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| A skill and resource to share |
The next Transition Circle West meeting will be held at 7pm and Anne's house on Tuesday February 21st. Following on from the focus of January's meeting on skills-sharing, where we all brought various examples of our handy work along to discuss, the meeting will cover resource-sharing. After sharing our usual vegetarian meal together we will be reviewing the circle's resource-sharing library and deciding rules of usage, the best form for it, and its possible benefits for us and for transition.
Transition Circle West starting off the New Year with skills sharing.
Transition Circle West does economics! We will be meeting at Jo's house to share a meal on Thursday December 1st to discuss the current global and national financial situation and what our response is/or should be as transitioners. Join us for what should be a very lively discussion!
After a small break over the summer, the Norwich West Transition Circle reconvened with fresh energy and enthusiasm at Helen's house last Wednesday to discuss our plans and objectives for the coming months. We discussed possible ideas for future meetings, including: a discussion about behaviour change; guerilla or indoor gardening; a discussion or activity around sustainable food; working together to think about answers to common questions about climate change; and many more! We also considered holding more regular general meetings where we might share a meal together or go to the pub to discuss Transition and other issues of interest, helping to create more connections within the group.
Hethersett Transition met in Steve's garden to discuss various ways to start growing this afternoon. John Heaser, Erik Buitenhuis, and myself walked around the south facing plot with some enthusiasm, and came up with a variety of approaches to cultivating the turf. It was good to meet up and briefly highlight local issues, including landlords and cess pits!! There's a seasonal hush over the garden that a nice bit of mulching will further, putting the garden to bed for winter. It's still unusually mild with time for planting rooted perennials. bulbs, shrubs.
Since the last update, members of Transition Circle West have been meeting twice a month with our usual bring and share vegetarian meal to do a variety of activities, including: textiles skills-sharing; discussing issues from ethical holidays to socio-cultural evolution; sharing herbal remedies; and going on a foraging trip! Most recently we met to discuss the changing role of shops and shopping in the future, and some of us also joined in at the open day for Norwich FarmShare at Postwick. We are currently in the process of creating a resource-sharing library for the group. Our next group meeting will be on Bike Maintenance. Do come and tune up!
Our first meeting in April was a foraging meeting. We met in the UEA square and then went for a lovely sunny wander round the lake, grazing on the vegetation as we went! We collected quite an impressive variety of different plants and all of us learnt lots of new things. We then took all of our goodies back to my house and made a gourmet lunch of super salad, chickweed omelette and braised hogweed shoots, yum yum! We decided that we should have another session later on in the year when there are different things available.
Circle West is getting politically educated!.... thanks to a great presentation by Helene, who has been working in the field of making the U.K. Parliament more accessible. We had our usual bring and share delicious food - and for me this was 2 evenings in a row of bring and share, as we had the Farmshare Board meeting the day before ( I'm now a bundle of health and wellbeing!).
We have had two very dynamic and interesting meetings in March. The first was an exploration of herbal medicine, we discussed experiences, shared tips and, as ever, ate good food. Did you know that lettuce is soporific? That is why Peter Rabbit fell asleep!
Our new format of two meetings a month seems to be working well. We had a lovely meeting of textiles work, getting on with projects we had and sharing tips and ideas. Our second meeting was a lively discussion of low carbon holidays, and what a long list of ideas we came up with! From Couch surfing to retreats, Cycle touring to RSPB residential volunteering there is a massive array of possible low carbon holidays in the UK. All of our ideas will be put into the resources section of the Transition Norwich website for others to peruse. We also discussed the ethics of international travel - flying, freight ships, voluntourism and slow travel - its a complicated moral maze, but low carbon options often end up being more memorable in the end. 
The Transition Earlham circles are having a bit of a makeover for the New Year! We decided that we should recombine the Earlham North and South circles, not least because it is sad to divide a friendly community in two unnecessarily. To avoid the problems of too many people we are instead going to have two meetings a month and people will have to RSVP to meetings so that we know we can fit everyone in and hosts have a bit more forewarning of numbers! We have also set up a google group (noo not another one!) to make communication easier.
Carbon Conversations Tuesday February 1st marks the start of the next inspiring and practical course on carbon reduction - Carbon Conversations - due to take place at County Hall, Norwich. Eight green and keen County Council staff members have signed themselves up to the sessions which will be facilitated by Esme Holtom and Elena Judd who did the course themselves and were trained to facilitate by Cambridge Carbon Footprint.
Transition Circle UEA Having just completed our final session on Carbon Conversations at UEA we decided that we didn't want to go cold turkey. So we are starting a Transition Circle UEA with our first meeting next month looking at low carbon Transport and Travel.
The vast list of foods available from Rainbow Wholefoods has been studied in intimate detail as we try to get an order together that will enable us to buy in bulk to save packaging and hopefully a bit of cash. This has turned out to be quite complicated because whilst some items are available in bulk containers others are multipacks that won't cut down on packaging. We have got a food order together and hopefully we can expand to include cleaning products. Anyone near to Hethersett that would like to join in with this is welcome.
Transition Circle West is open to anyone living in the west of Norwich who is interested in living a low carbon life. The group meets twice monthly in each others houses. Meetings always involve a bring and share meal and then go onto the theme for the night, which can be anything from low carbon holidays to energy in the home, from growing your own to natural remedies. This year we also plan to have some practical meetings on topics such as foraging and bicycle maintenance. Part of what the group does is share stories and experiences of how each of us lives, what is working, what is difficult, real lives making real changes. It is lovely to share food and stories with others who are on the same path as you.
Transition Circle Hethersett took part in an event organized by the Hethersett Environmental Action Team (HEAT) on Saturday, along with the Energy Saving Trust. Heavy snow meant that not many people were about but the cold weather focussed people’s minds on the rising cost of energy and the need to conserve it! HEAT has been active in Hetheresett for many years and promotes a wide range of topics - including wildlife conservation, litter picking, and energy efficiency.
This month we had a wide ranging discussion on money all the way from the global economy down to our individual savings. We inevitably discussed the spending review, but we also discussed alternatives to money and how sharing things is a great way to save money and the planet. We also thought that there should be another level of economy between the government and the household so that you could make decisions at something like a street level.
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