Mon 29 April: Capers for free

Free wild food workshops are every Monday at Grow Heathrow. Join us on Monday 29th from 2-4pm to make capers from dandelion buds.

We’ll learn to preserve dandelion buds (taraxacum agg.) in brine, like we did with cow parsley (anthriscus sylvestris) ‘celery sticks’ last week. Dandelions’ deep reaching tap roots bring calcium and potassium up from the sub soil, accumulating health-giving minerals for us to enjoy in this wonderful spring.

So come, visit, and let’s get a-foraging together.

New community space for the Austen Estate

On Saturday the 9th Feb, Transition Heathrow, together with the Cass Project and Hillingdon Play, held an open space for discussing the potential of a community garden in Hayes.

Locals were invited to come down and meet each other at the proposed site on the Austen estate.  Hillingdon Play provided games and activities for the children while we offered foraged teas at the ‘rocket stove cafe’ and music from our cycle powered sound system.

It was a fun and informal event where many people met for the first time to chat over tea and cakes. Residents and Cass architecture students came up with ideas and improvements for five currently disused spaces on the estate. Feedback from local people indicated that it is usual for next door neighbours not to know each other and that there is a desire for a sense of community here.

The initial interest seems to be in the creation of a children’s play area with seating, and possibly a selection of fruit trees and a herb garden as a valuable addition.

Free workshop at revamped Grow Heathrow Art space

Revamped art space

After being awarded £200 for Community Engagement work, local child Olivia Howard, age 13, has donated her winnings to the Grow Heathrow community art space, stocking it up with materials and resulting in the art space re-vamp.

So now the art space needs you! Whether your in a group or by yourself, if you have an idea or want inspiration, please come round for a cup of tea and get painting, sketching, sowing and creating. CRAFTERNOONS will now run every Wednesday Afternoon from 3.30-6PM and this week we will be making lanterns and lampshades.

If you can’t make Wednesdays, you can come any other afternoon and get on with your own project, as the space is always open. Directions to Grow Heathrow can be found here: http://www.transitionheathrow.com/directions/

Art space before

Grow Heathrow Drama Residency – ‘Heathrow in Transition’!

As part of Hillingdon Arts Week, Grow Heathrow held a performance residency; ‘Kaleidoscope – Heathrow in Transition’. The residency brought together a group of eclectic, creative individuals to collaborate in producing a forum theatre piece that highlighted the concept of peak oil, the values of Grow Heathrow and the Transition Towns movement.

We started off with concept development. This entailed taking ideas such as Peak oil, waste, Transition and community, and translating them into a script and visual performance. We wanted to get people’s attention as well as help them to question modern living habits. At the same time we were also integrating the ‘forum theatre’ model, as well as a musical back drop.

By day 3 we were moving on to the visual stage, with people from all sorts of different theatrical and performance backgrounds joining us. We then started to interpret what we had already put down in the conceptual stage to develop it theatrically. It was wonderful to see how different people responded to different themes. Each time someone came and worked on the project, it ripened the piece, until a fully formed forum theatre production emerged.

We managed to create a complete piece of forum theatre with a full cast, script, props and music in a matter of days, whilst mixing many artistic disciplines. We performed at a community fete and in the community centre centre, where we got audiences to participate in a full throttle debate about what they had seen. This included thoughts about advertising, farming, stress, wonky veg shops and more! Initiating debates and discussions like these has helped the local community ‘hear each other out’. And in the words of Audre Lorde: “Without community, there is no liberation.”

The performance was filmed and will be out soon – watch this space!

Celebrating Spring in Sipson

This blog is a bit late but here goes. The rain held out and joining plenty of other stalls, including dance classes, giant jenga, gnome painting and the Com.Cafe puppet show, Transition Heathrow had a great day with Heathrow villagers at this years Sipson Spring Fair.

In the Transition Heathrow area we had a mini selection of all the spaces from the Grow Heathrow site giving residents who haven’t yet visited a peek of what goes on in Vineries Close. A growing area giving away free tomato, salad and coriander plants and wild flower seed bombs, an energy space with a bike powered phone charger, arts and crafts with face painting and mural art, bike doctor and tandem riding and information stall, plenty of new friends were made.

A big thanks to all who came out for the day, its community events like these which bring everyone together and make people value and protect what we have here in Sipson.

Have a look at some pictures from the Uxbridge Gazette. And a big thanks to Kate Birch (Heathrow Villages Community Development officer) for making it all happen.

In Transition 2.0

Here’s another date for your diary. On Thursday 7th June, as the next installment of Grow Heathrow’s first Thursday of the month off-grid film club, we will be showing the Transition Network’s brand new film In Transition 2.0 

Filmmaker Emma Goude will be making the journey up here and will be taking questions after the film. We are inviting every Transition Town group across London and from the Thames Valley region to come and watch it with us so it should be a packed greenhouse.

Watch the trailer here and don’t miss out on this free film screening, starting at 8.30pm. Crash space is available if requested.

In Transition 2.0 is the new film from Transition Network, capturing inspiring stories of Transition initiatives around the world, responding to uncertain times with creativity, solutions and ‘engaged optimism’.

The economic impact of high oil prices

As the developed-world economy tries to gain momentum, it faces a persistent headwind. The oil price remains stubbornly over $100 a barrel, acting like a tax on Western consumers. Some blame the high price on evil speculators—Barack Obama unveiled plans to increase penalties for market manipulation on April 17th. But there is a simpler explanation: that supply is inadequate to keep up with rising demand.

The concept of peak oil—the idea that global crude production may be at, or close to, its limit—is far from universally accepted. One leading asset manager talked recently of the world being “awash with energy” because of the exploitation of American shale gas. Nevertheless, oil is still the main fuel for cars and trucks. And crude output (as opposed to alternatives such as biofuels and liquids made from gas) has been flat since 2005.

A number of countries (including Britain, Egypt and Indonesia) have turned from net oil exporters into importers in recent years. And although rich countries have curbed their energy-guzzling a little, demand continues to surge in emerging markets.

This has left the oil market very vulnerable to temporary supply disruptions, such as the war in Libya. Speaking at a conference in Dublin this week, organised by the Institute of International and European Affairs and the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas, Chris Skrebowski, a consulting editor of Petroleum Review, argued that spare capacity in the oil market could be eroded by 2015.

The peak-oil concept was devised by the late M. King Hubbert, who correctly predicted in 1956 that oil output in the lower 48 states of America would peak by around 1970. At the conference Michael Kumhof, an economist at the International Monetary Fund, presented the findings of a forthcoming working paper which showed that adding the idea of a “Hubbert peak” to energy production greatly improved the ability of a model to forecast oil prices. Based on an expected 0.9% annual increase in production over the next decade, the model predicts that real oil prices will nearly double over the same period.

The economic damage caused by such a rise is predicted to be modest, perhaps 0.2% of global GDP a year. In the past changes in oil prices have had a limited long-term impact, since any losses to oil importers are matched by gains by oil exporters. To the extent that high oil prices played a role in the recessions of the early 1980s and 2008-09, the main reason is that oil-producing countries tend to have a lower marginal propensity to consume their income, denting global demand.

Nevertheless, Mr Kumhof worries that if oil prices are high enough, the economic impact might increase substantially. On the most extreme assumptions, it could be 2% a year.

Even if the world can find more oil—in the Arctic or tar sands, say—the longer-term question is whether the era of “cheap energy” is over and how the world can adjust if it is. Developed economies are built on easy access to cheap energy, importing goods that are transported from around the world, with consumers driving many miles to work in air-conditioned offices and then flying off to sunny climes for their annual holidays. Persistently high oil prices would clearly lead to substitution (electric cars, natural-gas-powered trucks) but the transition costs could be significant.

Furthermore some potential substitutes for, or new sources of, oil (such as biofuels and tar sands) are a lot less efficient, in the sense that they require significant amounts of energy simply to produce. To the extent that this equation (energy return on energy invested, or EROI) is deteriorating, that must surely have an effect on economic growth.

“What is the minimum EROI that a modern industrial society must have for its energy system for that society to survive?” ask Carey King and Charles Hall in a recent paper*. The academics’ answer: “Complex societies need a high EROI built on a large primary energy base.”

This issue is not much considered by mainstream economists, who are too busy focusing on monetary policy, the impact of fiscal austerity or the need for labour-market reforms. But just as the industrial revolution was built on coal, the post-second-world-war economy was built on cheap oil. There will surely be a significant impact if it has gone for good.

This blog was taken from The Economist magazine.

Climate jobs caravan visit

It’s called ‘The Climate Jobs Caravan’. It will visit over 20 towns and cities in Scotland, England and Wales in a tour organised by the Campaign against Climate Change Trade Union Group.

The southern leg will start on the 12th May in Central London and then move onto Grow Heathrow for lunch. The northern leg starts on the same day in Glasgow. Throughout the tour, there will be meetings, publicity stunts, cycle rides and the spread of information about Climate Jobs. The message of the tour will be simple: the creation of climate jobs – in public transport, home insulation, and renewable energy – can help solve both the economic and climate crisis.

Climate change is not a distant future. Its effects are being felt today. Britain has just experienced its driest March in 59 years with nationwide drought a looming possibility. But it’s not just Britain that is being hit by extreme weather. 2010 saw the warmest summer in 500 years in Eastern Europe, killing thousands and devastating crops. That same year, the worst flooding in Pakistan’s history occurred, killing 1,500 people. According to the Nature Climate Change Journal, extreme weather events have increased over the past decade and are very likely caused by human-induced global warming.

At the same time, austerity is ripping people’s lives apart. The UK currently has its highest levels of unemployment in a generation. According to government figures, 2.67 million people are currently unemployed in Britain. This figure understates the real number. In addition, 22.2% of 16-24 years are unemployed.

The Campaign Against Climate Trade Union Group (CACCTU) believes that these two crises do not have to be understood separately. Instead, we should unite the struggles emphasising the need not only to tackle the economic crisis and get people into jobs, but also put forward a positive programme to address rising CO2 emissions and reduce the prospect of catastrophic climate change.

In 2010, the Campaign Against Climate Change Trade Union Group published the pamphlet ‘One Million Climate Jobs’. It outlines how when unemployment is at its highest in a generation and climate catastrophe is looming, what is required is a National Climate Service which could provide one million climate jobs, in particular in renewable energy, transport and housing.

At a time of rising unemployment and further cuts, the Climate Jobs Caravan could not come at a better time. Rather than asking for people to work for free doing workfare, we want to demand the government creates climate jobs that help reduce both emissions and unemployment.

Guest Post by Josh who is part of the tour organising committee                                              

Kaleidoscope performance residency

From the 6th- 10th June, Grow Heathrow needs YOU. Calling all with a background in; theatre, dance, poetry, movement, puppetry, music, visual arts, circus…. and anything else…

Grow Heathrow (our squatted community garden) are offering the opportunity to be part of a 5-day theatrical residency that explores the creative link between resistance, permaculture, occupation and transition. Immersed in the realities of group living within a place that would be destroyed by the third runway, we’ll build a freely creative and imaginative response to the history of Sipson’s fight against the third runway, Grow Heathrow and the Transition Town movement.

The residency will culminate in a performance in the local village and later on one at the Grow Heathrow site, both on Sunday 10th June. Although this is a 5 day residency, the first two days of devising are optional, and you can come on board just from Friday 8th to Sunday 10th if you are limited with time, although the whole shabang is advised

Timetable

Wed 6th – Thurs 7th: Nourishment, development and devising

Fri 8th – Sun 10th: Projecting, preparing, performing

Sunday 10th, 5pm and 8pm performances

This is a non-commercial, not for profit venture. £10 all-in to cover living costs on site. Deadline for applications: 01/05/2012 Please email kaleidoscope.transition@gmail.com for more information or to reserve a place, as numbers are limited, (including a little bit about yourself).

A visit to Totnes: the first ever Transition Town

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!