Happy Birthday To Us!

In 2008 we all met in St Andrews for the Great Unleashing. In 2009 we partied at Unit 5 - watched the Transition doc together, danced to cycle-powered music, ate low carbon fare. This year we’re celebrating outdoors in the city’s Creative Quarter Magdalen Street, as TN’s NR3 group present the community event of the year. Don’t miss! Read all about the day and all our happenings below . . . brought to you by Transition Norwich News.

Meanwhile looking to the hinterlands, the CSA at Postwick is diversifying into four working parties and is forming its not-for-profit board. Also on the food front: The Low Carbon Cookbook is exploring coops and consensus amongst the world's saucepans. Transition Circle Hethersett is putting their ecological focus on Food systems, Earlham North on Economics . Carbon reduction is on this autumn's menu when the climate change campaign, 10:10 has its day of reckoning on - you guessed it - 10 October and Carbon Conversations kick off their third round. The Reskilling group is also back in town after the summer and is meeting up at the Bicycle Cafe. Our wide-ranging related events include Heart and Soul's Power of Contemporary Spirituality evening, an Energy Efficiency Day at the Belvedere Centre and, booking ahead, a Norwich Be the Change Symposium in early November.

In the wider beyond Rob Hopkins is previewing Transition As A Pattern Language (the new framework for Transition initiatives world-wide and the new handbook). He's posting each of the 63 Patterns and asking everyone for feedback on transitionculture.org. Do check out and join in!

And don't forget our own home blog This Low Carbon Life which also has a birthday coming up. Check out next fortnight's retrospective of our Number 1 year and our topic week on Zero Waste. This month we’ve been taking a look at Magdalen Street, as well as what’s its like to run a tea tent, collect medicine plants, darn socks, go walkabout, deconstruct a dish, twitter, Make Do And Mend, create a festival from scratch and cycle from Land's End to John O' Groats. We may not be flying anymore, but we're going all the way!

(Text: Charlotte Du Cann Production: Mark Watson Poster: Andy Croft/Comms)

TRANSITION CIRCLES: Earlham North - 25 October

Fittingly for Transition Norwich's second birthday our meeting this month was titled 'Where do we go from here?'. The discussion was wide-ranging, but mainly focussed on how we can get more people interested in participating in the circles to keep them growing as they are now. We thought that just being more involved in the community generally would be a good plan, such as the stall we will be having at the Belvedere Community Centre's Energy Efficiency Day on 9 October. So that the idea could spread through word-of-mouth.

We also had an interesting discussion about personal actions versus local/community campaigns, with some suggesting that bigger campaigns affect more people while others believe that personal actions and leading by example were a more sustainable path.

We didn't definitively answer the question of the meeting, but are quite happy to just continue on the path we are on and see where it leads us. And we had some delicious food as usual to fuel the conversation. So next meeting we shall be discussing money, quite a contentious issue for many who seek change in our society. We shall be thinking about our attitudes to money, its role in the future and the impact our personal money has on the world.

The meeting will be at 6.30 on the 25th October at my house. Please contact me if you would like more details - the more the merrier. Kerry - kezereky_the_first@hotmail.com

Photos from original poster for TN Birthday Party 2009

TRANSITION CIRCLES - Hethersett - 25 October

TCH met on 16 September at Rhoda's. Initially, we discussed economy and preparedness for the worst case scenario. In order to move onto our topic for the night of Transport, Erik suggested we have one of our future meetings entirely on Economy. Based on a recommendation of Steve to read the Energy Bulletin, John added a links page to our google group.

Some of the things we talked about: Flying makes up only 2% of global carbon emissions, but that is because most people never fly. Flying can be a huge contributor to a personal carbon footprint, with a single return flight to New Zealand emitting about 10 tonnes per passenger, which is almost the current total yearly per capita footprint in the UK, while a 2 degrees warming target suggests this should come down to 1-2 tonnes per person by 2050, and even less by the end of the century.

The people in the room agreed that the main challenge of having a low transport impact (both from personal travel and from transporting the stuff we buy) is time. Going out of one's way to shop low impact often gets dropped in favour of the faster option, and the way online buying is set up has it's own environmental problems. One of the solutions we discussed is to pick up on what the Strangers have been trialling: to collectively buy dry goods wholesale and have them delivered.

By contrast, low carbon holidays were deemed easier to achieve: with a change in attitude, it's possible to see the slower lower carbon modes of travel (in particular trains) as part of the holiday with it's own attractions (views, sleeper trains, easier to make stopovers at interesting places on the way), although it can suffer from some of the same disadvantages as flying when there are delays. When booked well in advance, the train can be cheaper than flying (http://www.seat61.com)

Next meeting will be on Food. We will start at 19:30 with a bring and share meal. If you'd like to attend contact Erik at http://lgmacweb.env.uea.ac.uk/green_ocean/positions/Buitenhuis/feedback.html

Low Carbon Cookbook - 20 October

Last month we had our first One Planet Community Kitchen meeting at the Greenhouse in Bethel Street.

The Kitchen is a regional hub that aims to start up food and arts projects in different Transition initiatives. All the projects will share three aims: 1) to work creatively as a co-operative group 2) to bring ecological awareness to the food we eat 3) to map local food patterns.

In the next few months we’ll be writing on the blog about some of the aims of the Kitchen and showcasing our work. Ways of calculating an ecological footprint for food – looking at carbon emissions, as well as other greenhouse gases, in transport, production and processing. We’ll be considering waste, packaging, the use of water. Several people who came were from the four Transition circles and were Carbon Conversation facilitators; Erik ran the original One Planet group at UEA.

We’ll be focusing on the Transition Food Patterns of Norwich and its hinterlands in the way we began in our Transition Food Patterns Fortnight. Building up a list of producers, talking to people, visiting city allotments and food projects. We’ll be writing information boxes that show why engaging in local market-diversity (as opposed to supermarket monopoly) creates resilient community, what exactly organic certification means. And we’ll be cooking! Trying out recipes that are sustainable, intelligent, delicious, meaningful. Bring a dish to share dishes that everyone can eat.

In our first session Josiah Meldrum (Sustainable Bungay, Provenance, EAFL) talked about principles and the tenets of working as a co-op. And we kickstarted this creative project with our first food mapping exercise, Deconstruct the Dish.
For a full write up of our session check out This Low Carbon Life (Sept 22-25 : the Session. the Dish, the Ingredient. For further details and to join the group contact Charlotte Du Cann rootsshootsandseeeds@hotmail.co.uk

Carbon Conversations - 13 and 14 October

With the success of the Carbon Conversations earlier in the year we now have 10 facilitators trained in Norwich so we are able to offer our third round of courses this term. Carbon Conversations is an inspiring, practical 6-session course on low-carbon living. It was recently featured in the Guardian as one of the 20 best climate change solutions.

• based on the psychology of change
• emotionally engaging
• technically rigorous
• up to date, attractive handbook, games and materials

The course engages people both emotionally and practically, helping them overcome the barriers often associated with making large carbon reductions. Members explore the basic climate change problem, their responses to it, their ideas for a low-carbon future and the four key areas of the footprint – home energy, travel, food and other consumption. Most members make reductions of 1 tonne CO2 during the course and develop plans to halve their footprints over a longer period (Christine Way).

Courses will be starting on Tues 13 Octand Wed 14 Oct in the evenings in central Norwich. At County Hall on Tue 19 Oct, at UEA on Wed 20 (for students), in Unthank/Earlham Rd area Mon 25 Oct. Course Fee: £20 If you would like to join one of these courses please contact T. 01603 614460 or email training@transitionnorwich.org

Other courses will be starting throughout Norfolk so please get in touch if you wish to be kept informed of the programme

Community Supported Agriculture gets under way - 1 November

About 20 Transitioners met at the United Reformed Church on Monday September 13th to start making preparations for the CSA. The money is in place, the land is ready for us, and we've bought a tractor.

As Tully explained to the meeting, some aspects of the project are set out clearly in the funding application, but others are much more open for CSA members to determine.

Among the things that are clear are, for example, the plan to employ a full-time farm manager (shared betwen the CSA and the school farm) as well as more casual or part-time staff. Also the short-term role of East Anglia Food Link in helping to get the scheme established. EAFL's staff (William and Tully) are already working on getting the land subsoiled and mucked, drawing up the lease, buying the tractor, polytunnel and equipment and so on.

But other aspects are very much for the CSA's members to decide. At the meeting we agreed to set up working groups focusing on recruiting more members; arranging social events to build a sense of community and ownership in the CSA; finding the best arrangments for distributing the produce, for example through drop-off points around the city and beyond; and overseeing production to maximise environmental benefits, biodiversity and natural pest management. The meeting felt very strongly that the CSA needs to be Organic.

We have secured the services of The Guild (a Norwich-based consultancy specialising in social economy organisations) to help us to set up the new not-for-profit business (probably a co-op) which will run the CSA. Around 12 people have agreed to meet with The Guild to find out more about being on the Board of the new organisation, and to drive forward the process of setting it up.

The "Board" meeting is on October 5th and the "growing and environment" meeting on the 7th. The Marketing meeting on November 1st. If you're interested in joining any of these, please sign up to the Food Googlegroup and you'll get all the up-to-date information.

The business plan and budget that were used for the funding bid have been posted on the googlegroup too. If you're interested in reading in detail what's been promised to the funder, do have a look. (Tully Wakeman/Food and Farming)

RELATED EVENT: Energy Efficiency Day - 9 October

On Saturday 9th October The Belvedere Centre on Belvoir Street is holding an Energy Efficiency Day from 11am - 4pm. Norwich Radio, the Green Party and the City Council Advice Team will be present as well as The Energy Saving Trust with a Green Driving Simulator. There will be Circus Training, Short Matt Bowls and Street Dancing along with other activities. Kerry has offered to coordinate a stall on the day and your support in both running the stall and attending the event would be very welcome. This is the local community centre for those of us living in the Dereham / Earlham Road area so this event is a good opportunity for us to get involved with the community. Please get in touch with Kerry if you can help or have some ideas: kezereky_the_first@hotmail.com

RELATED EVENT: Be The Change Symposium - 7 November

Have you ever wondered how we can create an environmentally sustainable, socially just and spiritually fulfilling human presence on Earth?

Through dynamic group interactions, leading edge information, and inspiring multimedia Be The Change examines this question. Designed with the collaboration of some of the finest scientific, indigenous and activist minds in the world, the Symposium explores the current state of environmental, social and personal well-being from a new perspective and connects participants with a powerful global movement to reclaim our future.

The Symposium is being offered in Norwich by Bernadette Ryder who was one of the first Europeans to train directly with The Pachamama Alliance to deliver the Symposium, and then bring it to the UK under the auspices of ‘Be The Change’. She is now one of the UK’s lead trainers and integrates the material with other work including 5 Rhythms® and ‘The Work That Reconnects’

If you are ready to be disturbed, inspired and moved to action join us at Inner Space on Sunday 7^th November 11.00 – 5.30. www.innerspacenorwich.co.uk 01603 614460