We’re going full steam ahead for our 2nd birthday on Saturday 3rd March. The Uxbridge Gazzette and Heathrow Villager have both published articles about it in the newspaper so we’re expecting it to be a cracker. Hopefully see you there! Thanks Cadi for the lovely poster.
The London-based ‘Community Food Growers Network’ has been organising seasonal gatherings for information and skill-sharing, network business discussion, and to take part in practical tasks and visits to different community growing project sites.
If you want to get more involved in the network come along to the next gathering on Sunday the 26th Feb or check out the website for future dates, details of the network’s manifesto, and how groups can become members.
connect // cooperate // support // defend // celebrate
When: Sunday 26th February 2012
Time: Meeting 1-5.30pm (Practical work starting at 11am)
Where: Grow Heathrow, Vineries Close, Sipson, West Drayton, UB7 0JG
Directions: From Central London: Travel to West Drayton in TfL zone 6 in 20 minutes by train from Paddington. From West Drayton either take the 222 bus towards Hounslow and get off in Sipson Village or follow the cycle path towards Sipson. Our site is a 1 minute walk from the King William Pub which is in the middle of town.
Contact: info@transitionheathrow.com, 07890751568
Timetable
11-12.30: Practical tasks on the Grow Heathrow site: Mulching, preparing compost and seeding area
12.30-1.30: Lunch
1.30-4.30: Tour of Grow Heathrow & Meeting (see draft agenda below)
4.45-5.30: Seed swap
Draft Agenda: e-mail additional points to info@transitionheathrow.com or bring to the Gathering
1. Project Updates
2. Via Campesina
3. International Day of Peasant Struggles 17 April 2012
4. CFGN Annual Gathering - at the last gathering we resolved to make the quarterly meetings smaller ones for members only, and put our organising energy instead into organising an exciting annual gathering, to which we encourage loads of other CFPs to come to. Lets get a date, venue, and a bit of a plan for how the day will be run and publicised.
5. GM Crops in Hertfordshire – the GM trial in Herts is a focus for the GM campaign. How can London growers best support this campaign and organise against the trials? Would be good to have someone who went to the recent GM gathering report back on the latest
6. Allotment in Acton under threat
7. Stories of Food Sovereignty evening with Reclaim the Fields & PEDAL
It’s a busy week at Grow Heathrow as we prepare the site for the visit of three separate groups who are coming to use the space for meetings and gatherings over the weekend.
People & Planet will be holding a two day South East Regional Gathering on site but will be fighting for space with The Community Food Growers Network on the Sunday and also the Tin Village crew who will be planning for festivals coming up this Summer. Luckily we have managed to book the church hall over the road at the last minute to accommodate everyone.
Although it gives us lots of work to do and a dilemma as to where everyone might go – we are delighted to be hosting such a wide variety of different groups who are also part of the movement for social justice. This was one of our original key aims right from the beginning – for Grow Heathrow to be a host for other activist groups to share knowledge. Cup of tea anyone?
For the Grow Heathrow Artists Residency: Resistance is Beautiful, 15 artists from all over; Bristol, Newcastle, Germany and more, gathered at Grow Heathrow on a Sunday, without really knowing what was in store for them in the week.
The project co-coordinators had created a loose structure. The beginning of the Residency was set up to introduce Grow Heathrow with its sustainable and community ethics and the history of Sipson, as nourishment and inspiration for the creative process. The week would culminate in some kind of ‘exhibition’ on the last day, which was to be planned by the residents. The rest of the week was open for the residents to make of it what they wanted.
Day one included tours of Grow Heathrow, looking at all the points of resistance, from the solar panels creating independent energy, to the many signs and placards opposing the third runway. Each resident then interpreted parts of the site that interested them, through their own creative means. On the Monday, a blank rota was also drawn up with chores such as cooking, washing up and going out to skip food. Throughout the week, everybody filled in their names to ensure the duties were equally distributed. At the end of the day, everybody was asked for feedback on how they felt it went, and the next day’s activities were discussed. As the light began to fade, the residents all settled in to a talk from Hedvig from the London Permaculture Network – more nourishment for the creative hands.
On the 2nd day the group was given a tour of Sipson and the surrounding area, showing the history of Sipson, and the detrimental effects the airport has had on the community. The residents were also joined by Steve, one of the many local residents who has adopted Grow Heathrow as a second home and who, with his wife and family are actively involved in protesting against the injustices being carried out by BAA. The rest of the day involved more creative interpretations, and ideas began to flow about the tragedy of Sipson, BAA and the hopes and strengths of the wider movement.
With our ‘introduction’ complete, everyone sat down to one of many delicious meals, made with ingredients largely ‘skipped’ or donated. Again, the group discussed opinions and experiences thus far, and what was wanted from the rest of the week.
By Thursday, the 4th day of the residency, the group had started to form plans of how the exhibition might evolve. Many ideas and concepts where discussed and suggested, from group forum theatre pieces to solo pieces. It was agreed by all that, of all of the worthy pieces of work we could muster between us, the site was not only a living breathing work of art, but also the site and its immediate surroundings represented enormous cultural relevance. It was our job as artists to present this in a way which embraced the significance, the beauty and the struggle of this powerfully charged square mile of land and the surrounding community. The form with which this were to take was a ‘trail’ or a ‘tour’ almost.
So Saturday came, the trail was set and a great mixture of friends and residents, new and old, were handed a map and sent off to explore the trail. The trail included paintings and signs at the gate, to art installations in the greenhouses, to creating a band playing entirely on recycled materials called the ‘Dumpstarz’ in the ‘Tat Store’ (the name given to the onsite recycling). A workshop was also organized, with talks and statements by residents and locals. These were held in the remaining derelict green houses to the ‘back’ of the site, which have been vacated since the early nineties, and have been nearly entirely ‘taken back’ by nature; trees and vines completely engulfing the vast amounts of domestic and industrial waste, and neglected market garden structures. We also went and did some excellent Guerilla gardening in the village, as part of the exhibition. Modifications were also made to a bridge, abstract installations, and ‘make your own pizzas’ in the Pizza oven made by residents. Oh and a map to the trail was lovingly penned by our one and only Mike!
It was a week of such condensed inspiration and action that it’s hard to fit everything in, but the magic of the residency has inspired Grow Heathrow residents, Sipson residents and residents from across the country and beyond. Thanks to everyone involved.
This blog was written by Dan, one of the artists who took part in the residency
Yes – that’s right, Grow Heathrow is two Years old and we want to celebrate our Birthday with you! So come along on Saturday 3rd March and help us eat our birthday tea, we will be painting a beautiful mural and want everyone to get involved, think colour by numbers. We’ll also be having some live music for your entertainment.
Please bring – friends and family, young and old, and of course your finest cake for the cake competition. We also have warm sleeping space so if you would like to stay over you’re welcome, but let us know for numbers. Last year was fun, this year will be even better.
What: Birthday Tea, Cake Competition, Mural Painting and Musical Entertainment
When: Saturday 3rd March, 1pm – 5pm
Where: Grow Heathrow, Vineries Close, Sipson, UB7 0JG. Directions HERE
Dress Code: Fancy
This week the infamous Great Barn in the village next door to us, Harmondsworth was saved! After years of controversy over what would happen with it, English Heritage have finally purchased it for £20000.
The building once dubbed “the cathedral of Middlesex” is Grade Ι listed and was being looked after by community group ‘The Friends of Harmondsworth Barn’ who have been working tirelessly to secure it and are extremely pleased to have it back. The Barn will now be available for use by local communties and plans are already in place to open it for free to the public on two Sundays each month from April. Barn dance anyone?
The artist residency which took place at Grow Heathrow last week was extremely successful. 15 artists came and lived with us for a week which culminated in an exhibition/tour on the Saturday. A proper blog is to follow soon but for now here is a few pictures. And a whole series of more photographs can be found HERE.
On Wednesday 18th January two members of Transition Heathrow made the 220 mile trip out west to Totnes; a small town in Devon that has the distinction of being the first ever town to become a Transition Town back in 2006. We had been invited to come and present the story of Transition Heathrow, Grow Heathrow, and the Heathrow Villages communities.
The talk gave us the opportunity to go back a few years and speak about the different factors that came together to create Transition Heathrow. We began at the Heathrow Climate Camp in 2007 around the same time that Plane Stupid came to prominence and then went on to talk more about the No Third Runway campaign and how activists ended up living in the Heathrow Villages. Then we told the story of Grow Heathrow and how the site has been transformed since it was occupied on the 1st March 2010.
The following day we got to see Totnes for ourselves. We were given a full tour of the town and got to hang out in the offices shared between Transition Town Totnes and the Transition Network, where we heard about what the Transition group members had been up to in Totnes. The main focus was on their successful Transition Streets project, which is something we hope to bring to the Heathrow Villages in the near future. This project has involved roughly 500 residents, who have come together in groups to discuss how they could save money by reducing their carbon emissions. The most obvious result of the project is the installation of solar PV panels on over 150 households and the town’s Civic Centre, but the biggest benefit as reported by residents who have taken part is how it has allowed them to get to know their neighbours better.
After lunch we caught a lift up to Landmatters, just outside Totnes, where we were given a tour round their site that drew comparisons with Grow Heathrow – although they are far more established and are based on a 40 acre site deep in rural Devon. Their grounding in a permaculture approach to living on their site had led them to build some very comfortable and homely benders, install a 2kW solar PV system, herd sheep and goats, harvest oak timbers from their wood, and cultivate productive vegetable beds. Even on a cold and windy January afternoon it was a delight and a privilege to be given an insight into their chosen lifestyle.
Later, we enjoyed walking around Totnes and remarking on the abundance of independent shops on the high street, the focus on local produce, and noticing the shop windows carrying stickers saying “We accept the Totnes pound”; an initiative co-ordinated by the Totnes group to increase the resilience of the local economy by encouraging the circulation of money between businesses and consumers within the community.
Thankyou to everyone for making us so welcome, especially to Chris Bird for acting as our host for the duration of our visit, and you should all come and visit us if you’re ever in London!
A group of community-minded gardeners have turned a former Athens airport into a blooming vegetable plot, showing how Greece’s eroded soil holds the keys to a revival in farming and a way to buck the jobless trend.
‘If we want to survive on this land we must first help to heal the earth,’ said Nicola Netién, agro-ecologist, teacher and co-creator of the NGO Permaculture Research Institute Hellas. He was talking to a group of some fifty people of all ages who had gathered for two days of workshops on self-sufficiency, how to self-organize, agro-ecology and composting. This small gathering was taking place on a beautifully sunny autumn day at the former Athens airport, Ellinikon.
When the airport moved to another location 10 years ago in preparation for Athens hosting the 2004 Olympic Games, there was the hope and the State’s promise that this now available land would become a park. Then the ‘crisis’ landed and rumors began spreading that the site had been sold to an international developer who would pour yet more concrete on the chaotic sprawl that is Athens. This is when a small group of local residents, bearing seeds and armed with shovels, moved in. Their mission: to create a communal and productive agricultural space that will encourage an exploration into antidotes for the ecological-economic-educational and cultural crisis.
‘Thirty percent of Greece’s arable land has salinized and every year Greece looses 750,000 cubic meters of topsoil as a result of erosion and poor land management,’ Nicola continued as his demonstration compost pile grew. Just a few kilometers west and the political drama of a failing government and national bankruptcy was unfolding. The world watched the theatrics of politicians scrambling for self-preservation, while the contagious and desperate fear of being ejected from the Euro spread and the markets turbulently responded.
Natasha, one of the first to start working this small plot at the Ellinikon, told me that since the beginning of the current crisis, more and more people are visiting this small edible garden. She understands why. A year ago she was anxious that her future and her basic needs were dependent on the State that employs her. She had no survival skills. Now, she says, she feels empowered by being proactive in forming her community and learning how to grow food.
There are other examples of Athenians taking matters into their own hands to reclaim small plots of land so as to create communal green spaces; sometimes quietly and peacefully and other times after long drawn out battles with riot police. An example of the latter is Navarino Park in the centre of Athens. This again involved a broken promise by the State. One of the most densely populated areas of Athens was hoping for a park, so when the plans changed to build a parking lot, the local residents organized and resisted. Despite the violence and threats by police, residents stood their ground and cultivated this small plot that is now a budding potential of urban agriculture.
All these examples are neighborhood initiatives. It would be wrong to suggest this is a single coordinated movement. Often confused by the scale of change that is needed and starved for stories of hope, there is a tendency to inadvertently prescribe meaning to and inflate such examples so as to enthuse optimism in ourselves and in others that we are well on our way to dismantling ‘business as usual’. But this would be doing these small groups of activists a disservice. This is not their story, at least not for now. They are in the process of finding their way.
Life in Greece has gotten harder and people are quite literally going hungry. The cultural and the economic reality on the ground and the systemic rot that is so pervasive demand an exploration into context relevant ways of organizing, empowering, sharing knowledge, and redefining our values and our identities.
Riots in Athens have become common; albeit an expression of discontent, the dynamic that has developed between rioter and State seems to maintain the status quo. As I understand it, these local activists are not interested in head on combat against the ‘business and politics as usual’ that is largely to blame for the erosion of land and values, but rather they undermine the status quo by actively participating and investing in their own communities’ potential.
Within each small neighborhood group there is a collective evolving, sharing knowledge, learning, building and growing together. Perhaps these small groups and their gardens will be catalysts for change-maybe they will become nodes in an emergent network of urban farmers-maybe not. Regardless, this is an account of people proactively engaging the challenges and opportunities they are faced with. When Greece’s dominant narrative, particularly of late, has been of bankruptcy, corruption, nepotism, inefficiency and violence, it is important to recognize that this is not the whole story. With respect for others’ work, as well as our own, and as a defense against the infectious cynicism of such depressing dominant narratives, we must conserve and in fact cultivate the space for hope to articulate itself.
‘We can compost anything that was once living. Soon we will be able to add our Euros to the pile,’ Nicola said with half a smile. For a brief moment the group became uneasy and nervously laughed. This unease though quickly dissipated. ‘A healthy compost pile should never smell bad…’
This blog was taken from The Ecologist website
This week Grow Heathrow have been busy preparing the site for the arrival of 15 artists on Sunday night for a week long arts residency. The exhibition date has now been set for Saturday 21st January, from 11am at Grow Heathrow, where all work created during the week will be on display.
The residency, called ‘Resistance is beautiful’, funded by Hillingdon Council, will explore the creative link between resistance, permaculture, occupation and resilience. The exhibition on the 21st will start at 11am with drinks and snacks later in the day.
For more info contact: growheathrow.residency@gmail.com
For directions see: http://www.transitionheathrow.com/grow-heathrow/
