Transition Town Tooting Turn 8!

By rob hopkins 17th June 2016 Culture & Society

The wonderful Transition Town Tooting in London just celebrated their 8th birthday.  They have a lot to celebrate.  Here is a list from their website:

  • We ran our 9th series of Carbon Conversations last year – a series of workshops to help individuals reduce their carbon footprint and explore the challenges we face in light of climate change.
  • Eight years of our sustainable food festival – Foodival. Last year, we won a Grow Wandsworth Sunshine Award for “celebrating the ways people have brought a bit of sunshine into the lives of others through community growing”.
  • Five years of Tooting Community Garden.  The garden is open every Sunday to the public. In the last 10 weeks, 55 people have made visits – many returning week after week.
  • Four years hosting teenagers on the National Citizen Service scheme – Challenge – and working with them each summer.
  • Three years of outdoor learning with Gatton School – hundreds of children have explored the community garden, at sessions on Tuesdays. As one of the children said at the celebration at the garden last month, “Nature plays an important part in every religion and it is everyone’s responsibility to take care of it. We strongly believe that this community garden has brought us together and closer than ever before”.
  • Three years of Resparkle at the Library – encouraging families to spend time together making things from upcycled materials.
  • One year of Rooting in Tooting – running gardening, carpentry and arts sessions with the CARAS youth club
  • UpFest – Jeni Walker ran sewing sessions at the new Wandsworth Oasis shop – the beginnings of a great partnership.
  • Tooting Field Days – in partnership with fanSHEN Theatre – a series of local safaris in and around Tooting – a chance to get outside, walk, play and make things. Themes for each safari follow Carbon Conversations themes – shelter, travel, food, water, natural neighbourhoods.
  • Growing Tooting – a new initiative working across three new locations, running a series of 8 workshops to help people learn about growing in the city.
  • Tooting Neighbourhood Plan – the Forum group is firmly established, bringing a diverse voice to the development of the area.
  • Restart Parties – a chance to get your electronic or electrical items fixed, or help others to fix. The parties are now established in Tooting and the next one is 21st June.
  • Tour de Tooting – a wheeled parade through Tooting to re-imagine our streets with fewer cars and buses. It’s happening – 3rd July!
  • Golden Ticket Awards – we are incredibly grateful to the individuals who have gifted the community share of the Wandsworth Golden Ticket Awards to TTT. The Golden Ticket scheme is run by Western Riverside Waste Authority in partnership with the council and is an initiative to encourage recycling. These donations will go a long way in helping us continue our work. Thank you.

Local blogger Eleanor Glen wrote a lovely short blog about the event, published on her website under title ‘Inspirational Communities’ (our thanks to her for letting us repost it here):

I have been attending various Transition Town Tooting (TTT) events for a few years now and am mainly involved in community garden activities. On Friday night I went to the Transition Town Tooting Annual Celebration Extravaganza.

TTT

I thought it was a great event. The presentation of the successes from the last year really opened my eyes to what can be achieved when like minded people get together on a common theme and don’t give up. Even though I am involved and getting the regular newsletter, there were lots of activities going on under the radar that they were ready to share. All of the activities presented together showed an incredible achievement.The activities included things like; workshops inspiring beginner gardeners, carbon conversations, helping to create a neighbourhood plan, running a community garden, sustainable art projects and restart parties.  Where possible I have included links to the overarching group rather than the tooting specific sites as many of these initiatives are happening at other locations too.

The main theme that stood out to me on the night was partnerships. It was clear that it wasn’t just TTT working on their own. The strength comes from the partnerships that they have developed and nurtured. The partnerships were not all with other environmental themed groups either. They cross a variety of sections of society and combine the interests of both parties to create amazing results.

Friday’s event has inspired me to get more involved in a wider variety of projects. I have just volunteered to attend a local event to represent TTT next weekend so I will post an update on how that goes next week.

If you haven’t heard of the Transition Network I would encourage you to check them out. I couldn’t put it more succinctly then they have on their website.

“The Transition Network  is a charitable organisation whose role is to inspire, encourage, connect, support and train communities as they self-organise around the Transition model, creating initiatives that rebuild resilience and reduce CO2 emissions.”“When we use the term “Transition” we’re talking about the changes we need to make to get to a low-carbon, socially-just, healthier and happier future, which is more enriching and more gentle on the earth than the way most of us live today.”

If this sounds like something you want to get involved in there are Transition groups all over the world which can be found from their web site. If there isn’t one near you then you might fancy starting one up.
TTT

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