Windmills and turbines

We all know how blowy it can get out on the heath, and many of us must have wondered to ourselves while our umbrellas are being blown inside out: "Why not plonk a couple of wind turbines there?"

I've just found out that the Blackheath Bugle has been musing on this - and kindly linked to this blog

here

. Thanks, Bugle. I've shamelessly nicked your clever photomontage above, showing how a beturbined heath might look.

A more recent Bugle entry suggests the heath really was used for windpower before any of us were around. Our reliable witness is Turner himself.

Could commissioning a feasibility study be an early project for Transition Westcombe? Or does anyone know if one has been done in the past? Leave comments below if you've got anything to say on this.

Next: We'll have details soon of a Transition Westcombe meet-up open to anyone interested in getting involved.

Do more with less

This is not Westcombe-related (except that there are probably plenty of coffee-drinkers here), but I enjoyed this. 'Do more with less' is a great, constructive way of expressing what we all need to do. A catchphrase for these times.

Go go new logo

If you've visited before, you'll notice above that we've got a new logo for Transition Westcombe. The old leaf logo was really a temporary thing until something better came along - and how it has!

Some might recognise this unique 360-degree photography technique as the work of a local artist, who is a member of TW and who has put a great deal of time, effort, skill and creativity into this logo, so many thanks to him. It's a huge improvement - and when spring and summer come, we may well see it evolve into a version with the tree in leaf, which nicely echoes the idea of undergoing transition.

This old tree is a great example of natural resilience, too, having lasted for centuries while the world transformed around it - I'm told it's the second oldest of its species in the country (though I suspect many claim that title). The first to identify the street AND species correctly wins, let's see... a low-energy lightbulb.

Finally for now, thanks to all those who have been emailing to register their interest in TW. We are still at a very early stage, but we intend as soon as possible to arrange some kind of forum, for those who want to get really involved, to meet each other and do so. Watch this space.

Walking the walk

Transition Towns are intended to be vehicles for creating or supporting real, visible, useful projects.

With Transition Westcombe at this early stage, some people may be thinking: 'I get the concept, but what will it actually do?

That is up to the people who get involved, of course - each Transition initiative is made unique by the local people and the resources they have.

But by way of illustration, here are just a few of the projects that transition initiatives elsewhere have managed to get off the ground or which are being planned.

But what would you like to see happening in Westcombe? Which of these ideas should we cherrypick or adapt, and what new ideas can you suggest? Feel free to use the comments section to post your thoughts.

TOTNES

Totnes has a projects page you can browse by clicking here. It includes:

Business Resource Exchange – One company's waste or spare resources used as input to another

Community Food and Well-being Garden – Creating a community garden within walking distance of Totnes

Energy-efficient lighting for business – Driving a switch to low-energy lighting for high street retailers

Garden Share – matching unused garden space with gardenless growers (we may well seek to do this in Westcombe)

Green energy for business – helping businesses to switch to renewable energy tariffs

Local Complementary Health Directory

Local Food Guide – Promotion of local produce and independent outlets

Measuring Transition – looking at how we know whether we are making progress towards our goals

Campaigning for more allotments

Nut trees - Planting nut trees around town and training tree guardians with the aim of becoming the 'nut tree capital of Britain'

Oil Vulnerability Audits – Helping businesses quantify their exposure to rising oil prices and to assess risk

Resource efficiency for businesses - Free audits and advice for small local businesses from Envirowise - pilot project

Seed and plant swaps - Retaining local plant diversity and promoting Grow-Your-Own

Solar Thermal Challenge - Bulk purchase and promotion of solar thermal kit for hot water on 50 homes

The Great Re-Skilling - Practical training programme to re-establish the skills we have lost

Totnes Pound - local currency, now accepted in over 70 shops in the town

Transition Library - Wide selection of transition-related books & films available for free in Totnes

Transition Tales - Storytelling the future to educate and inspire

Transition Teams and Home Groups - Support formation of small social based groups that take on their own transition agenda

Compost toilet – Plans to build one

Community Support Agriculture - Local people commit to buy seasonal shares of a local farmer's crops

Localising commercial food - Identify local commercial food needs and match with local supply potential

The Great Home Retrofit – Phase 1: Create energy map of Totnes housing stock to focus on least efficient first / Phase 2: Create low energy action plans for homes then support homeowners through retrofit activities

Totnes Youth Film Festival - Provide equipment and training for making short films about 'Totnes in 2030'

Transition Street Showcase - Work with typical street to deliver aspects of all these projects for a living demonstration

BRIXTON

Distributing project grants – a small amount, but TTB has £1000 to give to projects this year

Fruit and nut tree map

ABUNDANCE project (Activating Barren Urban Niches for Daring Agricultural Networks of Creativity and Endeavour) – 2 strands: a green map of Brixton exploring possible growing space, especially on estates, roofs and walls / a demonstration urban agriculture & permaculture project in an allotments site

Possible: Establishing a transition / climate change / peak oil reference shelf in the local library – plus an exhibition space in the library foyer

Responding to the LDF consultation process

Simple A4 guide for local people on how to beat the cold; easy to revise and update

Remade in Brixton - a partnership working towards a zero waste Brixton through repair, reuse, recycling, and making better use of resources locally

Local currency - including Brixton Pound for local business resilience, and LETS to build trade networks beyond sterling

Planned: Street party to promote reduction in car use

Planned: An in-town-without-my-car day

LEWES

Local food branding pilot

Garden buddies – connecting growers to share gardens and skills

Lewes community bag – cloth bags supported by local businesses

Schools workshops – transition projects / talks / workshops in schools

Lewes Pound - a local currency

Heat More Greens - A Lewes Householders' initiative to block buy and install solar panels

Car-free Lewes – A flyer with tips on car-free living

Ovesco – Ouse Valley Energy Services Company – to deliver energy saving, renewable energy and related projects. Ran a round of grants-making for the district council, fitting 50 solar panels in just over a year and 50 thermal panels and wood stoves

WANDSWORTH

TT Wandsworth is at an early stage, but their ideas include:

Children's herb garden

Food-growing workshops

Community composting

Hazlenut tree planting

Website for exchange of local services, eg laundry, shopping

Green book club

Infrastructure support in case of crisis

Snow and resilience

Someone has emailed a list I subscribe to with an interesting point: that if the economy were more localised, with more people working closer to home as in the past, we wouldn't have seen such a widespread shutdown of workplaces and schools because the hazards and the effort of getting to class or to office would be less.

Here's that email:

"Most of the problems caused by even mild snow falls, such as we have just had, come from the move away from local economies that has occurred in the last 40 years. Sorry to sound like an old fart, but when I were a lad nearly everyone in my town walked or biked a mile or two to work, or did if their car was out of action, and did it whatever the weather."

Is this a rose-tinted view of the past or a genuine example of how we have become less resilient to sudden shocks? What do you think?

Lighting the touchpaper

A big thanks is due to the Westcombe News for putting our article about the transition towns concept so prominently on pages 1 and 3 of the latest issue, which we hope has lit the touchpaper and whetted people's interest.

If you don't get the WN delivered, you should be able to see it within a few weeks by clicking here.

If you want to get involved or simply be kept up to date on upcoming Transition Westcombe events, simply email us at transitionwestcombeATgooglemail.com (replace 'AT' with '@'). We promise not to swamp your inbox, as we intend to send only occasional messages, and of course you can unsubscribe at any time.

What was particularly interesting about the new issue of the Westcombe News is that so many of the articles touched on 'transition' themes, which are increasingly preoccupying people even if they aren't labelled as such.

A piece about the need to preserve local businesses and shops ('use them or lose them') fits very snugly with the transition towns' drive to localise the economy so that we get more of our basic needs from within the local community, making us more resilient to whatever shocks are thrown at us by economic turmoil, the end of cheap-and-easy oil and the challenge of combating climate change.

Inside, Anne Robins from the Victorian Society talked about the importance - and the difficulty - of making Westcombe's many Victorian buildings more energy efficient. As she writes, they were built 'in an era of different energy needs and technology', and creative ways of adapting them now have to be found. Elsewhere, other transition towns have gone at this issue with gusto, even arranging for residents to buy insulation, renewable energy equipment or energy efficiency measures in bulk in order to cut the cost.

Perhaps we can put our heads together and come up with a similar scheme in Westcombe.

TW is taking shape

We now have a more interactive web presence than this simple blog, at a networking site called Project Dirt. You can find us - and join TW there - by clicking here. We hope this will prove useful - it should be a good way to get in touch with TW and for everyone to exchange ideas, post useful documents, flag up events and so on. See you there.