Transition Town Lewes News – January 2008

In this issue

  • New winter programme
  • Welcome to our new project facilitator
  • Coming up next
  • News from the groups
  • Relaunch of Transition Town Lewes Food Group
  • Our first birthday celebration
  • Film being made of TTL
  • New initiatives calling for help
  • How else to get involved

Welcome back to the new year and a great new programme to keep us engaged and informed over the rest of the winter. It’s a contemplative programme, with lots of ways to help us dig deeper within and find our own power and determination to respond creatively to the turbulence we are witnessing in world systems. David Korten, author, and Joanna Macy, green ecologist, write that we are experiencing the Great Turning, the time when we move from Empire to Earth Community, turning crisis into opportunity and learning to live in creative partnership with each other and with Earth. http://www.yesmagazine.com/article.asp?ID=1463

New winter programme out now

Please look here, with diary in hand, at our forthcoming programme. There are some great things happening, including a series of inspiring events organised by the Heart and Soul group, and a must-hear talk by Richard Heinberg, world authority on energy supply and how it affects food.

Welcome to our new project facilitator

We’re delighted to announce the appointment of Kate Toller, TTL’s first employee, funded by the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation grant for the next 18 months. She’ll be working part time in the Transition Town Lewes office to plan and run the programme with groups, to continue to raise awareness and outreach in Lewes; to act as a liaison between the emerging groups and facilitate their ‘practical actions’ and to coordinate fundraising. One way we can support her is to offer to be part of the summer programme planning group. Please contact Kate at the TTL office on 01273 479779 or by email on kate.toller@googlemail.com.

Coming up next

National Storytelling Week and new beginnings for Imbolc (Celtic spring

Transition Tales
Wednesday 30 January, upstairs at the Elephant and Castle, adults and babes in arms only. 8-10pm (note new time), £3
An evening of traditional stories for adults about adversity and adventure with local storytellers Rachel Bennington, Liz Porter, Thomas Schorr-Kon and Dirk Campbell. Join us for this warm encounter, with candles and mulled drinks to help fuel the imagination.

Stories from the future
Saturday 2 February, Westgate Chapel, 92 High St, 11-1pm, free, 15 adult places only
How did we move away from cars? How did local food really take off? We invite writers, storytellers, poets and older people to join us in a fun, creative workshop. Susannah Waters, local writer, will support us in writing pieces from the future illustrating how we made an ingenious transition away from fossil fuels. These will be used to illustrate Lewes’s Energy Descent Action Plan, which is being drafted this year.

Seedy Saturday
Saturday 2 Feb, Southover Grange, 10-4pm. Co-sponsored by TTL, come along, swap seeds and learn about gardening, wild birds and local food.

Bombs at Teatime
Tuesday 12 February, All Saints Cinema, 8pm, £5 (£3 members) in association with Lewes Film Club. A feast of short public information films from wartime Britain

News from the groups

Each month the representatives of the groups meet up to share news and ideas. Some of the things we discussed at our last meeting are:

  • Lewes Local Food sticker is being developed as a pilot by the Food group, who would like a third person to join in on that project, ideally someone who might produce a flyer.
  • Ovesco (www.ovesco.co.uk) is up and running – an initiative of the Energy group –to distribute energy savings grants from Lewes District Council, especially targeted to low-income families. It’s looking at a number of ways to extend its work.
  • The Waste group is working with Furniture Now and East Sussex County Council and consultants to deliver a Rocket composter to Lewes to deal with commercial waste, especially food.
  • The Land group is looking at land available in the area and looking at ways to use existing land for the community rather than as a speculative commodity
  • The Transport group is mulling some solutions to cars and is working with Lewes District Council on their Air Quality Action Plan, which includes funding for community solutions, including car clubs, cycle solutions and educational activities.
  • The Schools group is working with Priory and Ringmer secondary schools with the aim of sharing good practice; they’re developing a ‘Schools website’ that belongs to the young people which will have all the TTL email addresses, fundraising opportunities for young people and other interested organisations.
  • The Business group is designing the second phase of the questionnaire, which will go out to local businesses, along with useful information about saving energy, next month
  • The Currency group has applied for funding from UnLtd to launch the Lewes currency in the next programme.
  • The Textiles group is on its second print run of the Love Lewes community bag, and will create a questionnaire to investigate the way people buy textiles, as the beginning of an awareness raising programme about how energy intensive most textiles are.
  • A new group has formed, called the Dream Life Group, to research, create and live in a sustainably designed and managed owner-occupied low energy housing development on Lewes’s urban fringe http://transitiontowns.org/Lewes/DreamLifeGroup
  • Another new group is forming to create a Forest Garden. Contact chloe.anthony@gmail.com if you want to get stuck in to designing and creating a Forest Garden in the coming weeks in Lewes.

The next Contacts group meeting will be on Wednesday 6th February - venue and time to be confirmed – everyone is welcome.

Relaunch of Transition Town Lewes Food Group

On Thursday 31 January, 7.30pm, upstairs at the Lewes Arms If you wish to be actively involved in the new food group with practical projects, please bring along your ideas to this relaunch, which is being supported by the TTL Business group.

Our first birthday celebration

Put this fabulous occasion in your diary: it’s going to be on the evening of Wednesday 7 May at the Town Hall. Polly Senter, who is forming a group to run this event, is calling for help with this. Polly Senter, 01273 480787, pollysenter@hotmail.com

Film being made of TTL

Some independent film-makers, Films for Change, http://www.storiesforchange.co.uk/SFC_Home_about.htm who have been recording our progress since the Unleashing, want to make a film about Lewes’s transition. The communications group is seeking help with the making of the additional footage needed: facilitating interviews, background material, etc – please get in touch

New initiatives calling for help

The office has identified a number of initiatives that could do with help starting or running them. Please come forward if any of these resonate with you.

  • Redesign of our web presence. Our wiki pages are great, but graphically clunky. We need someone to design a home page for TTL.
  • Film collection. We’d like to widen our film collection for a new lending initiative. Can someone spare a few hours to order and collate these films?
  • TTL needs to be making instructional videos documenting how we did various things. To be posted on YouTube as a resource for all the other TTs to come. Also a video for our first birthday celebration.

How else to get involved

  • Join a group (please see www.transitiontowns.org/Lewes for the list)
  • Volunteer to help with the programme and the TTL organisation
  • Donate money
  • Tell us what skill you wish to offer

Transition Towns have been an incredible phenomenon in 2007, increasingly recognised internationally as an effective grassroots approach to solutions. There are now 30 Transition Communities, with 300 ‘mulling’. Transition Town Lewes has been one of the towns at the forefront of this wave, with lots of enthusiasm and creativity coming from hundreds of people in Lewes. We are likely to amaze ourselves as to what we can do together in 2008. Some great projects are incubating, ready to come on stream, and this is the year that we will write the first draft of our Energy Descent Action Plan. Please join us, pass this on to get more people involved, and bring along your passion.

From the communications group of
Transition Town Lewes

Get involved: contact hello [at] TransitionTownLewes.org.uk