News from Transition Stroud!
Dear readers,
After all these months, we’re back with something that is a lot more like a regular Transition Stroud newsletter.
We have News from Transition Stroud!
We have an article!
There’s an event!
And news from some Fellow Travellers
While there are some things it would be nice to safely return to, there are so many reasons not to simple go back to life as it was before the virus. There are opportunities to build back better, to cut carbon and improve quality of life. If opportunities arise locally to get involved in making that happen, we’d like to hear about them and will be keen to share them.
The Transition Network is recruiting! Do you have fundraising skills? Find out more about the role here - https://transitionnetwork.org/news-and-blog/join-the-transition-network-team
If you’re doing something you think might encourage or cheer other people, email Bryn for the newsletter – brynnethnimue@gmail.com or contact us by social media (see below). We’ll do what we can to support fellow travellers locally, tag us on Twitter for re-tweets and pop things on the facebook wall for sharing.
You can also follow our Facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/TransitionStroud/
And connect with Transition Stroud on Twitter - https://twitter.com/TTStroud
If you want to encourage anyone to sign up for this newsletter, please send them to the website – https://www.transitionstroud.org/
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Transition Stroud has a new Coordinator!
we're delighted to announce that Transition Stroud has a new co-coordinator. We're sorry to be losing Tosca, who has been offered an excellent opportunity elsewhere. Many thanks to Tosca for her hard work, innovation, energy and ideas. We welcome Nick, who brings an array of exciting skills and experiences into the mix. Over to Nick to introduce himself...
Hi all, I'm Nick and have taken over from Tosca as the part-time coordinator of Transition Stroud. I live in Stroud Town with my partner and two young kids and am passionate about building connections and promoting actions to protect the environment and deal with the climate crisis.
I’ve spent the last 5 years running global environmental communication projects and was previously involved in educational management and technology. I currently help organise Landwise Network and helped set up the Stroud Coronavirus Community Support Facebook group and website.
I plan to be working one main day each week but will also be checking emails on a daily basis so please get in touch. The email address continues to be the same as before, admin@transitionstroud.org.uk
With my Landwise Network hat on I'm doing some research on food security. Landwise Network is a Stroud District based group which formed last year and is concerned with food security, land use and biodiversity. They have funding from Gloucestershire Funders to undertake research into local awareness of food security, the interest in growing food and what barriers there are to taking part.
They are keen to gather responses from as wide a group as possible. Please find out more and take part in the survey here:
http:// links.landwisenetwork.org/foodResilience
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Stroud Book Festival – please support us
Culture and the arts are a key element of a community’s resilience. Caroline Sanderson Co-Director of the 2020 Stroud Book Festival writes briefly on the history of the festival, why it is so important to our community and how you can particularly help this year.
Founded in 2016 by author Jamila Gavin, Stroud Book Festival has grown from a small local weekend event to a five-day Festival, which in 2019 welcomed 4,500 people to more than 40 events. The Festival supports and promotes writers, poets, illustrators, publishers and booksellers local to Stroud and the surrounding areas. It works hand in hand with the wider creative community to make the Festival accessible to as broad an audience as possible.
Stroud Book Festival is also committed to inspiring children and young people to tell their stories and become lifelong readers. It works with local primary and secondary schools, along with other community organisations including Stroud Library, to create fun and creative ways to inspire its youngest Festival goers. In 2019, more than 700 children joined in at the Stroud Subscription Rooms for our Schools’ Day for local primary schools, with visiting authors including Joseph Coehlo, Atinuke, Onjali Q Raúf and Christopher Edge.
This year, Stroud Book Festival (4-8 November) will take place entirely online for the first time. While nothing can replace the buzz of events staged in front of a real live audience, the opportunity to reach an online audience way beyond Stroud this year is an exciting one that the Festival team is determined to embrace. The majority of events will be streamed live via Zoom and on Stroud Book Festival’s YouTube channel (please subscribe so you don’t miss a thing). Already confirmed are two events in association with Transition Stroud on the evening of Thursday 5th November: a tribute to Polly Higgins and her book, “Dare to be Great”, and an in conversation event with Jonathon Porritt about his new book, “Hope in Hell: A Decade to Confront the Climate Emergency”. More details very soon.
In the meantime, Stroud Book Festival has launched a crowdfunding campaign at https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/2020-stroud-book-festival#start. In the absence of ticket income and business sponsorship this year, the crowdfunder aims to raise £10,000 in order to make Stroud Book Festival free and accessible to all, the best possible response, the Festival team believes, to the current crisis. Stroud Book Festival greatly values its association with Transition Stroud and would be hugely grateful for any donations. If you’ve bought tickets to Stroud Book Festival in the past, please consider donating that money to help us bring the joys and benefits of reading to a wider audience than ever before. Thank you.
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Stroud District is awarded Plastic Free Community status by marine conservation charity
Stroud District has joined a network of communities across the UK who are leading the way to tackle throw away plastic at source. Stroud is one of the first few districts to have been awarded Plastic Free Community status by marine conservation charity, Surfers Against Sewage (SAS), in recognition of the work it has done to start reducing the impact of single--‐use plastic on the environment.
Action group leader Claudi Williams started the local campaign back in 2017 after an experience on holiday in the Mediterranean: she and her family found themselves surrounded by so much plastic waste, she likened it to floating in a plastic soup.
Coming home, Claudi wanted to raise awareness of the polluting impacts of the plastics life cycle - in particular, single use plastics, which have only a brief useful life but a long environmental impact. Joining up with other interested local campaigners, businesses and councillors, she was motivated to help individuals, businesses and institutions across the community to reduce their plastic footprint.
In July 2019, Stroud District Action on Plastic (SDAP) was formally launched. In registering with the SAS Plastic Free Communities movement, Claudi and the SDAP team have pulled together key organisations and businesses across the district to put in place a five--‐point plan.
The objectives included: setting up a community led steering group, instigating the SAS Plastic Free Schools education programme, getting local council commitment and working with local businesses, organisations and community groups to spread the word and minimise the amount of disposable plastics they use. SDAP has organised and attended over thirty public events to promote the cause and involve the community, including talks, litter picks, film screenings, fairs and workshops on how to reduce the plastic coming into the home. The group has also worked with several of Stroud’s festival teams to help run the town’s great annual events plastic free.
Claudi said: “Perhaps it should come as no surprise that the Stroud district community has responded so well to this challenge: people are increasingly aware of the damaging impact of the plastics cycle on our climate and our environment, and they are looking for ways to live without the need for it. So often, the solutions to this issue are also beneficial to the local economy, so the district only stands to gain from this shift towards a lower waste, more sustainable way of living.”
The group has also partnered with businesses across the district, from our largest employers such as Renishaw plc, Ecotricity and SGS College, to some of our most popular pubs and restaurants, market stalls and high street retailers. All of them have worked hard to reduce the disposable plastic in their operations, from the way they package their product to the way they buy their staff room coffee.
Project Coordinator Chloe Turner said: “To achieve this accreditation, we’ve worked closely with more than thirty small businesses across the district, who’ve successfully taken on the challenge to reduce their plastic footprint and been recognised as Plastic Free Champions as a result. So many have gone beyond what was asked of them, making changes to reduce plastic right across their premises and supply chain, and we have loved celebrating their successes.”
Earlier this year, SDAP also helped Wotton--‐under--‐Edge Chamber of Trade put in place a ‘plastic pledge’ for its members to sign up to, and the group hopes to do the same with other chambers across the district.
James Millar, Business Engagement lead for SDAP said, “As we said at our launch last year, taking action on plastic can also be an opportunity for local businesses, whether that be in reducing packaging costs or in gaining custom as a business recognised for its sustainable operations. I’m very pleased we’ve been able to work with so many local businesses and hope this award will enable us to reach more.”
SDAP has also partnered with over fifty community organisations across the district, visiting many primary and secondary schools, youth and other community groups, and working with many local councils keen to do their part.
Stroud District Council has been a supportive partner from the start, with cross party agreement from councillors on the need for action on plastic, and the issue named as one of the council’s Corporate Delivery Plan objectives.
District Councillor Catherine Braun said: “The Council is delighted that SDAP has made such progress in its community engagement work on this key issue over the past year.
The group continues to have the Council’s full support, and we have been pleased to do our part, including work to reduce plastic in our own operations and offering free--‐of--‐charge water refills at all publicly accessed District Council buildings as part of the Refill scheme.”
Of course, SDAP’s work is far from over, and the month of July - known as Plastic Free July – has been a busy one as the group continues their work across the community”.
Claudi said: “I’m thrilled that we have been able to reach this first milestone. The SAS five--‐point plan has been vital in shaping and propelling our work across the community. Of course, Stroud District is far from completely free of unnecessary plastic, so this is an ongoing journey, but we have been inspired and motivated to receive this accreditation.”
The Surfers Against Sewage Plastic Free Community network aims to free the places where we live from single--‐use.
Using the five point plan the aim is to empower communities to kick start local grassroots action, which can then be built upon. The marine conservation charity, based in St Agnes in Cornwall, says it wants to unite communities to tackle avoidable plastic from the beach all the way back to the brands and businesses who create it.
It says it is not about removing all plastic from our lives, but kicking our addiction to throwaway plastic and changing the system that produces it.
Rachel Yates, SAS Plastic Free Communities Project Officer, said: “It’s great to see the work that Stroud District has done to reduce the availability of avoidable plastics, raise awareness and encourage people to refill and reuse.
“We have over six hundred communities across the UK working to reduce single use plastic and the impact it has on our environment.
Every step those communities and the individuals in them take is a step towards tackling the problem at source, challenging our throwaway culture and encouraging the habit and system changes we need to see.”
FURTHER INFORMATION
Plastic Free Communities: www.plasticfree.org.uk
Surfers Against Sewage: www.sas.org.uk
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News from the Textiles Group
Claire Sheridan says: I made a pair of slippers out of granny squares (crochet) with bicycle inner tube for soles. They are very comfortable. Also if a part wears
out then that square can easily be replaced. They will be featured in the Trashion Show which if gathering allowed by then will be on Saturday 7th November at Lansdown Hall, Stroud.
Therefore I ask all you people out there to get thinking about what outfit that you can create from trash, rubbish, unwanted items, anything that you have and is not being used, can it be worn in some way? Those of you at the last Trashion show will recall the shower curtain poncho, the curtain dresses, and the gown made from cat food pouches.
I am still making masks which are still going like hot cakes as fast as they are put out, outside Share and Repair, Stonehouse High Street, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
Repairs, electric, woodwork sewing etc can be dropped off for fixing, they will be quarantined for three days then repaired if possible. All for a donation.
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Mapping Carbon Neutral Stroud
Please fill in our 3-minute survey!
A small group of volunteers have been working on an online map of community-based low carbon projects in Stroud District. Please spare us 3 minutes to fill in a short survey and help us develop our understanding of which parts of the online tool might benefit you most. Feel free to share the survey with anyone you think might be interested too.
https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/DV5T93M
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Economy for the Common Good
If you live in the Cotswolds and are passionate about building a fairer, more sustainable and inclusive local economy, the Economy for the Common Good (ECG) would love to hear from you! ECG is a rapidly growing international movement dedicated to building an ethical economic system that benefits all people and nurtures the planet.
At its heart is the idea that economic success would be much better measured by looking at how we as individuals, businesses and governments are honouring the fundamental values of human dignity, solidarity and social justice, environmental sustainability, transparency and democratic co-determination than by focusing on GDP growth. Over 500 companies, municipalities and other organisations in 22 countries are now using the ECG Common Good Balance Sheet to measure their progress and identify priorities for their future development.
ECG is a democratic grassroots movement organised as local chapters, under the umbrella of a national membership association. In the UK, there are active chapters already in London, Brighton and Portsmouth – and a new chapter is now being set up to cover the Cotswold area. Local chapters meet regularly to learn about the ECG model and movement, create their own projects, plan speaking engagements and other contacts with the business community and local authority in their area and much more.
ECG Brighton recently made an inspiring short film about the kind of future they want to build and their motivation for getting involved with ECG. You can view this on the ECG UK website at https://www.ecguk.org/.
For more information on how to get involved, please contact ECG UK at: info@ecguk.org. You can follow ECG UK on social media at:
Twitter: @ECG__UK
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ECGuk.org
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New Community Hub - Trinity Rooms, clean up
Monday 3rd - Thursday 6th August
As some of you may know, actions have been taken towards forming a community hub at the Trinity Rooms on Field Road. It will be a shared office space for organisations working around sustainable and regenerative communities, and a community space to enable sustainable projects to thrive. We want to spruce up the Trinity Rooms so that it will be ready for the first of our collaborators, StroudCo to move in by the end of August, and for the dance classes to re-start as soon as they are able. Please join us in this first phase of preparation by signing up on the site below for a slot that suits you:
https://rotarota.net/TrinityRooms
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Stroud Community Seed Bank have started sending out a monthly newsletter with tips on seed saving and other interesting info. If you'd like to receive the newsletter email: seedbank@downtoearthstroud.co.uk
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 We are grateful to those individuals and organisations that fund Transition Stroud including the Community Investment Grant from Stroud District Council
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