terms of food security. In the days before our supermarkets became full of imported, tasteless Granny Smiths and Golden Delicious, we grew over 3000 apple varieties of UK origin, but what now has happened to the Norfolk Biffen, the Chelmsford Wonder and Beauty Of Bath? This wonderful handbook distils the knowledge and experience of the dedicated enthusiasts and volunteers who are preserving these precious genetic resources for a future when diversity and distinctiveness are once again valued.

Packed full of case studies and practical advice, the topics covered include setting up a successful steering group, advice on planning, planting and establishing orchard management regimes, through to attracting wildlife, utilising harvests and involving the wider community through events and festivals (apple pressing and cider making days can combine the latter two!) There’s also useful appendices containing specimen constitutions and legal documents, sources of grants and funding and plenty of contacts and resources.

Something I’ve always enjoyed about Common Ground publications is their high aesthetic standards, and this book is no exception. Its illustrated throughout with beautiful colour photos that in themselves are a delight to peruse, but at the same time the spiral binding and heavy stock paper make it a practical volume for field use.

Whether you are starting a new orchard or restoring a neglected one, this is an invaluable volume.

Graham Burnett www.spiralseed.co.uk

Since the screening of Rebecca Hoskins excelent ‘Farm For The Future’ documentary which spelled out the implications of the end of cheap oil for the farming industry as well as explored some permaculture based alternatives, there has been a huge upsurge of interest in forest gardening as a means of food production.

Our Forest Gardening Film Night at the Friends Meeting House in Leigh on October 19th was also a great success, attracting a good crowd of around 30 or so to see ‘A Forest Garden Year’, the recently released documentary about the Agroforestry Research Trust founded by Martin Crawford near Dartington in South Devon, and ‘Urban Forest Gardens’, a short film illustrating working forest gardens in Leigh on Sea and London (see Youtube clips of both films below).

These were followed by informal chat well lubricated by plenty of apples, pears and freshly pressed apple juice, all sourced from local orchards and Ron’s forest garden. We also featured plenty of books for perusal and displays celebrating our local orchard heritage, including St Laurence orchard on Eastwoodbury Road.

We’d be interested in running a series of locally based forest gardening workshops perhaps early next year, if interested please let us know by email or via the comments box below.

.

What is Forest Gardening?

The concept was pioneered by Robert Hart, who examined the interactions and relationships that take place between plants in natural systems, particularly in woodland, the climax eco-system of a cool temperate region such as the British Isles, as well as the abundant food producing ‘home gardens’ of Kerala. This led him to evolve the concept of the ‘Forest Garden’: Based on the observation that the natural forest can be divided into distinct layers or ‘storeys’, he developed an existing small orchard of apples and pears into an edible landscape consisting of seven dimensions;

I)A ‘canopy’ layer consisting of the original mature fruit trees.
2)A ‘low-tree’ layer of smaller nut and fruit trees on dwarfing root stocks.
3)A ‘shrub layer’ of fruit bushes such as currants and berries.
4)A ‘herbaceous layer’ of perennial vegetables and herbs.
5)A ‘ground cover’ layer of edible plants that spread horizontally.
6)A ‘rhizosphere’ or ‘underground’ dimension of plants grown for their roots and tubers.
7)A vertical ‘layer’ of vines and climbers.

Stepping into the Forest Garden is like entering another world. All around is lushness and abundance, a sharp contrast to the dust bowl aridity of the surrounding prairie farmed fields and farmlands. At first the sheer profusion of growth is bewildering, like entering a wild wood. We’re not used to productive landscapes appearing so disorderly. But it doesn’t take long for the true harmony of nature’s systems to reveal themselves, and the realisation sinks in that in fact it is the Agribiz monocultures, with their heavy machinery, genetic manipulation, erosion, high water inputs, pesticides and fertilisers which are in a total state of maintained chaos. Whereas hectares of land may produce bushel after bushel of but one crop, genetically degraded and totally vulnerable to ever more virulent strains of pest and disease without the dubious protection of massive chemical inputs, just an eighth of an acre of a garden such as Robert’s can output a tremendous variety of yields.

Inspired by Robert’s example, forest gardening has become an international movement, and projects been planted in community spaces, private gardens and school grounds. They have the potential to contribute enormously to the social, physical, spiritual,economic and environmental well being of communities.

”Obviously, few of us are in a position to restore the forests.. But tens of millions of us have gardens, or access to open spaces such as industrial wastelands, where trees can be planted. and if full advantage can be taken of the potentialities that are available even in heavily built up areas, new ‘city forests’ can arise…” (Robert A.de J.Hart)



‘Weeding and reading’

Southend Libraries : October 2009 booklist

Enjoy Reading, Love Allotments and ‘Growing Your Own’?

At libraries you’ll also discover shed-loads of free reading ideas, as well as details of allotment sites, gardening clubs, local Farmer’s Markets, Eco-volunteering opportunities and reading groups.

Libraries also offer free loan of energy monitors and “recycled reads” (Booksales!)

Don’t forget with free Internet and reservation services you can also use the ‘online anytime’ catalogue – 24/7! Simply visit www.southend.gov.uk/library

• Get Buzzin’

Keeping Bees by Paul Peacock (Gaia Books) is a very useful addition to several new titles published on beekeeping. It includes step-by-step photos showing you how to handle and check your bees, along with a seasonal hive checklist and recipes using your honey. Another title to try is Beekeeping in the Self-Sufficiency series by Joanna Ryde.

• Dig this!

Dig that Garden, Save the Planet by Johnnie Dominic is a handy little guide to getting started as an Eco-gardener.

• Good together

Companion Planting by Brenda Little offers practical advice on good (and bad) garden companions. Arranged alphabetically for easy use, this is a handy guide to working with nature for better results.

• Time Management

The Half-Hour Allotment by Lia Leendertz is aimed at those who want to enjoy the benefits of an allotment, but are pressed for time. Tried on her own plot, the author uses methods that could help you grow lots – in no time at all

• Bob A Job

The No-Work Garden by Bob Flowerdew is a book many people will find instantly appealing – a sort of gardening without the boring bits. As you’d expect from the organic guru, some of his suggestions are off the (tyre) wall, but it could help you get the most out of your garden for a lot less effort.

• Farmers’ delight

Back to the Farmer: A guide to seasonal farm food by Nick Jones & Nick Forde is a pocket –sized listing of over 130 Farm Shops and Farmers’ Markets in London and the Home Counties (Southend appears in the “Essex Experience” section on pages160-1). Contains a list useful website listings.

• Small is beautiful

Successful Allotments is a little book with big ideas. Published by Impact press as part of their Green Essential series, it aims to help you easily create an organic garden or plot. Other simple step-by-step guides include: slugs, ponds, compost, and wildlife. For more details visit www.impactpublishing.co.uk

• Post Punk Kitchen

Vegan with a vengeance by Isa Chandra Moskowitz is a quirky cookbook, which both devoted and aspiring vegans will enjoy. Like good music, cooking is best when it’s experimental and innovative. With over 150 delicious recipes you can be kind to animals and also your wallet. Cooking for Crass fans!

• Cooking the Books

Having successfully grown all your own veg, why not try some of the new recipes given in Rose Elliot’s Vegetarian Supercook. Flavour-filled weekday meals and menus from all over the world inspire without spending hours in the kitchen.

• The “Original” Economy Gastronomy

Interested in the recent history of allotments? Then travel back in time with Ration Book Cookery from English Heritage. With recipes adapted for the modern kitchen, this fascinating book provides a true taste of the times, including Mock Marzipan, Curried Carrots and Passion Dock Pudding!

Other titles about the “Dig for Victory” era include Bombers and Mash by Raynes Minns, Spuds, Spam and Eating for Victory by Katherine Knight, We’ll Eat Again by Marguerite Patten The Wartime Kitchen and Garden by Jennifer Davies’, featuring BBC veterans the (late great) Harry Dodson and Ruth Mott.

• Plot to Pot

Michelin-starred chef Paul Merrett and family share their experiences of breaking free from supermarket shopping to live off the produce from a small London allotment. Using the Plot – Tales of an Allotment Chef is an honest and amusing memoir / cookbook of how one family tries to make a difference.

• Food for free

Seaweed and Eat It is memoir, natural history guide and cookbook rolled into one. This inspirational book shows you how to make use of the wild larder by getting the whole family involved in foraging for free feasts. Packed with recipes and clear advice it puts the adventure back into mealtimes.

• Shaker Table

Get back to basics with Norma MacMillan’s cookery book In a Shaker Kitchen.

This fantastic collection of 100 traditional American recipes is based on home- grown ingredients, simply prepared and beautifully presented. Included are vegetarian dishes, breads, puddings and thirst-quenching fruit and herb drinks.

• The Best things in life…

Fun shouldn’t be a costly or stressful business. The Book of Idle Pleasures by Tom Hodgkinson and Dan Kieran lists 100 simple, free delights such as libraries, garden sheds, looking at maps, gathering food from hedgerows, whittling, slippers, cloud watching and learning the names of trees.

• New Kid on the Plot

Valentine Low decides to quit his world of dinner parties and take on an allotment. One Man and His Dig, charts the entertaining first year in the life of a plot novice coming to terms with Sheds, Slugs and Curly Kale. and Squirrels.

• Green Guerrillas

Richard Reynolds new book On Guerrilla Gardening looks at the world-wide green revolution that’s transforming neglected public areas and unloved shared spaces through innovative and inspirational illicit cultivation.

Magnificent Seven: Why not dig around these useful websites?

• www.buglife.org.uk Discover the Good, the Bad and the Buggy www.bbc.co.ukbreathingplaceshttp://www.which.net/gardeningwhich/www.rhs.org.ukwww.guerillagardening.orgwww.wlcs.org- download a free allotment crop planner www.whichbook.net

Simon Wallace @ Southend Borough Libraries, October 2009

Spiralseed course announcement

5 – 6 December 2009; Turning Anger Into Action – An introduction to inner city Permaculture, London E11

Venue; Leytonstone, London E11 (full venue details given on booking)

Summary; This weekend introduction to permaculture will explore alternatives to lifestyles based on the exploitation of the earth’s resources, including sustainable design principles, permaculture ethics, organic gardening, creating community, ‘hands on’ practical experience and more with a particular focus on urban solutions.

Download PDF course poster http://www.spiralseed.co.uk/courses/rubellapermaculture.pdf

View Youtube movie of Sid and Zillah’s inspiring urban permaculture garden
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKTvpdsXokA

Led by; Graham Burnett (Dip Perm Des), Zillah Minx and Sid Truelove (Ultra Violet Punk Productions)

Cost; £60 (includes hot vegan meals), concessions/flexibility available for those on low incomes

To book places visit www.permaculturecourses.co.uk

Please feel free to pass this message on to anybody who might be interested!