EcoActionMinutes04Mar06

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Minutes for the 2nd Sustainable Communities Action Forum held at St Matthias building, All Saints 4th March 2004

There were around 25-30 people with vary levels of skills and ideas including people wanting to do positive actions e.g wasteland gardening, people whom are attending and teaching permaculture courses, a squatter looking for a solution to growing food that takes into account evictions, reps from UK eco-village network, rep from 56a Infoshop, a couple of architects, & people looking to visit low impact communities, people on the diggers350 list etc etc.

1./ Skills offered and skills shared to be set upon Graham’s WIKI. Graham to be email at graham@spiralseed.co.uk

2./ Josef to set up a mailing list and forward details to Graham. Nb. Mark has more email addresses from the original list.

3./ Funding – to be discussed at next meeting. Would be needed for materials for yurt workshop, though some materials can be tatted, some wood can be skipped ( there is a lot of people doing this now! ) but as pointed out willow/hazel/ash would be needed! Danny’s ( reclaimed ) Woodyard in Hackney suggested as source for some wood.( see Anna or Lou for more details ) Biodiesel van for tour/visiting eco-projects would need funding. Woody has an interesting smoke-free eco-friendly, light camping cooking device he wished to introduce from Canada in the summer ( June?) – could be marketed here for fundraising.

4./ Website could be put up with CMs either Drupal or Mambo. Discuss next meeting. ( name still needed to be agreed on ) . Had suggested at previous meeting that it would be useful to advertise the forum plus calendar and online forum.

5/ Next meeting is at Russell Square Sunday 19th March 4-6pm, during the London Creative Forum. Please bring food to share. Forum including possible screening of “End Of Suburbia”(?) and Compost toilet film, plus research report backs. People have put on list / taken on topics to be reported on next meeting. More films and demonstrations wanted.

6./ Several people suggested bio-dioesel van for eco-tour. Would need fundraising. People wanted to make biodiesel. Suggested topic of research. Tony G. knows bio-diesel manufacturer. - Note to Josef- film has just come out on making bio-diesel.- Veg My Ride website:- http://vegmyride.tv/

7./ Graham mentioned London Permaculture Network. He’s going to send more details about this and events they put on. We don’t need to replicate what they do.

8./ Compost Toilets. Item held over for next meeting.

9./Alt./Low impact Building Festival i.e Ecovillage in Spain over summer suggested – held on Josef’s father’s land. Roisin of London Rising Tide / Hackney City Farm has straw bale build in summer at latter place.

10./Lady mentioned bicycle-driven washing machine project. More details please.

11./ Announced:- Growing Communities - for people around Stoke Newington - local organic project including SN Farmers Market, fruit and veg box scheme and urban market garden. Looking for volunteers. Intro sessions 2nd Monday of the month from 9:30am till 11:30am at Springfield Park. Contact:- Growing Communities, The Old Fire Station, 61 Leswin Rd, Stoke Newington, London N16 7NY 0208 75027588 grow.communitites@btopenworld.com

12./Permaculture - Introductory weekends and Full Design Courses at Naturewise, Islington Ecology Centre http://www.naturewise.org.uk More info contact Alpay at: alpay.torgut@ukonline.co.uk or 0845 4584697.

13. Projects needing help:- Plot 21 at Alexander Palace allotments desperately needshelp. Contact is Nicole Ferris. Also, another community garden project at The Margaret McMillan Nursery on Hornsey Rise, North London. Graham has more contact details.

14./Advisory service for squatters have practical squatters sessions every Monday at the Autonomy Club, Freedom Bookshop 84b Whitechapel High St. ( entrance Angel Alley next to Kentucky F*** Chicken ) . Ring first http://www.squatter.org.uk

15./ C. of 56a Infoshop also pointed out they had a very successful Free-school last year where people were contacted who could offer practical skills teaching taught workshops for free. e.g Bicycle repair http://www.56a.org.uk/ People at the meeting were very interested in setting up another one. ( She also commented on time that would be needed to do these many things that people were suggestingJ )

16./ Tuesday 14th March – Solar Power System being put in at St Matthias ( where we had the meeting ). People welcome to come along and find out about this. Get hold of Lou or Anna for more info.

17./ Climate Change Camp at the end of August somewhere up north. Next meeting to prepare is in Oxford next weekend. See http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/ for details.

18./ Tony G. mentioned online Peoplefinder to exchange skills. http://www.evnuk.org.uk/pf/

19./ Direct Action - 120 Acres of woodland to be defended in Kent. More info Mark B who has just visited there. Yurt-building opportunity at same location is possible sometime this year. Bring up next meeting.

20./ Mark B brought some copies of new land rights magazine “The Land”- contact: chapter7@tlio.org.uk for more info.

21./ Advertising – same channels / level as before ( till skills based increases )

22./ No name yet decided upon for forum. Tony thought Sustainable Communities bad idea as it would be drowned by NGO sites in a web search.

23./ John suggested list of workshops to go on WIKI.

24./ Josef suggested we do a stall at Synergy centre Friday march 31st . There will be other stalls, live music and café. http://www.thesynergyproject.org