Good food March - 16 September

A Europe-wide protest and awareness-raising organisation, the march is campaigning to get changes to EU law on farming to support small-scale farms; encourage greener and more sustainable farming; get fair prices for farmers and consumers; improve animal welfare and much more. Find out more on their website.

The March is coming to Norwich on 16th of September, visiting by bicycle several food projects around Norwich before setting out to Norwich FarmShare for a picnic. You’re welcome to join the march at any point, from cycling the whole route to just enjoying the picnic at the farm.

Join the cycle route or join by car or on foot at any point:

Start: 12pm – 12.30 Meet at Norwich Train Station
12.30 – 13.15 Cycle to John Innes Centre
13.15 – 13.45 John Innes Centre, Colney Lane
13.45 – 14.00 Cycle Bluebell South Allotments
14.00 – 14.45 Grow-your-own Project (to be confirmed)
14.45 – 15.15 Cycle to Chapelfield Shopping Centre, Norwich
15.15 – 16.00 Chapelfield Shopping Centre, Norwich centre
16.00 – 16.45 Cycle to Norwich Farmshare, Near Postwick Park & Ride
16.45 – 18.00 Good Food Picnic at Norwich Farmshare

Refreshments will be available at Bluebell Allotments & John Innes and bring a picnic for the meet at Norwich Farmshare: the organisers ask that you bring homemade, wholesome, ‘non-supermarket’ salads, bread, hot water, tea, coffee & own plates & cutlery.

For more information and any questions contact Britta on 07545 765 274, For more information on Good Food March 2012 see www.goodfoodmarch.eu

The Rebirth Of A Community Garden - 2 September

When we celebrated the opening of Grapes Hill Community Garden just over a year ago, several volunteers from the Belvedere Community Centre came along to the Grand Opening and asked whether we could help them with their own garden.

This was the start of a year's work by volunteers to revamp the Belvedere Centre's garden, which was originally laid out about twenty five years ago, but had become overgrown and neglected.

Volunteer work parties removed brambles and perennial weeds and Norwich City Council gave us permission to prune and thin the trees, to allow extra light to reach the garden. We built a new compost heap and leafmould bin and then in early April we planted up a sunny, herbaceous border and a shade border. During the spring and summer we worked on the centre of the garden and have laid new slate paths, to allow people to walk between the trees.

At last the preparation work is nearly done and we will celebrate the rebirth of the garden with a Garden Open Day on Sunday 2nd September 2012 (12 noon - 4pm). There will be a barbecue, tea and cakes, live music and craft and garden information stalls. Admission is free.

We are setting up a Belvedere Centre Gardening Group to look after the garden, which will meet for the first time on Friday 21st September 2012 (10am - 12 noon).

The Belvedere Community Centre, Belvoir Street, Norwich, NR2 3AZ. Registered Charity No 295729.For further details phone 01603 616894 or e-mail belvederecentre@yahoo.co.uk.

Jeremy Bartlett.

Photo: The sunny herbaceous border in The Belvedere Centre garden, by Jeremy Bartlett.

Grapes Hill Community Garden: Poetry In The Garden - 12 August

During this last week we've been enjoying some summer sunshine at Grapes Hill Community Garden, which is a mass of colour at the moment.

We celebrated our First Birthday Party on Sunday 8th July and we're now looking forward to our next event - Poetry In The Garden on Sunday 12th August, from 2pm to 6pm. The afternoon will feature Norwich Poetry Group and wildlife poet Richard Bonfield, with music by Lucy & Dee, an open microphone slot, games, competition and quiz. Bring your own refreshments and something to sit on. Read your own poem or bring a favourite to read.

The Grapes Hill Community Garden Group has recently received Group Award in the Norfolk Biodiversity Partnership Awards, in recognition of our "visionary project to create a community garden from a tarmac area in the heart of Norwich". We've also been given a Green Flag Award for being a high quality public space.

We continue to have garden tasks on Sunday afternoons (2pm - 4pm). Our next dates are 5th & 19th August and 9th & 23rd September 2012. The garden is open every day from 9am to 6pm in the summer (9am to 4.30pm or dusk from the end of October).

For more information about the garden see our website and Facebook page.

Jeremy Bartlett.

Photo by Jeremy Bartlett

Low Carbon Cookbook at the Bungay Beehive Day - 15 July

At the recent Bee Cause meeting in Norwich, organised by Friends of the Earth, Bob Flowerdew declared: if you want to help bees eat organic food, don't give your money to the pharmaceutical companies. It's perhaps the most useful step you can take to help both honeybees and wild bees in their present decline. Protecting wild places and growing nectar and pollen plants your garden are great helps, but the main damage caused to pollinator populations is the high use of pesticides in commercial food production.

At the Low Carbon Cookbook we're organic to the max: recognising that it's not just eating for our own health and well-being that is important, but that by "voting with our forks" and eating plants grown without systemic insecticides we're also backing the millions of creatures who suffer colony and habitat loss as a result of industrial farming. 90% of our crop species depend on pollination and we face a tasteless and depressing food future, if the bees and other insects disappear.

At our next meeting we are converging for a picnic after the (Sustainable) Bungay Beehive Day, organised by the Transition group, Bungay Community Bees. We will be discussing the crucial relationship between bees and our food, and everyone is welcome to join us. Just bring a picnic dish and/or drink with you and a rug to sit on.

This is BCB's second annual day of talks, walks and workshops celebrating the honeybee, and this year will feature the film, Queen of the Sun, and a talk by Heidi Hermann from the Natural Beekeeping Trust. At 12.15 LCC's Mark Watson will be leading a Bee and Flower walk around Bungay's diverse green spaces and at 2pm Charlotte Du Cann will be discussing wild flowers and their relationship with bees, with excerpts from her new book 52 Flowers That Shook My World – A Radical Return to Earth. Full details of the day here.

Meet at the entrance to the Festival marquee, Castle Meadow, Bungay on 15 July at 5pm. For further info contact Charlotte Du Cann theseakaleproject@hotmail.co.uk

Images from BCB trip to High Ash Farm, Caister St Edmund, farmed by Chris Skinner for the benefit of wild plants and creatures (and us).

On the move with Norwich FarmShare - workday 28 July

FarmShare has set up a new Food Hub at Bicycle Links in the St.Mary's Works complex. Bicycle Links gives unemployed and disadvantaged people skills and work shop experience, refurbishes unwanted bikes and stops them going into the waste stream and encourages cycling as a sustainable means of transport.

We think it’s a great location and we’re delighted to be sharing a space with a social enterprise whose social and environmental aims match so well with ours. If you’re not a member of FarmShare but would like to come and meet us, see how the Harvest Share Day works and see Bicycle Links you’d be more than welcome any Thursday afternoon (after 4pm); the full address is Bicycle Links, 18 St. Mary's Works, Duke Street, NR3 1QA.

Over at the farm, which is entering the most abundant half of the year, volunteers from the Big Norwich Bat Project have been recording bats. They were delighted to identify 6 species including soprano pipistrelle, noctule and brown long eared bats.

FarmShare welcomes visitors and the Tierney, Christophe and the team love to see people up at the farm. There are regular opportunities to come and get involved or just have a walk round the land. The next workday will be Saturday July 28th but you can come and help with the harvest any Thursday morning or come down at other times by arrangement - email Tierney here:
grower@norwichfarmshare.co.uk.

Grapes Hill Community Garden Update - 29 July

Grapes Hill Community Garden is a mass of lush vegetation and colourful flowers as the wet spring continues.

Highlights of the garden in early June are the magnificent grass Stipa gigantea and patches of Sweet Rocket (Hesperis matronalis), lupins, various types of hardy Geranium and Salvia 'Mainacht'. There are the contrasting foliage shapes and colours of Hostas, golden Lemon Balm, Heucheras, Sage, Curry Plant (Helichrysum italicum), Marjoram and Mints.

As summer begins there will be yet more colour and the garden should be looking good for our First Birthday Party on Sunday 8th July, the day of the Norwich Lanes Fair. There will be food, a licensed bar, music and plant sales, from 3pm until 9pm.

The flowers and the wildflower meadow are doing their job of attracting insect life into the garden. We've just been told that the garden has won an award from Norfolk Biodiversity Partnership. We don't have more details yet, but it is good to know that the Grapes Hill Community Garden Group's work to create a haven for people and wildlife near Norwich city centre has been recognised.

Our raised bed tenants are beginning to harvest their vegetables, though it has not been the easiest of growing seasons so far, with lots of cold weather.

We continue to have garden tasks on Sunday afternoons (2pm - 4pm). Our dates for the summer are: 15th & 29th July and 5th & 19th August 2012.

For more information about the garden see our website and Facebook page.

Jeremy Bartlett.

Photos by Jeremy Bartlett

New Transition newspaper launched

This month the Transition Free Press, a new national newspaper, launched its preview edition. It's a blueprint of how the paper will look, and the kinds of subjects we aim to cover every quarter - news with comment and context, features and reviews.

As well as viewing it online, there will be printed copies that will be available at various events, including the Transition Network Conference in September 2012. Plus you can order copies by post (see bottom of page).

"Where are we going?" asks the editorial. "We’re heading for the future. We are not afraid to share our views, ask awkward questions, laugh or explore paths other papers don’t go down in order to get there. What we want is to capture the real-life experiences of people who are discussing and doing Transition, learning to share skills and resources, starting up social enterprises, thinking hard about alternative ways of organising the way we do energy and economics.

We’re looking at the small details in the big picture. We’re optimistic in the face of tough times. But we are also real. We’re real about the awesome challenges of peak oil and climate change and the economic collapse. We’re real about the hard work the projects featured in these pages take (including this paper!) We want to reflect that feet-on-the-ground reality, mixed with the cheerfulness that comes when you’re working with your fellows for a common purpose.

Most of all we want to connect the dots. Our old-style, fossil-fuelled culture works by separating out all the important subjects, by keeping everyone separated and alone. We want to connect people in Transition, connect campaigners and thinkers and people who never heard of energy descent or alternative currency, open up a dialogue, write another story."

To make future editions happen, we need your support too - in particular we hope you like it enough to want to have copies to give out in your community. Please fill in this short survey to give us an idea of your interest in distributing copies: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/GZCKV97

Please get in touch if you would like to contribute or advertise or get involved in any way with future editions.

For editorial contact Charlotte Du Cann charlotteducann@transitionnetwork.org
For distribution contact Mike Grenville mgrenville@gmail.com

Order print copies with Paypal. Click here: 4 copies or 8 copies
Please contact Mike for prices for more copies.

Image for front story on alternative currency -Brixton pounds in action by Jonathan Goldberg; Climate impacts day in Texas from 350.org

Norfolk Incinerator Song

Video of the King's Lynn/Downham Market incinerator protest at County Hall last Friday, shot by William Alderson. Song by Nico and the Downham Market Underground (John Preston - Downham and Villages in Transition)

Norfolk Incinerator protest - 29 June

Norfolk County Council is threatening West Norfolk with a mass burn incinerator. Like nuclear waste, it is perfectly safe. It is to be sited 2 miles from King’s Lynn, near farming land and near the Wash, with its shellfish beds. Nobody in West Norfolk wants this – 90% of 65,000 polled said NO INCINERATOR. The campaign against it are King’s Lynn Without Incinerator (KLWIN) and the Farmers’ Campaign. In 2010 there was a 400 strong demonstration outside the Town Hall (from a population of 30,000). When BBC Question Time visited Lynn, the unofficial mention of the incinerator stopped the show!

West Norfolk musicians and poets, a number in DOWNHAM AND VILLAGES IN TRANSITION, got together and made a CD of excellent and pertinent songs and poems about the incinerator. They then launched a Living Room Tour, where they performed in people’s houses and sold the CD, thus raising over £300 for the KLWIN campaign.

On Friday 29^th June at 10.00 a.m. at County Hall, the Planning Committee will decide whether to build the incinerator despite the overwhelming public opposition. A lot of people are going to invade Norwich to protest and we will be singing our Incinerator Hymn! Come and join us!

For background read our "Dash for Ash" story by Andrew Boswell here

Norwich Community Bees Update

With the weather being so poor during April and May, we had to wait a while, but finally the bees started to swarm, and we were able to welcome a new colony into our Norwich Community Bees hive up at the Norwich Farmshare site at Postwick.

Dan, Bee, Suzanne and I recently headed over to the site to see how they were settling in and add some additional frames. It was the first time I'd suited up and got up close and personal with a hive, and I was quite nervous, but as soon as we opened the hive, you could just hear that the bees were getting on fine, and they were really calm while we checked them out and added the frames.

It was a fantastic experience, and I can't wait to go back and see how they're getting on. Watching them flying in and out of the hive and listening to the buzzing is so peaceful, you could quite imagine bringing a deckchair and a nice bottle of wine and making an afternoon of it!

If you're interested in knowing more about Norwich Community Bees, visit our website or drop us a line at norwichcommunitybees@hotmail.co.uk. We'd love to hear from you!

Pic: Jon (l) and Dan (r) adding frames to the hive.

Bee Cause campaign and public meeting - 27 June

Leading gardeners, campaigners and beekeepers speak out for action to tackle bee decline

As part of a campaign to protect the bee, Friends of the Earth is calling on David Cameron to produce a National Bee Action Plan to tackle bee decline. It says that the PM should suspend those pesticides linked with bee deaths, make changes to the way impacts on bee health are assessed and include targets for reducing use of pesticides.

A public meeting calling for action will take place on Wednesday, 27 June at the Assembly House, Theatre Street, Norwich at 7:30pm (doors open 6:30pm). Speakers include Bob Flowerdew, broadcaster, author and President of the Norfolk Organic Group, Paul Metcalf, Easton College and President of Norfolk Beekeepers Association and Linda Laxton, Founder, British Wildflower Plants Co., Norfolk. Chair for the evening is Chris Skinner, Norfolk farmer, BBC broadcaster and conservationist. Bee and honey related stalls will be on site. Admission is free.

Pesticide use rose by 6.5% between 2005 and 2010, increasing the risk to bee populations according to new research released last month by Friends of the Earth. Bees are critical to Britain's food supply and economy, but numbers of some species have fallen dramatically in recent years. Three British bumblebees have become extinct, solitary bees have declined and managed honeybee colonies fell by 53% between 1985 and 2005. Loss of lowland meadows and hedges and the destruction of local wildlife sites have removed vital sources of food and nesting sites for bees.

For more information: email: foenorwich@hotmail.com Tel: 07864 674014

Ancient and modern superfoods - Low Carbon Cookbook - 18 June

Last year the Low Carbon Cookbook contacted Jeremy Bartlett to see if we could curate one of the raised beds at the Grapes Hill Community Garden. Fortunately for the garden, all the beds were snapped up by people in the neighbourhood: from those wanting some more space to grow veg and herbs or keen to try their hand.

Our original plan was to have a showcase for Transition plants that people might not know about: experimental cereals and pulses, perennial plants that flourish in forest gardens, medicinal herbs and edible flowers. We wanted to have an area where everyone could find out about them (with signs), ask questions, touch and taste.

Unfortunately for us there was no space available, but Jeremy has let us have one or two places for some of those plants. We chose three that came under the heading Ancient and Modern Superfoods: two seeds bearers - amaranth and chia from Mexico and one berry bush, goji from the Orient (via Jo Homan's Edible Landscapes London).

We were inspired by our meeting at Jo Balfe's Nectar Cafe where Jo mixes local goji berries into her teas and muesli and chia into muesli and breads. Both the seeds are highly nutritious and make a sticky and fortifying porridge. The goji berries are an ace tonic. All these plants are easy to grow, lovely to look at and delicious to taste - and once planted free to eat too! Check them out.

Low Carbon Cookbook are meeting on 18 June at 7pm. For further info contact Charlotte Du Cann on theseakaleproject@hotmail.co.uk (01502 722419)

Martin Crawford's ace guidebook, How to Grow Perennial Vegetables (Green Books); amaranth seed heads from Erik's garden.

Second Visions for Change meeting - 26 June

The idea behind Visions for Change is that it should be a communication platform between the numerous groups which exist in Norwich and Norfolk that are working for a just and ecologically sustainable world. It should be a space for the exchange of visions for change in this direction. The purpose of this second meeting is to refine the ideas developed so far about the role of the proposed Visions for Change and how to create and maintain it.

Visions for Change will not duplicate the substantive work of active individuals or groups, but will rather promote cross-fertilisation.

Second Visions for Change meeting, Tuesday 26 June, 7-9pm, Playhouse meeting room (enter Playhouse, turn right). Here is the facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/events/345641262176405/

Poster for action taking place on 9-10 June to commemorate The Diggers and reclaim land in Windsor. The group will be walking from Syon Lane Community Allotment in West London. Details can be found on the website http://diggers2012.wordpress.com/ or by emailing diggers2012@yahoo.co.uk

little g film - Lives of Others - 15 June

'Lives of Others' (released 2006, Germany) takes place in 1984 in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). Its topic is the monitoring of the cultural scene of East Berlin by agents of the Stasi (the GDR's secret police). A successful playwriter is spied upon, mainly because the Minister of Culture has taken a liking to the playwriter's girlfriend, a famous actress. The Minister abuses his powers to try to rid himself of a romantic rival. In the course of the actions the actual spy develops a much higher moral standing than his superiors. The revealing of real human being, hidden in the spy who is just doing his duty, is the main theme of this movie. A film with a very positive and powerful message.

The movie starts at 6 pm and lasts just over 2 hours. We will take a short break to give everyone time to grab warm food from the fantastic Norwich FoodCycle group, who serve supper in the Friends Meeting House from 7pm and meet for exchange of thoughts. Donations appreciated. (Luzie Wingen)

http://www.foodcycle.org.uk/norwich.php
norwich@foodcycle.org.uk

Lives of Others will be showing at 6pm at the Friends Meeeting House, Lower Goat Lane. FoodCycle begins at 7pm.