Category Archives: Uncategorized

Gear up for a two-wheeled revolu­tion – join a 2011 Otesha UK cycle tour!

Do some­thing worth­while with your sum­mer! Join an Otesha sum­mer cycle tour, deliver work­shops and per­form a play about envir­on­mental and social sus­tain­ab­il­ity in schools and youth clubs as you cycle across the UK. There are two tours to choose from: Northern Soul (10^th June – 23^rd July) and Tartan Trail (5^th August – 17^th September).

Volunteers will be tak­ing in the delights of the UK from their saddles, per­form­ing a play, mak­ing the world a bet­ter place, learn­ing new skills (bike main­ten­ance, theatre, con­sensus decision-making, sus­tain­able and group liv­ing… the list goes on), meet­ing new friends, and gen­er­ally mak­ing mischief.

If you’re 18 to 28 and pas­sion­ate about cre­at­ing a sus­tain­able future, then why not ride with Otesha? Find out more at www.otesha.org.uk/cycletours. Places are first come, first served, so get your skates on!

If you have any ques­tions or would just like to have a chat about it, please call on 0207 377 2109 or email cycletours@otesha.org.uk.

Welcome to the March bul­letin for the SDE Network. This month sees our Annual Conference tak­ing place on 31^st March, in Edinburgh, so hope as many of you can make it along to meet up, talk, share and learn.

Cycling and green trans­port seems to be a pop­u­lar topic at the moment and there is plenty info in this months bul­letin about it  –  from national con­fer­ences and local meet­ings, to resources and fund­ing. So get on your bike!!

Regards

Norah Barnes

email: bulletin@sdenetwork.org

For all other enquir­ies contact:

Abi Cornwall, SDE Network coordin­ator, tel. 07506 189 600

email: coordinator@sdenetwork.org and web­site: www.sdenetwork.org

1. Fairtrade Fortnight, Show Off Your Label, 28^th Feb – 14^th March

This year, Fairtrade is ask­ing you to get loud and proud and show off your label. Show off your pas­sion, your favour­ite product, your pro­du­cer stor­ies. Most of all, we want to show off Fairtrade cot­ton and high­light the injustices that make Fairtrade a vital life­line for cot­ton farm­ers in West Africa and India. Let’s show off a dif­fer­ent way of doing trade and why we support it!

Posters, leaf­lets, Schools Action Guide, events are all on the web­site:http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/show_off_your_label/

2. Trellis Annual Conference, Perth Concert Hall, 15^th March

Trellis sup­ports and rep­res­ents over 180 thera­peutic garden­ing pro­jects across Scotland. This year’s con­fer­ence will be a show­case for the work of some of the inspir­ing and diverse garden­ing pro­jects in the Trellis net­work across Scotland and will offer del­eg­ates a choice of prac­tical work­shops on themes ran­ging from ‘Surviving Lean Times through Reinvention and Diversification’, to the value and chal­lenges of provid­ing Therapeutic Gardening in Secure Settings, a Fruit Tree Pruning Master Class and a chance to dis­cuss pre­lim­in­ary find­ings on the evid­ence for thera­peutic horticulture.

To book a place, please con­tact info@trellisscotland.org.uk or tel 01738 624348. Full details also avail­able atwww.trellisscotland.org.uk

3 Renewable Energy and Heat Fair, Nevis Centre, Fort William, Sat 19^th March

As the cul­min­a­tion of the cur­rent phase of the 2-year RENEW Project, a ‘Renewable Energy and Heat Fair’ is being organ­ized in Fort William. Renewable com­pan­ies based in Lochaber, and other Scottish-based, accred­ited com­pan­ies have been invited to run info stalls.

For those who want to know more about a spe­cific tech­no­logy there will also be 75-minute work­shops for each of the three tech­no­lo­gies sup­por­ted by the Feed-in-Tariff (solar PV, hydro and wind) and also for each of the three renew­able heat­ing tech­no­lo­gies (solar thermal, bio­mass and heat pumps).

Robert & Justine Dunn, RENEW Household Project Officers, tel: 01967 402453, email: renew@lochaber-environmental-group.org.uk, web­site: www.lochaber-environmental-group.org.uk

4. Spokes Spring Public Meeting, Augustine United Church, Edinburgh, Wed 23^rd March

The meet­ing will be a hust­ings for the May 5^th Holyrood elec­tions – with an excit­ing line-up of speak­ers, and a new format to enable max­imum test­ing of and engage­ment with each can­did­ate!! Candidates for the Parliament from the 5 main parties will each speak for 5 minutes about cyc­ling in the con­text of their wider trans­port policies.  They will then spend 10 minutes each in sub­groups of the audi­ence, so that each can­did­ate gets a real grilling – by you!!

Time… 7.30pm; open 6.45 for cof­fee, stall, exhib­i­tion and chat.

For more info email: symondsmark@hotmail.com or go to Spokes website:

http://www.spokes.org.uk/wordpress/2011/02/holyrood-hustings-23-march/

5. World of Work Glow Meeting – Renewable Energy Sector, 2 –3pm, 23^rd March

The renew­able energy sec­tor is set to become one of the fast­est grow­ing sec­tors in Scotland, offer­ing many excit­ing career oppor­tun­it­ies for young people. Join this inter­act­ive Glow meet to find out more. Participants will have the oppor­tun­ity to take part in chal­lenges, ask ques­tions and learn about the career paths taken by three indi­vidu­als. This meet is broadly aimed at learners in sec­ond­ary schools but may be of interest to primary schools too.

Join this Glow meet on the 23^rd March 2011 in the World of Work Wednesday Glow meet room athttp://bit.ly/glowWOWW.

Please dir­ect tech­nical quer­ies regard­ing Glow to Jennifer McDougall on emailj.mcdougall@LTScotland.org.uk. All other quer­ies should be dir­ec­ted to Ian Menzies, Development Officer (Developing Global Citizens) on email: i.menzies@LTScotland.org.uk or Tel: 0141 282 5160.

6. SDE Network Conference, Godfrey Thomson Hall, Universty of Edinburgh, 31^st March

The SDE Network’s annual con­fer­ence is an oppor­tun­ity for the SDE com­munity to meet, talk, share and learn.  This year’s Keynote Speaker will by Prof Tim Kasser, author of Common Cause and The High Price of Materialism.  There will also be a var­ied pro­gramme of work­shops where del­eg­ates can share know­ledge, develop skills and learn prac­tical activities.

Cost – £50 for non-members or £20 for SDE Network Members. Places at this event are limited.

To book your place please con­tact Abi Cornwall: coordinator@sdenetwork.org, tel: 07506 189 600

7. Growing Communities in Scotland, Edinburgh Regional Meeting, 5^th April

This is a great oppor­tun­ity to meet other people involved with com­munity and thera­peutic farms, gar­dens and grow­ing pro­jects in the Edinburgh area. On this day there will be an look at the work of the Grassmarket Community Project, a work­shop on top tips for grant fund­ing suc­cess, and a visit to the Royal Edinburgh Hospital Community Garden.

For more inform­a­tion email: naomi@farmgarden.org.uk or tel: 0131 623 7058.

Hi, we just wanted to let you know what happened at PEDAL’s recent Local Food Links event, and our plans for the next event — where we hope lots of local people will come along to start work­ing together for locally-produced food grown and sold here in Portobello.

On Tuesday 23^rd November in the Community Centre, Heather and Pete of Whitmuir Organics hos­ted a dis­cus­sion on local food in Portobello.  A group of 16 local people got together to cre­ate a vis­ion of a fant­astic food future for Portobello … locally-produced and organic … then work out how we might get there.

Have a look at the map we cre­ated, and the dia­gram sum­mar­ising the cur­rent PEDAL Food groups and pro­jects, which is on the Food page of this website.

We are hold­ing a fol­low up event on Tuesday 25^th January from 7-9pm. We want to bring together as many people as pos­sible who have been involved in PEDAL’s food pro­jects — whether that’s the orch­ard, mar­ket, food grow­ing courses or whatever — and people who are inter­ested in local food but haven’t yet man­aged to get involved.  Folk will be able to choose the topic they’re most keen on and work with oth­ers to plan what can be done over the next year. We hope to see you there!

Details of the venue will be pos­ted on the web­site and emailed to all those who expressed an interest.

PEDAL are look­ing at vari­ous ways in which a strong local food sys­tem in Portobello might be developed. We are hop­ing to find out what res­id­ents of Portobello feel about buy­ing loc­ally pro­duced food.

By loc­ally pro­duced food, we mean food that has been grown, reared, caught, baked or oth­er­wise made in Scotland (prefer­ably the south-east of Scotland). The pro­duce cur­rently sold in local shops may or may not have been pro­duced locally.

In par­tic­u­lar we would like to know what makes it dif­fi­cult for people to shop this way and how it could be made easier.

This sur­vey will only take a couple of minutes but will be very use­ful when decid­ing how to take this work for­ward. It would be great if you could take the time to com­plete it as everyone’s opin­ion counts. Please also for­ward it to any Portobello res­id­ents that you know.

To com­plete the sur­vey please click on this link Survey

Best Wishes and thanks in anticipation,

Emma Dempsey (on behalf of PEDAL)

We had an excel­lent turn out for PEDAL’s AGM on 25^th March. Kitchen Canny gave a great out­line of their work, the Chair (Justin) and Treasurer (Stephen) reviewed the year, Diana told the story of the Orchard using Jane’s and Mary Jane’s excel­lent slides, and our new Project Manager — Tom Black — out­lined an excit­ing year ahead as he, Charlotte (Energy pro­ject worker) and Peter and Polly (Food pro­ject work­ers) embark on an ambi­tious work pro­gramme to engage the com­munity in real car­bon reduc­tion and com­munity resi­li­ence build­ing measures:

-       from an ima­gin­at­ive com­munity orch­ard that spreads from the Donkey Field site at Brunstane through people’s gar­dens and pub­lic spaces to re-skilling and garden sharing;

-       from a novel approach to tene­ment insu­la­tion (let us know if you’d like to involve your tene­ment in this) to test­ing whether we can pro­duce com­munity owned elec­tri­city and funds for Portobello through wind power.

A great 12-minute clip from the film ‘In Transition’ was shown, out­lining how the Transition model helps com­munit­ies pos­it­ively tackle cli­mate change and peak oil through rebuild­ing com­munity resi­li­ence.  It took a few attempts before we could get the film to run with sound, at the right speed, and without stop­ping – a good meta­phor for com­munity action: it takes patience, per­sist­ence, going back over the same ground, and finally suc­ceed­ing. After the film, we shared a meal — the whole event had been mar­velously organ­ised by Mary Jane and Charlotte, and it was great to see so many new faces — some­thing which augers very well for the year ahead.

We wish our new pro­ject work­ers all the best of luck with their efforts over the com­ing year, and want to restate OUT LOUD the fact that this is a shared com­munity endeav­our which relies entirely on vol­un­tary effort for it’s suc­cess and future.

If you have an idea or pro­ject you want to pro­pose and help pur­sue, or if you want to offer time and help (how­ever little or great) with exist­ing pro­jects, then please get in touch, get involved, and help us con­tinue work­ing to get Portobello on the road to com­munity resi­li­ence, a road that the whole world is going to be pur­su­ing, and the sooner com­munit­ies start the bet­ter placed they will be to bene­fit and to weather the eco­nomic and envir­on­mental storms.

PEDAL -> Portobello Transition Town has recruited 4 work­ers to run a new pro­ject aim­ing to reduce the col­lect­ive car­bon foot­print of Portobello and to develop local resources to meet the needs of our community.

Project Manager:
We have employed an exper­i­enced man­ager to man­age our pro­jects and fin­ances, fund raise, com­mu­nic­ate our vis­ion, and develop our Transition response to Climate Change and Peak Oil.

Two Food Workers:
One Energy Worker:
We have employed 3 devel­op­ment work­ers: two spe­cial­ising in food and one in energy. In devel­op­ing their par­tic­u­lar area of work, they will be organ­ising a range of events, pro­du­cing pub­li­city mater­i­als and — we hope — work­ing with you to gal­van­ise a high level of com­munity involve­ment, meet­ing the chal­lenges of Climate Change and Peak Oil through facil­it­at­ing mean­ing­ful social change.

These posts cur­rently run until the end of March 2011.

PEDAL has a sup­ply of Powerdown Switches and Energy effi­cient 15w Bayonet light bulbs. Any Portobello res­id­ent can apply for them. Both will help save you money and help stop cli­mate chaos.

The Powerdown Switches allow you to switch off all your com­puter peri­pher­als (printer, scan­ner etc) with one switch.

Energy effi­cient light bulbs can save you over £10 a year for every light you change. They come on instantly and are now flicker free.

If you’d like either of these email admin (at) pedal-porty.org.uk and we can arrange for you to get them.

Richard Heinberg sums up what happened in Copenhagen and bril­liantly por­trays the lar­ger con­text and why local action is the best way forward.