Woohoo for Wonky Veg!

Last Sunday was Cambridge's third Liberated Feast. [when I wrote that last sentence, it was indeed last Sunday. It is now three or so weeks ago...] If you haven't heard of Liberated Feasts yet, they are the brainchild of Jennie Debenham, and they are a celebration of food that supermarkets think we won't buy. This may be the banana that's not the same uniform size and shape of its brothers and sisters down the aisle, or else the rather over-enthusiastic thigh-width leek. At the Third Liberated Feast, the food that was served was a combination of food rejected by supermarkets and food donated by local farmers.

The Feast was held at St Paul's Centre on Hills Road, 7.30pm. We were all seated on long, Hogwarts-style tables, and serenaded by a variety of musicians. While food was somewhat long in arriving (with a handful of sweating volunteers ladling soup and hurrying in and out of the kitchen), getting to know my Feast-neighbours passed the time very nicely. I would estimate a hundred or so Feasters, most of whom were unknown to me. I was opposite Jessica, who works for the University press office, and Alistair, who works for the Red Cross.

The starter was a pale, parsnipy soup. Chatting to Liz Serocold and Bev Sedley, we couldn't quite work out what all the different flavours were - the combination was a treat. Following the soup, the main course was a fascinating mezze of sprouting broccoli, Baba Ghanouj, Unidentified-Greenish-Dip, kale crisps and other tasty tidbits. The desert was fruit crumble or chocolatey-biscuit thing. All courses were delicious and well worth the wait. The fact that this food would otherwise have been squashed beneath plastic in a hole in the ground somewhere as methane-oozing goo made one particularly appreciate it.

Many thanks to Jennie and all volunteers for liberating that feast for us!

Creative Communities

Last weekend I was helping to organise the Creative Communities event, a Cambridge Carbon Footprint event led by Amy Ross and supported by Kate Honey and a few other fantastic people from a range of inter-faith backgrounds. The idea of the event was to get people from different religions to get together, and talk about how our beliefs affect our engagement with issues around the environment.

The idea is that all of us have something in common - a belief in something greater than us, which could be a way to find the inspiration and resources to make the necessary changes if we are to live consistently with what needs to be done to prevent further climate disasters. Inter-faith work can be delicate though, it's easy to find the differences before you find the commonality, and find yourselves moving further apart.

Aware of that, the event focussed on unity and used games, music and prayer to promote it. We played a match-and-chat game first of all, finding one other person with the same numbered ticket as us, and finding out more about their interest in the environment. We had some beautiful singing sessions, led by Kate, including one lovely tune that she had composed for the event. And also, a lovely pair of songs by a Baha'i gentleman called Peter.

One really remarkable thing about the day was that there were lots of children, and the event really seemed to meet their need for play and colour, thanks to the forward thinking of Portia and Jessa. They ran around and played happily throughout, reminding all of us that caring for the planet is also caring for the futures of the next generation of people.

Climate Change and the Arts: The Great Turning

Hello all! After a long break (necessitated by looming composition deadline) I am back to blog about climate change/Transition/finding solutions to pressing world issues and the arts.

Winchester Cathedral nave

Last Thursday, I took the train down to Winchester, because that evening was the world premiere of The Great Turning, a massive musical work for a choir of 120+ and orchestra, composed by June Boyce-Tillman. The Great Turning is based on Stories of the Great Turning, edited by Peter Reason and Melanie Newman: a collection of stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things to help a planet in peril.

The contributors to 'Stories of the Great Turning' include a former businessman, brought to a personal crisis by the sudden death of his wife and seeking a new direction in life; a PhD student turned whale-saving activist; a Frome-based poet who organised a Funeral for Extinct Species ceremony;  a married couple who install an innovative hydroelectric scheme at their property in Wales; a woman who launches a project to help disadvantaged young people grow vegetables in skips by King's Cross station; and a young woman who makes beautiful lingerie out of old clothes, amongst many others.

While the achievements of the contributors were not always flashy (nor always obviously 'achievements' or 'successes'), what was most heartening was that they changed the direction of the contributors' lives from life-draining to life-sustaining - a personal transformation we can see occurring planet-wide amongst individuals and communities.

Back to the music, and to Winchester Cathedral. June Boyce-Tillman is one of those fantastic contemporary composers you've never heard of (rather like all contemporary composers. New composition didn't stop with Vaughan Williams, by the way). Her specialism is in writing music that can be performed by everyone: children and singers who couldn't read music were all present in the 120+ singers who performed The Great Turning. Unlike much contemporary music, Boyce-Tillman's musical language is lyrical and accessible, while retaining emotional depth and sincerity.

The Great Turning was written for eight children's choirs, six community choirs and the Southern Sinfonia ( a professional orchestra). The work was structured in five sections, borrowing from the philosophy of one Joanna Macy: Act Your Age, Gratitude, Encountering the Darkness, Dare to Dream and Join Hands Across the World. The words were also written by Boyce-Tillman, who often lifted passages straight from the book and reworded them.

At around 8.20pm the sound of a gong resonated through the cathedral, followed by sombre, awe-inspiring chords in the heavy brass. What happened next had an extraordinary sonic effect: the children all processed down the nave,  beating together two pebbles. The sound of all the pebbles merged together into a hissing sound that swept along the cathedral, echoing into the all the recesses and up to the distant roof. As the children reached the quire, all voices were raised: 'Come, Gaian beings, we form parts of the earth. In honouring and sharing we bring new life to birth...'

The musical scope of the piece is too epic to sum up in a blog post. A high point for me was the distinctly pagan 'Glory be to Gaia', which owed much to renaissance liturgical music. There were also catchy sing-alongs for the children, such as 'Growth, *boom* growth *bang* economic growth *crash* more and more and more and more and more....' which I was humming all the way home. Probably the most succinct description of that particular economic ideology I've yet heard...

See here for Vala Publishers, the super co-operative who published Stories of the Great Turning!

Follow the van

I was recently privileged to cater for the Food for a Greener Future conference, and got to hear some great talks in the afternoon after lunch. The most interesting part for me was the workshop right at the end, where Jacky Sutton-Adam and Duncan Catchpole discussed the Transition Food Hub and invited everyone in the audience to say something about what the concept meant to them.

This was a chance to get a consensus about what Cambridge needs, how to address perceived issues with food and community, and potentially begin a new profit-making spinoff from the Transition community. The appetite in the room was clearly for a space where sustainable food could be sold - and where people could come together. There was some murmurs about including educational activities, selling CamBake bread, and a definite preference for a venue somewhere central with a shopfront that could provide a visible site.

Potential visibility is a massive benefit that I would love to see the Hub project explore, and I'm going to restate my suggestion for a mobile hub after a little bit of research.

The challenge of a static site is that property rental costs are so high in Cambridge, that it seems hard to imagine even a temporary makeshift site being affordable. And as with the Cafe Project and Cambridge Carbon Footprint, being evicted by the landlord would be quite a setback after working really hard to get people turning up. Perhaps there is a way to find a permanent home for a sustainable local food enterprise, I would love to see this, but I am afraid that it might be too well-hidden to get the custom it deserves.

I'd like to seriously think about having a Transition food truck, fitted out to run off solar energy and cooking oil, and weaving a route through business parks, community kitchens and schools. The benefit of this approach would be that the vehicle acts as both marketing and point-of-sale, popping up in the city and the villages making people think "What's that beautiful, positive, hopeful thing doing here?".

Transition doesn't have the resources to advertise heavily in the press or the busy places, but the word of mouth and social networks have a limited extent. In fact there were some legitimate concerns at the conference that the attendees were white, middle-class, middle-aged and upwards, and the message wasn't getting out beyond that very small group. A hub bus would be able to both sell to and engage with diverse groups, and learn a great deal about what is really in demand in the wider populace. Organic food is seen as expensive, vegetarian food is seen as bland, these ideas can be challenged more effectively by lunches than by lectures.

A bus or a van would also be flexible enough to respond to opportunities - travelling to festivals and invitations, while learning which areas generate enough revenue to maintain running costs. It would be able to resell on behalf of community bakeries, chefs and farms if the terms were good, perhaps even working with Outspoken couriers to fulfil deliveries for each other.

Spare room could either be used for storing additional food, seats for outdoor occasions, or projector equipment for showing Transition related films. The van might even be kitted out as a mobile library for some situations.

Financially, most of the cost would come in terms of set-up, rather than in terms of monthly expenditure. This seems more suited to the type of money that could be raised from a council or developer grant, or from investment - a predictable cost that can be budgeted, and a liquid asset.

Perhaps the team who take this on could focus on generating turnover to begin with, turning up at large office buildings with delicious food to buy, and proving the concept of the hub bus so that the outreach and education activities can be gradually brought online while keeping the balance sheet healthy. Opportunities to reduce food waste and to create community will reveal themselves every day, and a digital presence can also take shape.

The next step would be to contact green businesses who have tried similar things, The Big Lemon and Buddhafields Cafe for two examples, to seek out more advice about costs and processes. I will offer to do that myself if there is a enough interest in the idea.

The Big Lemon is a public transport company in Brighton which uses cooking oil for fuel
http://www.thebiglemon.com/aboutUs/FAQs/default.asp

A detailed breakdown of setup costs for a Food Truck in New York, in dollars.
http://upended.net/post/25574021175/foodtruckstartupcosts

Community Energy Trumps Gales and Romance

Valentines Day this year brought no let-up in the storms so I was really pleased to see about 40 people come to the Transition Cambridge Energy Group forum on Community Energy – many of them even came by bicycle.  The program featured three local schemes in various stages of completion: Mike Brettle talked about the Gamlingay Wind Turbine project, installed in May last year, Andy Rankin described the Reach Solar Farm project, now waiting for planning permission, and Stuart Dyer gave us an update on the Cambridge Community Energy company, which hasn’t definitely got a site yet but we are sure enough to go ahead and register the co-op. Also Paul Rewrie of PR Accountants described some tax breaks available to renewable energy investors. Cambridge is rather a slow starter compared to Oxford, with several installations already completed, but people commented to me how exciting it is that things are happening here too at last.

There didn’t seem to be much controversy about whether or not community energy generating schemes are a good idea. There were questions about the financial side: Can I use my pension fund to invest? (Answer yes but you won’t get all the tax breaks you do normally) and: Will you only allow local investors? (For Reach it seems that local will definitely include Cambridge).

Also there were concerns about the equipment: Which bit of a wind turbine usually fails after 20-25 years? (answer none, they may last much longer, but they are often upgraded before then anyway).

Mike made some very interesting recommendations about how to get support from local residents – their planning application got twice as many positive comments as negative ones which is amazing for a wind turbine project. The CCE scheme probably won’t need planning permission but Reach is in planning now and we are keeping our fingers crossed.

You can download some of the slides from the presentations on the CCE website here and on the Reach website here. Also both websites let you signup for a newsletter and if you are interested in helping to get CCE going let me know or use the email address on the website contact page.

The Work that Reconnects

It was a happy day for me when a mentor of mine recommended the book Active Hope by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone (see link below). Subtitled 'How to face the mess we're in without going crazy', the book is a practical guide to what is variously known as 'despair and empowerment work', and 'the work that reconnects'. The Work that Reconnects is trailblazing in its emphasis on personal transformation in this time of crisis.

In particular, the Work that Reconnects is the antidote to the frozen, numb sort of feeling that can arise when one is aware of the huge crises facing our planet, and suppresses the rage and grief that this knowledge can bring up. This suppression is quite understandable - these emotions are can be inconvenient to manage while one is attempting the stressful juggling act of 21st-century living. The rage and grief can be awkward in social settings, and one can feel the threat of being swallowed up by emotions and responsibilities unmanageable by a single, concerned individual.

It is this numbness that Joanna Macy argues is the dam in the river of interconnectedness that weaves each individual into the web of life (to mix my metaphors). It is our interconnectedness that causes us pain when rainforests are slashed and burned, when reefs are bleached, when broken Syrian families flee to refugee camps.

To quote Macy, interconnectedness is no picnic. But it is a life saver.

On February 2nd, Transition Cambridge hosted a Work that Reconnects workshop in Newnham Croft Primary School, near Paradise Nature Reserve. It was a very special and enlivening day with an eclectic range of participants (would estimate 12-15 of us; I wasn't counting). The workshop had five facilitators, from the veteran to the first-timer: Anna McIvor, Bev Sedley, Liz Serocold, Nicholas Wilkinson and Kate Honey. 

The day was modelled around the spiral of the Work that Reconnects: Gratitude, Honouring Our Pain for the World, Seeing with New Eyes and Going Forth. One exercise we participated in was completing open sentences in pairs (one scribe and one mindful listener). The sentences included 'If you knew you could not fail, what would you do for the healing of the world?' Another exercise was the Mirror Walk: one partner leads the other, who has their eyes closed, through a garden. They guide their partner to a beautiful object, which the parter explores by touch before opening their eyes. My favourite exercise was when we were all asked to mentally voice our most burning question. As we internalized this question, we wandered through Paradise Nature Reserve, and let the sights, sounds and smells of nature offer us their timeless wisdom.

May all beings be well!

Joanna Macy: 'The most remarkable feature of this historical moment on Earth is not that we are on the way to destroying the world - we've already been on the way for quite a while. It is that we are beginning to wake up, as from a millenia-long sleep, to a whole new relationship to our world, to ourselves and each other...'

http://www.activehope.info

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Active-Hope-without-Going-Crazy/dp/1577319729

Climate Change and the Arts - Gary Snyder

For me this poem encapsulates the ambiguity of the times we live in. No one alive today can predict what the world will be like in the 22nd century (imagine someone from the 19th century trying to predict the events of the 20th!) This is an area where intuition and emotional response can tell us as much as the intellect.
May we all learn to... well, I won't spoil the last three lines of the poem.

FOR THE CHILDREN

The rising hills, the slopes,
of statistics
lie before us.
the steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all
go down.

In the next century
or the one beyond that,
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.

To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:

stay together
learn the flowers
go light

--Gary Snyder

Gary Snyder (b. May 1930) was an American Beat poet,  Zen practitioner, environmentalist and
general free spirit. Google him.