Editorial

Another Year in Transition

The end of July always marks the end of Ealing Transition’s ‘year’: it’s when we hold our “AGM”, and, as well as looking forward to the things we want to achieve in the next twelve months (and beyond), it’s also good to look back and see what we’ve achieved in the last twelve, and make sure that we “celebrate our successes”.

July  2013-2014 was another busy year for us; amongst the highlights, we held our Third Re-Skilling Day, started our Forest Garden (which will appear in our reviews for many years to come!), held energy saving events, maintained our allotment, orchard, wildlife-friendly flowerbed, and held regular film showings. There was more besides: the Chris Johnstone talk, Edible Ealing’s 1st Birthday, Cosmetic making with produce from our Community Bees, and a whole bunch of pizza making (and eating) down at Village Park to name but a few.

To put it all in context, we’ve knocked up a wizzy time-line thingy for your enjoyment!

Ealing-Transition-2013-2014Actually, putting it in context is what it does well: on the time-line we’ve also included some of the climate and energy news events of the last twelve months – it’s amazing how quickly you forget that, for instance, winter 2013/2014 was the wettest on record, with the UK battered by storms for much of it, not to mention the continued CO2 and temperature records, the Balcombe anti-fracking protests and energy price hikes…

Whether you’re off on your holidays, or staying at home, we hope you enjoy the rest of the summer; if you are around town, please drop by the Orchard or Allotment to see them in their glory,  but otherwise, we’ll see you in September, when, amongst other things, we’ll be gearing up to our “Community Fayre” event on 11th October, put that in your diary, and watch out for more details!

Environment, Media

The Turning Point

algore rolling stoneAl Gore’s new article in the Rolling Stone makes both sobering and inspiring reading. Most notable is the hope offered by the rapid uptake of solar power and other renewables, which are fast making the old model of centralized power based on fossil fuels obsolete. You can read the full article at http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-turning-point-new-hope-for-the-climate-20140618

Children, Environment, Film, Health

Project Wild Thing

Sunday 20th July 7.30pm: Film Showing: Project Wild Thing

10066963776_5d8667f841_zProject Wild Thing is filmmaker David Bond’s record of his attempt to reconnect his own children – and indeed all of Britain’s children – with nature. Today’s young people stay indoors, unlike their parents and grandparents, who as children loved to roam free. A new generation is addicted to iPads and consoles, getting obese and insidiously depressed in the process, and parents are letting it happen. The outdoors is increasingly assumed to be dangerous, pointless and irrelevant.

“We think we’ve outgrown nature,” says Bond, and wonders if the way is to promote nature as a brand, so the kids can ‘get’ it and ‘choose’ it. With boyish enthusiasm, he devises ad strategies through billboards and social media to spread the good word, and gets out and about to talk to environmentalists like George Monbiot and Chris Packham.

After the film we will be holding our Annual Open Meeting, which is an informal opportunity to help us define our programme for the forthcoming year over a cuppa and a slice of cake.

As usual the showing takes place at St Mary’s Church, St Mary’s Road, Ealing W5 5RH (map). Entry is free, but we will ask for a donation after the film to help us to cover screening costs. We hope you can join us.

Bring a child – or your inner child!

www.projectwildthing.com

 

P.S. Please display our poster if you have an opportunity to do so!