B&NES Council MOD Site Redevelopment Consultations – Transition Bath Response

A number of us are in the process of putting together a response on behalf of Transition Bath the Council’s MOD Concept Statements for Ensleigh, Foxhill & Warminster Road. The Concept Statements from the council provide a framework for the redevelopment of the 3 ex-MOD sites where it is proposed 1200 houses, 2 schools, a Doctors Surgery and office accommodation is to be built. Our objective is to try to persuade the council and ultimately the developers to make the developments more sustainable.

So far our draft response includes requests for:

·         Higher standards of insulation and more use of renewable energy than currently being proposed

·         Larger floor areas – so the properties are usable and can provide flexible accommodation suitable for the next 200 years

·         Inclusion of community based shops with local sourcing of food

·         Better transport links – particularly at Ensleigh

·         A greater investment in the local economy – so a reasonable proportion of the houses are developed using local builders, architects and tradespeople

Whilst TB's response is still being worked on and with a submission deadline of 30th May fast approaching, there is still an opportunity to incorporate some wider feedback. We would be interested particularly on feedback from anyone who lives in the vicinity of the three sites. Time is short, so if you would like to help could you please email us at news@transitionbath.org a soon as possible. A copy of the current draft response will soon be available on the website, but in the meantime if you would like to see our draft, please email us and we'll send you copy. 

Thanks,

Paul, Philip, Virginia & Dick

Harvesting our shared interest

The Transition Bath Food Group has been getting together with like-minded people from other community groups in Bath.

They all recently embarked on a ‘charabanc’ trip to three growers/producers near Shepton Mallet. Virginia of the Food Group explains what they got up to:

On Easter Saturday, food group members joined people from Bath

Organic Group, Transition Larkhall and the University Gardening

Club on a trip organised by B&NES Allotments Association to visit

Pennard Plants, Pennard Organic Wines and Charles Dowding's

no-dig garden.

Pennard Plants are based in an old walled garden. As well as

selling heritage vegetable seeds, they have a range of unusual

herbs on sale and some old varieties of top fruit. They're not

usually open to the public, but hold open days once or twice a

year.

Hugh Trip of Pennard Wines makes organic wines from vines, top

fruit and soft fruit grown on his smallholding at Avalon Vineyard

and, after some tasting, we left East Pennard weighed down with

wine as well as plants. (Pennard Wines are on sale at Nibbles in

the Guildhall Market, and at Dick Willow’s farm shop, on the Box

road).

Charles Dowding's no-dig garden is extraordinarily productive,

allowing him to run a successful business selling salad leaves all

year round from a standard greenhouse, a couple of polytunnels

and some beds in what is in effect a largish garden round a

farmhouse. (His method is ‘no-dig’ but adding a layer of manure

each year as a mulch.) 

Well, it certainly sounds like great fun was had by all. If you fancy going along on trips like this or even having a go at growing your own veg, get in contact with the guys at the Food Group. They'd love to help.

What is Transition Bath (roughly)?

Now that Transition Bath has extended itself into the blogosphere, it occurred to us that maybe some of you who have stumbled across this blog using a search engine, may not know what we’re about. So without further ado, let us explain:

Transition Bath is a local environmental group in Bath (funnily enough), run completely by volunteers and associated with the greater Transition movement. Our objective is to demonstrate how to bring about positive change in the community, using the power of community. We don’t chain ourselves to railings, scale the side of super tankers, throw eggs at MPs or go around hugging trees. We like to think that we work through much more robust methods than this.

The vision of the organisation is to build strength and resilience into Bath at a community level by empowering and guiding people on topics such as growing their own food, managing energy and understanding economics. The group engages in positive action through talks, workshops and innovative projects, offering individuals the chance to get involved with a range of environmental initiatives in and all around Bath.

Creating Vegmead

Residents of the city or surrounding areas may already be familiar with Transition Bath given our recent award-winning guerrilla gardening in Hegdemead and Gravel Walk. There is, however, much more to the organisation than covertly transforming Bath’s unloved green spaces into community vegetable patches.

Some current projects include a partnership with the Bath Oliver - our local currency; Bath Homes Fit for the Future - a project to highlight methods of improving energy efficiency in Bath homes; Fareshare Bath - a collaboration with the charity Fareshare helping to re-distribute surplus food to the disadvantaged; Bath and West Community Energy and the community nuttery - to name but a few. We have different groups that deal with different areas of the organisation, so to coin a phrase - there's something for everyone.

Transition Bath has at its core a great bunch of people who are all connected by the desire to see our city move toward a self-reliant future. We are not an organisation that campaign against environmental injustice. Instead, we demonstrate examples of what can be done to implement positive change, creating a community with the health, vitality and future of this stunning city at its heart.

If you want to get involved in any way, we would love to hear from you. Probably the best way to come and meet the gang is to pop along to a HUB meeting on the first Tuesday of the month.

Or you can contact us here too:

www.transitionbath.org
info@transitionbath.org

01225 750 932

Transition Bath, South Vaults, Green Park, Station, Bath, BA1 1JB

Mending Clothes: A Very Transitional Talent

Léonie from the Waste Group recently interviewed Tara, Transition Bath’s resident clothes-mending expert. Tara is relatively new to Transition Bath, but her outlook on life is like listening to a seasoned Transitioner. We thought you may like this interview and hence posted it on the blog. Enjoy…

Léonie: Tara, you come from the New Forest and you're a new arriver in Bath. Can you tell us how you heard about Transition Bath?

Tara: Through a Scottish friend, Paula, who is part of it. And I knew about Transition groups after visiting my dad in Totnes. I felt like getting involved.

How did you choose to commit yourself in Transition Bath?

We only knew few people here, and I work from home. It was a way of getting out and hopefully meeting like-minded people. A mix of personal ideals and search for social life.

Tara offering her expert advice at the recent Clothes Mending Session

What is your feeling about people wanting to mend their clothes?

Really positive. I hate the idea of things being thrown away. There is nearly always something you can do with it. Fabric, in this case, is a precious material. There are old skills that now go through revival. Being an archaeologist, I love to connect with our ancestor's knowledge. We become very vulnerable when we lose those knowledges; very dependent on capitalist supply chains, and what if they suddenly collapse? It makes you feel more independent to know how to mend your clothes. People shouldn't be frightened; they are able to fix things, fix their lives if they go apart. Plus it's a creative process and there is a therapeutic effect of crafts activity. Hopefully the participants of the sewing session will use their new knowledge.

How did you learn these skills, and what sort of creations do you produce?

From my mum, grandmum and a bit from school - although not much stayed. My grandmum was a great needlewoman, and my mum is very talented with her hands: clothes, soft furnishings, etc. I was probably four when I made my first T-shirt for my teddy bear. It was awful, but I was proud of it. Now, I make curtains or cushions for my home. I never buy those things, and I always play around clothes, I alter things a lot. I get inspired by things I see in shops or magazines. When I see a £90 item in a shop I wonder whether I could do it myself. The whole thing is a step back from fashion. It's not instant gratification, plus there aren't many fabric shops around, so it's slow fashion too.

Trousers get a new lease of life...

What do you believe is the biggest challenge for cities in transition? What are your goals?

I want to simplify my life as much as possible. I've been living a ‘normal’ life for the last 6 years, with a decent salary, etc. It was interesting, but I would like to live more like an artist, and to have not so much cash. I prefer to be cash-poor and time-rich. I'd like to make more things on my own. For example, when you have a full-time job, you can't produce much food. I had to make choices, because sustaining yourself in life becomes your work! If I'd had more time, I'd like to do my own furniture, food, etc. But I don't have enough energy to do that and work full-time. I love digging, cooking, making jams... I'd like to not need the cash. We've all got a long way to go. 

I think the more people get involved with Transition the better; consciousness spreads. But I do see it becomes harder for people to live out of the system. Examples are all the problems with travelling communities or boaters. Things have been closed more and more, regulated more and more when we're at a time where we should explore other ways of living. Capitalist society wants to trap us all in the machine to produce things for them, not for us! It seems that when somebody finds a way to wriggle out of the system they don't like it! The UK is well over-regulated, it's difficult to make the tiniest changes. We have a strong heritage culture which makes it hard to bring in new ideas, which are actually old ones!

Léonie Ahrens

Hooray! We now have our blog up and running.

Welcome to the first post of the Transition Bath Blog. We've been talking about getting this going for a while now, so please excuse us while we raise a glass (clink).

So why all the celebration you ask? Well, because we want to use this blog as a celebration in itself – a celebration of all that is Transition Bath, the Transition movement as a whole and, of course, all the people engaged with it. We want to post stories, news, anecdotes, joy, tears (of joy), laughter (more joy) and occasionally a little mayhem (yes, Green Vision guerrilla gardeners; we’re looking at you).

This blog will be an outlet for all involved in Transition Bath to have a say. That is a say on anything: what they’ve been up to, what they are up to and what they intend to be up to, and more importantly, why they’re up to it. We want to bring out the personal side of our organisation. Everybody has a Transition story inside them and we want to extract thsoe (in the nicest possible way) and get them posted on here.

If you subscribe to the blog, you can guarantee a good supply of interesting, relevant and topical material to brighten up your inbox every week or so.

So, for our first post, we are going to print Tom Youngman’s account of his time at the UN Climate Change negotiations in Durban last December. Tom, who is co- founder the youth climate movement Green Vision, sent this in to the newsteam last month, but we couldn’t print the full version in the newsletter, even though we really wanted to. There are no such restrictions with our shiny new blog; so here you go. Over to you Tom… 

In mid-December I returned from the adventure of the lifetime - three weeks at the United Nations climate change negotiations in Durban, South Africa. Just before leaving I recorded this video. As you can see, I was exhausted, if still adrenalised, and somewhat downtrodden. The climax to the conference had been a closed, undemocratic process - a huge contrast to the lively civil society action that had defined the rest of the conference.

Durban was filled with people of every nation, passionate about finding a solution to the climate crisis. Especially among the young people present, the atmosphere was vibrant in the face of a lack of agency, taking creative action at every available opportunity. From the individual action of Abigail Borah, a young American who stood up in plenary and screamed a speech in place of her negotiator to the mass action of hundreds of people, young and old, occupying the conference centre, civil society broke the boundaries imposed by international diplomacy to make the moral voice the loudest one.

So how can I bring this energy and solidarity back to Bath? It's going to be hard. I tried to communicate at the time - some of you might have been to Green Vision's 'People's Kitchen' event with which I linked up live - but even now, weeks later, I'm finding it hard, as I've tried to explain in this longer reflection on my time at the negotiations. Mostly I think it's taught me to take a step back - that giving people space and time to take their own action is as important than trying to inspire people to do so. A very 'Transition' mantra.

Lastly I'd like to thank those of you that supported me in any way in the run-up to the negotiations, be it financially or otherwise.  To have my community behind me in this was both exciting and humbling. If you'd like to know more about my trip, read this blog article and don't hesitate to get in touch.

Tom Youngman