At the meeting, we collected your ideas for how we can make Christmas a little more sustainable, how we can buy a little less, waste a little less, and Catherine kindly compiled them all into a nice Green Christmas Guide.

There is no Open Meeting this month, because it fell too close to Christmas. See you all in 2012; our first open meeting is on Weds, 18th January.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from everyone at TSA!

The evening will be a chance to learn more about the issues around climate change, in particular about its effect on the developing world, and an opportunity to put your concerns on climate change to local politicians.

Everyone is welcome!

Tuesday 29th November 2011, 8pm at Fleetville Community Centre on Royal Road, off Hatfield Road, AL1 4LQ (opposite the Morrisons supermarket car park entrance) [map].

After an initial overview presentation by a Change Management specialist on the dynamics of personal change and techniques to impact individual behaviours in relation to Transition, there will be group breakout sessions to help define and develop our Communications Plan, looking at:-

• Communications and Change objectives: What are the ultimate aims of our communications? What changes are we trying to drive?
• How we can raise awareness of TSA, its aims and objectives, within the local community?
• Who are our key stakeholders and how can we best engage with them?
• What resistance might we encounter along the way?
• What resources do we have and how can we maximise their potential?

The session will be facilitated by Faye Brook, a professional Project and Change Management consultant.

As usual, there will also be updates on projects ongoing and planned, and time for announcements.

Everybody welcome!   Suggested voluntary donation of £2 to cover costs.

Time and place:  Weds 16 Nov, 7.30pm at Fleetville Community Centre on Royal Road, off Hatfield Road, near Morrisons [map].

Jonny Rotheram (Steer Davies Gleave) has been commissioned by Herts County Council to produce a plan for cycling in St Albans and he will present initial proposals at the meeting.

This follows on from the ‘Wish List’ STACC prepared at last December’s meeting – now the ideas are being taken forward into a formal cycling study, hopefully to be implemented in the next 5 years.

The meeting will be interactive, to help develop the plan further.

There will also be an update on other local cycling news – and refreshments will be provided.

We started with a Think-and-Listen exercise to reflect on how we each see the consumerist society we live in. At the end, everybody was asked to write down on a post-it something negative and something positive we associate with consumerism. The word cloud below shows what was written (positives have a plus sign in front).

The answers seem to reveal our dilemma: we know well what’s not good about consumerism but the problem is big and we are worried about our economy (mentioned equally as positive an negative) and, most of all, about employment.

We then watched the film “The Story of Stuff” with Annie Leonard. If you weren’t there or want to see the film again, you can view it on YouTube here (it’s a short film, only about 20 minutes)

Tracking our “stuff” from extraction to production to distribution to consumption to disposal, the film explains how running a linear system in a finite world, focusing on producing ever more stuff in a manner that neither respects the environment nor the majority of people, is causing a range of environmental and social issues. And ever increasing consumption sits at the heart of this system, as the engine that drives it and keeps it going.

The message was clear: we are facing a big problem, a system in crisis.

However, as Annie concluded the film: “the good thing about such an all pervasive problem is that there are so many points of intervention, and there are already many people working to reclaim and transform this linear system into something new, a system that doesn’t waste resources or people.”

“Because what we really need to chuck is this old-school throw-away mindset. There’s a new school of thinking on this stuff and it’s based on sustainability and equity: Green Chemistry, Zero Waste, Closed Loop Production, Renewable Energy, Local living Economies. It’s already happening.”

“Some people say it’s unrealistic, idealistic, that it can’t happen. But I say the ones who are unrealistic are those that want to continue on the old path. That’s dreaming.”

“Remember that old way didn’t just happen by itself. It’s not like gravity that we just gotta live with. People created it. And we’re people too. So let’s create something new.”

After the film, we had a discussion about how we can transform our culture of consumption and waste into a culture that prioritizes social and ecological wellbeing.

It’s difficult to summarise what was said in the discussion, but one of the things we seemed to agree on was the importance of values as guides for our behaviour, and the need to shift our values to create the lasting substantial behavioural change required to address peak oil and climate change.

It so happens that several NGOs (WWF, Friends of the Earth, Oxfam ea) have commissioned research on values in recent years, and several interesting reports were published on this subject last year. We didn’t discuss this in any depth at the Open Meeting, but those interested can find links to the most recent reports in the Resources section below (see Common Cause Report and Handbook).

Resources:

• Watch “The Story of Stuff” via our YouTube Channel  (ironically, Google/YouTube sometimes adds an advert before the movie)
• The website storyofstuff.com website has lots of supporting material, including:
• a referenced and annotated script of the film, i.e. the full text of the film with footnotes  with links to the journals, newspapers and websites that were used to research it
• suggestions on what to do to address the problems identified in the film
• resources for facilitating learning and action
• links to NGOs.
• The storyofstuff.com website has evolved since 2007 into “The Story of Stuff Project” and now offers further movies on more specific topics like cosmetics, bottled water etc.
• For information and research on the importance of values, see the valuesandframes.org website, especially:
• The Common Cause Report by Tom Crompton (PDF 1.1MB)
• The Common Cause Handbook (PDF 2.8MB)

We will be showing the film “The Story of Stuff” by Annie Leonard.

The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled, humorous look at the underside of production and consumption. It explores the connections between a vast array of environmental and social issues, and points the way toward a more sustainable and just world.

Afterwards we’ll have a friendly discussion, thinking about how we can transform our culture of consumption and waste into a culture that prioritizes social and ecological well-being.

You’ll learn something, you’ll laugh, and you just may never look at stuff the same way again. [UPDATE: you can read how it went here]

As usual, there will also be updates on projects ongoing and planned.

Everybody welcome! Suggested voluntary donation of £2 to cover costs.

Time and place: Weds 19 Oct, 7.30pm at Fleetville Community Centre on Royal Road, off Hatfield Road, near Morrisons [map].

NatWest CommunityForce is an initiative which sees NatWest working with local communities to support the people, projects and charities who are making a real difference where they live.

Communities are important to all of us. At the heart of each and every one you’ll find great people doing great things to make them better places.

Up to £6000 is available for individual projects with awards dependent on the demonstration of support from the community for each project.

You can vote for the Watercress Wildlife Association here. You have to register to vote but it only takes a minute.  Voting closes midday on 24th October.

If you can, please also ask your friends, family and colleagues as every vote counts!

Exceptionally, our monthly Green Drinks social evening at the same pub – normally on the second Tuesday of the month – had been brought forward by a week, to make it a part of the ten day local food scene celebration that is the St Albans Food & Drink Festival.

“Grow it, Cook it, Eat it! – Green Drinks Harvest” programme

8.25pm – Opening speech by Peter Bloomfield of TSA

8.30pm – Kevin Yelland, the Chief Brewer of the Award winning Verulam Brewery, which is based at the Farmer’s Boy, gave a “Talk and Brewery Tour”. So many people were interested that there wasn’t enough space for all of them inside the small brewery building…

9 pm – Roselyne Masselin, Chef and owner of the local Vegetarian cookery school “La Cuisine Imaginaire“ and BBC Cookery author, did a Vegetarian cookery demonstration, complete with tastings. The soup and veggie burgers were truly delicious!

We also had:

• an Open Gardens photo display by Romayne
• our Pallet Garden in the pub’s courtyard, replanted by Peter B
• home grown produce to take away, grown by members of the food group, coordinated by Heather
• seeds and seedlings, complete with instructions, also from the food group
• lovely homemade cakes by Amanda Y
• vegetarian nibbles kindly provided by the Farmer’s Boy

The evening went very well, with a really nice atmosphere throughout. In all, some 25-30 people came, so there were many interesting conversations and contacts made. And always good to see some new people too!

Thanks to everybody who helped make it such a good evening!

You can see a few photos here.

We were swamped (pleasantly I hasten to add) with ideas by everyone present at our Energy meeting this week on Wednesday 21^st September. The topic was Open Energy Houses (known also as Eco Open Houses) and the meeting started with the following questions:

• What would you like to learn about energy in the home?
• What would you expect to find out when you visit a house?
• In what form would you like this information?

Three groups were formed and a brainstorming session began. There was then a talk by Andrew Allen on his experience of Brighton Eco Open Houses 2011. A great deal of ideas were generated which have all been recorded and will contribute to a follow up session at the next Energy meeting on the 17^th October.

If you did not attend this meeting or for those present who would like a recap on the issues raised in the presentation on Brighton, a copy can be downloaded here: TSA Open House Brighton Talk (PDF – 6.9MB).

Results from the brainstorming session will follow. If you would like to know more about this exiting new project, email energy at transitionstalbans.org or for further information on what we are trying to achieve at Transition St Albans go to the contacts page or tap on this link http://transitionstalbans.org/contact/.

We look forward to seeing you at the next Open Energy Meeting or at Green Drinks if you can make it. See events for more information or tap on this link http://transitionstalbans.org/events/.

Our Home Energy Group intend to launch an Open Energy Houses project next year and are seeking your ideas to help put this project together.

We are planning a friendly and sociable evening, so do come along.

As usual, we meet at 7.30pm in Fleetville Community Centre on Royal Road, off Hatfield Road, near Morrisons [map].

Everybody welcome!