Transition Willesden Core Group: minutes of 3rd May 2012

[Viv Stein]

Present: Sarah L, Marjory, Brian, Viv (chair)
Apologies: Urmi

Minutes of the previous meeting
The minutes were accepted as accurate.

Matters arising.
Brian and Viv had met to discuss ways of using the cash book to keep the group’s accounts.
Viv said there was nothing to report on the web site. She suggested that an alternative was to look at a Twitter account in the meantime and would speak with Urmi.

Logo
The draft logo produced by Ashika was discussed. Viv said she would come back on this with feed-back from members’ comments.

Allotments
Sarah agreed to submit a group response to Brent’s allotment strategy being conducted by Brent Council after she had consulted the core group members.
Marjory reported she had been asked to give a talk at Willesden Green library for people on the allotment list on 21st May.
Willesden Green Library Development
Viv said there were two meetings coming up and she would circulate details.
Willesden Green Town Team
Viv reported she had attended the first meeting of this new forum, and learned there was community development funding. She would report further.
Development of the Sainsbury site.
Viv said she was still waiting to hear from Sainsbury’s and would up-date the group as appropriate.
Bread-making workshop at St. Mungo’s
Marjory reported that it would be possible to have a bread-making event at St. Mungo’s with local baker Vincent. Viv and Marjory agreed to have a look at the facilities. Viv mentioned the potential of building cob-ovens. Sarah said she knew of one allotment where the cob-oven had become the ‘centre of life’.

Gladstonbury Festival
Viv reported that she had not heard any news on this to-date.
Next Public Meeting: showing of the film ‘‘The Economics of Happiness”
Viv reported that she had the DVD of the film.  We agreed to hold it at St. Mungo’s on Thursday 17th May.
The practical arrangements for the meeting and how it would be organised on the night and before hand were then discussed at length.

Green Coffee morning
Marjory said she would be holding a Green Coffee morning on Thursday 10th May and would put up a poster at the venue. Brian said he would go along.
Meeting with Brent’s bio-diversity officer
Brian said he had finally got round to meeting up with Leslie Williams only to find he had been promoted to a more senior position in Brent’s Parks and Gardens department. Marion Hoffman had taken over Leslie’s bio-diversity responsibilities. Both officers were present.
Brian reported that he had taken the initiative at the meeting to highlight the general difficulty TW had with finding venues for holding public meetings and had suggested to Marion and Leslie that this might be partially solved by TW partnering Brent’s Sustainability Forum from time to time on matters where there was a common interest. Brian reported that this was received positively by both the council officers.

Viv responded by saying that she thought the notice for taking on a BSF meeting on June 12th was too short.  She thought that we should concentrate on activities in the local area before seeking to spread the Transition Town message over the whole of Brent, and wondered if the Sustainability Forum would be our priority, as we had discounted this at the last core meeting. Brian replied that he had be motivated by the idea of spreading the message as widely as possible bearing in mind this was an accepted objective of the movement.

Viv said the proposal would have been more attractive if the Council had offered to make the Willesden Green Library facilities available as part of the arrangement because this would have attracted a much higher proportion of local residents.

Sarah said that it was not healthy to spend most of one’s efforts in just promoting the theory behind a movement like TT with little or no practical experience to underpin the theorising, as she had discovered in her previous job advising government departments.
It was agreed that Brian should let Marion and Leslie know that the proposal was premature and probably not in TW’s immediate interests.

Brian said on the positive side of the meeting, Leslie had reported that the Council had decided to move towards a more biodiversity-friendly policy for their parks and gardens and had also signed up to a national scheme involving identifying local ‘green’ sites that had potential for benefiting from positive conservation management.

The meeting agreed that the change in the policy on parks and gardens was very welcome and we should look for ways in which TW could participate in the ‘green’ site initiative.

 

Future meetings
The next meeting after the film showing was planned to be on Fruit Harvesting and was expected to be in late June or early July.

 

The approach of TW’s first anniversary.
Marjory drew attention to the imminent anniversary of the first public meeting organised by TW. Self-congratulations were exchanged on the thought that TW was still going forward constructively after a year of solid activity.

Next meeting.
It was agreed this would be again at Sarah’s and would be held on Thursday 31st May.