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Monthly archive for September 2009
Showing results 16 - 20 of 37 for the month of September, 2009.
16 Sep 2009
Was in London yesterday for the conference of the Development Trust Association (conference programme here), a fantastic event. I was speaking in the first plenary session, but due to overall time overrun, I had to give a 20 minute talk in 10 minutes! A bit hectic but seemed to go down alright. Highlight for me though was a workshop I attended following my talk. It was chosen from a mouth-watering smorgasbord of great workshops (community food production and distribution, community sector trading, community land trusts, community energy initiatives, setting up community development trusts.. imagine… I felt like a child in a sweetshop…), and was called “Community Bonds and Shares”. It was brilliant, very thought provoking.
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15 Sep 2009
A couple of months ago we published the paper we’d been working on for a while, ‘Can Totnes and District Feed Itself?’ We had hoped to stimulate a lot of discussion on its contents, but most of the comments ended up talking about human sewage and it potential use in agriculture. Interesting, but not quite what we had been hoping for. Over the last few weeks, two excellent analyses of the report have emerged. The first is by Colin Tudge, author of, among other things, “Feeding People is Easy”, and it can be read here. It is a fascinating take on the paper, in spite of suggesting that the whole exercise was largely a waste of time! The second is a review by Patrick Whitefield, to appear in the next issue of Permaculture Magazine (see below). Be interesting to hear what you think.
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14 Sep 2009
This weekend saw the launch of the Stroud Pound. Four denominations have been published, and over at Josef Coates-Davis’s blog, he tells the story of the design of the notes.
“The notes, designed by local artist Ronan Schoemaker and produced by local currency collector Steve Charlwood, are like miniature histories of the economic and cultural life of the Five Valleys. The most prominent local celebrity to feature is Laurie Lee, author of Cider with Rosie, who was born in Stroud and is buried in the Slad Valley. Local wildlife is represented by the rare Adonis Blue butterfly found on Minchinhampton Common. Stroud’s economic heritage is commemorated by the teazle itself, while the lawnmower, invented in Stroud, the green felt cloth that is still made in the town and Thomas the Tank Engine also feature”.
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11 Sep 2009
Here is the response to the previous post. These are offered in the hope that they inspire some kind of a discussion/debate around this. Please feel free to contribute and share your thoughts. In case you missed it in yesterday’s post, you can read the MoU document that is the subject of all this conversation here.
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Was in London yesterday for the conference of the Development Trust Association (conference programme here), a fantastic event. I was speaking in the first plenary session, but due to overall time overrun, I had to give a 20 minute talk in 10 minutes! A bit hectic but seemed to go down alright. Highlight for me though was a workshop I attended following my talk. It was chosen from a mouth-watering smorgasbord of great workshops (community food production and distribution, community sector trading, community land trusts, community energy initiatives, setting up community development trusts.. imagine… I felt like a child in a sweetshop…), and was called “Community Bonds and Shares”. It was brilliant, very thought provoking. 
