Everyone's Blog Posts - Transition Kensal to Kilburn2024-03-19T07:23:28Zhttp://ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com/profiles/blog/feed?xn_auth=noCapital City Academytag:ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com,2022-07-13:3499303:BlogPost:1644052022-07-13T09:48:18.000ZNick Hartleyhttp://ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com/profile/NickHartley
<p>The solar PV installation at Capital City Academy has been running since June 17 and they will be reaping the benefits of reduced electricity bills in the region of £15,000 p.a. There are still some details to be sorted out like a display system in reception to show solar data, etc. and an export power purchase agreement. After that we'll carry on with our next project or two. Possibilities are Preston Manor school Wembley, Gladstone Park school and Willesden sports centre. Ideally, we go…</p>
<p>The solar PV installation at Capital City Academy has been running since June 17 and they will be reaping the benefits of reduced electricity bills in the region of £15,000 p.a. There are still some details to be sorted out like a display system in reception to show solar data, etc. and an export power purchase agreement. After that we'll carry on with our next project or two. Possibilities are Preston Manor school Wembley, Gladstone Park school and Willesden sports centre. Ideally, we go for community sites with large roof areas and daytime use, such as schools, offices, community sports or medical centres. The other key factor is to find an on-site enthusiast for renewables, a 'local champion' who can help persuade the 'powers that be' that solar PV is a good way to combat climate change and reduce energy bills</p>
<p>More details available at brentpureenergy.org.uk By the way, we got an Eco award from Brent council for the Capital City installation!</p>£1000 available for Kensal to Kilburn community project ideastag:ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com,2021-04-15:3499303:BlogPost:1614772021-04-15T20:30:00.000ZTransition Kensal to Kilburnhttp://ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com/profile/ttkk
<p>£1000 available for Kensal to Kilburn community project ideas</p>
<p>Transition Town Kensal to Kilburn (TTKK) is inviting local residents to take part in a competition this spring.</p>
<p>Our volunteer organisation has created three grants - one £500 grant and two £250 grants.</p>
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<p>To enter the competition, participants need to fulfill the following criteria :<br></br> - live in the Kensal to Kilburn area,<br></br> - submit an idea for a community project that would benefit residents…</p>
<p>£1000 available for Kensal to Kilburn community project ideas</p>
<p>Transition Town Kensal to Kilburn (TTKK) is inviting local residents to take part in a competition this spring.</p>
<p>Our volunteer organisation has created three grants - one £500 grant and two £250 grants.</p>
<p></p>
<p>To enter the competition, participants need to fulfill the following criteria :<br/> - live in the Kensal to Kilburn area,<br/> - submit an idea for a community project that would benefit residents living in the area, <br/> - be ready to turn the project into action this year.</p>
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<p>The projects submitted need to bring people together and protect the environment. The grants will finance the material costs of the successful bids.</p>
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<p>TTTKK, a local volunteer group created in 2009 and advocating a transition to an environmentally friendly way of life, is particularly keen to get some young people enter the competition. One of the £250 grants will be allocated to a resident under 25 years old. <br/> However, the group is generally looking for new people of all ages and origins to create a more resilient local community in the face of climate change.</p>
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<p><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><strong>Inject new energy into the group by submitting project ideas</strong></span><br/> Over the last decade, TTKK volunteers have made a positive impact in the Kensal to Kilburn area by setting up community gardens, harvesting fruit every summer, planting trees and organising regular electric and electronic repair events etc.</p>
<p>Some TTKK members have also created their own separate organisations to take their project further. For example, Brent Pure Energy is a community benefit society that has been funding solar panels for local schools since 2016.</p>
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<p><strong>Fruit harvesting group</strong></p>
<p><a href="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/8799369501?profile=original" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/8799369501?profile=RESIZE_710x" width="360" class="align-full" height="270"/></a></p>
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<p>“As we are coming out of lockdown, we would like to inject some new energy into our group of dedicated volunteers”, says Janey McAllester, one of the fruit picking group leaders. “Making the most of our local community and environment has brought us a lot of satisfaction and joy. We want to create more opportunities for fellow residents to enjoy the benefits of a life deeply rooted in our local area”, adds Amandine Alexandre, another TTKK volunteer.</p>
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<p><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>How to apply</strong></span></p>
<p>People can enter the competition by submitting their idea by email before Monday June 7th (michael.stuart6@googlemail.com).</p>
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<p><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><strong>Please apply with up to 100 words about your idea, yourself, the road you live in, how it would work, what help you would need or like and how long you think it will take for you to complete the project.</strong></span></p>
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<p>Projects that meet the criteria will be shortlisted by local people voting at a meeting on June 23rd in the evening and then Transition Town Kensal to Kilburn will select the three best projects.</p>
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<p><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><strong>Support we can offer</strong></span><br/> TTKK can help people find others interested in making their idea happen and help with advice. “We are happy to provide feedback and help develop and present the project”, underlines Michael Stuart, a founding member of TTKK.</p>
<p><br/> Expenses are reimbursed against receipts or we can pay for items directly so prize winners are not out of pocket. If your project costs less than the full amount the money will be reallocated to extra projects.</p>
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<p>Unfortunately, you can't apply if you are:<br/> - an organisation - individuals or small groups of individuals only please,<br/> - if your idea should be covered by statutory funding (as in health care and social care funded by the government and local authorities), <br/> - If you are promoting religion.</p>
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<p>TTKK can be contacted via Michael Stuart. You can email him at: michael.stuart6@googlemail.com</p>
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<p></p>Extinxtion Rebelliontag:ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com,2018-10-12:3499303:BlogPost:885462018-10-12T16:31:18.000ZCollobosshttp://ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com/profile/Colloboss
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Hello All</span></p>
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<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">I’m contacting you from Extinction Rebellion, a major direct action campaign set to begin this November. Our demands to the government are simple. We want UK carbon emissions reduced to ZERO and the global ecological overshoot decreased to half a planet by 2025. We want the reversal of policies and practices that are causing the sixth mass extinction of life on this planet. And, we want a national…</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Hello All</span></p>
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<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">I’m contacting you from Extinction Rebellion, a major direct action campaign set to begin this November. Our demands to the government are simple. We want UK carbon emissions reduced to ZERO and the global ecological overshoot decreased to half a planet by 2025. We want the reversal of policies and practices that are causing the sixth mass extinction of life on this planet. And, we want a national citizens’ assembly to be formed to implement these demands. This crisis is not just environmental or economic - it is political.</span></p>
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<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">From the 12th November onwards, we will block roads, do sit-ins, graffiti walls and occupy buildings, all of it peacefully and non-violently. Many of us will get arrested and even go to prison, clogging up the justice system. With small direct actions, every participant counts, even a small group. This isn’t something the government or the media will be able to ignore. We will also need people for non-arrestable action and behind-the-scenes organisation.</span></p>
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<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">If this is in line with your group’s/organisation’s values, then these are the ways you could support us:</span></p>
<ol>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Share the event pages of our direct actions with all your members through social media and email.</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br/></span><a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/1588038141300204/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">https://www.facebook.com/events/1588038141300204/</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br/></span></a><a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/1909607045823806/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">https://www.facebook.com/events/1909607045823806/</span></a></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Endorse XR officially and organise an autonomous event with your own group/organisation on the days of direct action.</span></li>
</ol>
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<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">We would love to have a chat with you about ways our groups could liaise. Please reply to this email or come to our next networking meeting on the 18th October (</span> <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/1909607045823806/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">https://www.facebook.com/events/1909607045823806/</span></a> <span style="font-weight: 400;">).</span></p>
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<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">If you want to find out more, check out our facebook page (</span><a href="https://www.facebook.com/ExtinctionRebellion"><span style="font-weight: 400;">https://www.facebook.com/ExtinctionRebellion</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">) and twitter account @ExtinctionR (</span><a href="https://twitter.com/extinctionr?lang=en"><span style="font-weight: 400;">https://twitter.com/extinctionr?lang=en</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">).</span></p>
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<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Thank you for any support you can give.</span></p>
<p>Ben</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Extinction Rebellion</span></p>The Big Dig 2018 - Queens Park Allotmenttag:ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com,2018-04-24:3499303:BlogPost:873552018-04-24T20:36:13.000ZHelene Lateyhttp://ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com/profile/HeleneLatey
<p>My daughter holds a caterpillar in her hand, determined to take the pale, earth covered creature home as a newly beloved addition to our family. She proudly introduces ‘Pillar’ around the group of gardeners who, taking a rest from shovelling farm yard manure onto the allotment beds, lean on tool handles and smile indulgently in turn. We all wonder whether it will become a moth or a butterfly, and we all want it far, far away from our budding vegetable plots.…</p>
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<p>My daughter holds a caterpillar in her hand, determined to take the pale, earth covered creature home as a newly beloved addition to our family. She proudly introduces ‘Pillar’ around the group of gardeners who, taking a rest from shovelling farm yard manure onto the allotment beds, lean on tool handles and smile indulgently in turn. We all wonder whether it will become a moth or a butterfly, and we all want it far, far away from our budding vegetable plots.</p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404533752?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404533752?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center" height="317"></a></p>
<p>It’s the day of the Big Dig at Queens Park Allotment, the annual get together to spruce up the plots and get ready for the gardening year ahead. After a long winter, punctuated by snow days and frosts, the soil is finally waking up and the weeds are poking belligerently through – a sure sign that it’s time to move from planning into seed sowing action.</p>
<p>Maggie Turp, the organiser of the community gardening group, has coordinated delivery of new bark chip for the paths and enormous bags of dark rich manure to feed the beds, both generously donated by the park staff. As a group of around 10-15 gardeners we make short work of these supplies. Soon the allotment transforms from its slightly bedraggled post winter state into an ordered space of trim paths and lush looking plots awaiting fresh new growth.</p>
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<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404534712?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404534712?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center" height="505"></a></p>
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<p>As we shovel, weed and dig we discuss our growing plans for the year. One plot owner has decided to keep things simple – planting only squash, turnips and parsnips. He is a patient man, sowing in the blossom filled spring with dreams of roasted vegetables in the autumn and winter months. Other members of the group have only just acquired a plot and have the recognisable shiny eyed zeal of the newly initiated. They want to plant as many different types of plants as could possibly fit in their allotted rectangle.</p>
<p>A couple, who have been industriously working away at their plot despite the colder months, already have a harvest on their hands: an abundant crop of purple sprouting broccoli. They kindly share the produce around and we all manage to take a little bit of the first harvest of the year home with us.</p>
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<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404536867?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404536867?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center" height="347"></a></p>
<p>By the time I’m ready to leave, the farm yard manure has been distributed across the site, the emptied canvas bags piled high by the compost bins. I’ve checked the tiny seedlings bursting through the soil in my shared plot and, following a quick weather check, have given them some water from the water butt. Invigorated by the work and with a bag of freshly picked vegetables in tow I feel the satisfaction that seems to come hand in hand with communal allotment gardening.</p>
<p>Waving my goodbyes to the group I see that Maggie is in the process of digging trenches in one of the three communal beds, demonstrating how to sow seed potatoes. I can’t wait to see how the garden will evolve and emerge over the coming months. My daughter can’t wait to see how ‘Pillar’ will evolve and emerge over the coming months, from its new home in our privet hedge.</p>
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<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404537754?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404537754?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center" height="419"></a></p>
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<p></p>Kilburn Tube Station Planters - New Plantingstag:ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com,2018-04-24:3499303:BlogPost:875632018-04-24T20:15:46.000ZHelene Lateyhttp://ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com/profile/HeleneLatey
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404534162?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-center" height="381" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404534162?profile=original" width="509"></img></a></p>
<p>Standing with my two feet firmly stationed on the brick walls of the raised bed, I bend down, grab the underside of the large root ball and lift a sage plant high up into my arms, dirt loosening and crumbling down beneath it. The herb has reached shrub like proportions and I can barely see around its woody stems as I cradle its mass against my chest. As I jump…</p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404534162?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404534162?profile=original" width="509" class="align-center" height="381"></a></p>
<p>Standing with my two feet firmly stationed on the brick walls of the raised bed, I bend down, grab the underside of the large root ball and lift a sage plant high up into my arms, dirt loosening and crumbling down beneath it. The herb has reached shrub like proportions and I can barely see around its woody stems as I cradle its mass against my chest. As I jump carefully down onto the station platform, the leaves crush against my face and I get a beautiful hit of aroma, reminding me of Sunday roasts. As I carry my load towards its new home in the herb bed a train pulls into the station. The doors open with the familiar whoosh and people emerge from inside, umbrellas popping open into the air above their heads. The other gardening volunteers, busy digging, sowing and planting look up and laugh at the image of me traipsing down the platform, heaving a massive shrub and covered in mud, surrounded by Sunday train travellers.</p>
<p>It’s a rainy afternoon at Kilburn station but we, the “Kilburn Station Planters”, have big plans for the community garden on the platform and we’re intent on braving the increasing levels of mud. Founded six years ago by members of Transition Town Kensal to Kilburn, the station garden is completely open to the public and consists of four raised beds filled with edible plants, available to be harvested by passers-by.</p>
<p>Our plans today are to create a more structured theme for each of the beds. There will be one bed for herbs, one for fruit and vegetables, one for foraging plants and one for ‘tea’ plants (i.e. plants you can make infusions out of such as camomile, yarrow and echinacea). This garden revamp includes gently moving existing plants from one bed to another as well as introducing completely new plants to the mix. With a wonderful turn out of new volunteers to help, we plant chives, lavender, rhubarb and thyme. We also sow spinach, nasturtiums, marigolds and sunflowers and we transplant garlic mustard, strawberries and Jerusalem artichoke tubers. We note that the lemon balm and valerian are doing well in the tea bed and that the almond tree has come into blossom, its pale pink flowers opened to the torrential rain.</p>
<p>We take a short break and huddle, mud splattered and hair plastered to our heads, in the little station kitchen. Sharing some homemade pastries and cups of tea we chat cosily about the garden and the local area. We outline future plans such as tea making workshops, where we would harvest leaves from the station ‘tea bed’. We also discuss getting some signs put into the garden to inform the public of the new planting themes.</p>
<p>Getting back to the job at hand we’re interrupted by a woman about to get on a train. She tells us that she is so grateful for the work that we do, that seeing the plants and flowers is the highlight of her daily commute to work. We’re all heartened by this feedback, to know that we’re not only enriching our lives by volunteering for the group but are enriching the lives of our local community.</p>
<p>Soon enough the job is done for the day. There will be more new plantings over the coming months but the majority of the changes have been completed and we’re all thrilled. As I firm the sage plant down into its new home, knowing that the rain will settle its roots into the soil, I look across the station, reviewing the four raised beds. They have that fresh look of all newly planted gardens, a ‘just wait and see’ storing of energy, ready to burst into verdant lush life.</p>
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<p>To get involved come and join us at Kilburn Jubilee line Station on the first Sunday of the month from 11am-12:30. No need to oyster in, just sign in at the station office, telling them you’re there to garden.</p>Brent Pure Energy - updatetag:ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com,2018-03-17:3499303:BlogPost:873372018-03-17T09:42:43.000ZNick Hartleyhttp://ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com/profile/NickHartley
<p>If any of you reading this work at, have contacts or influence at these places, please get in touch with me:</p>
<p>Alperton, ARK Elvin, Capital City, JFS, Kilburn Park, Kingsbury, Leopold, Michaela, Preston Manor, Wembley primary, Wykeham (Schools) Wembley High Technology College</p>
<p>Chalkhill, Lonsdale, Wembley Health & Care, (Medical/Community centres)</p>
<p>Willesden Sports Centre</p>
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<p>Now read on to find out why.....</p>
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<p>Our first installation on Queens…</p>
<p>If any of you reading this work at, have contacts or influence at these places, please get in touch with me:</p>
<p>Alperton, ARK Elvin, Capital City, JFS, Kilburn Park, Kingsbury, Leopold, Michaela, Preston Manor, Wembley primary, Wykeham (Schools) Wembley High Technology College</p>
<p>Chalkhill, Lonsdale, Wembley Health & Care, (Medical/Community centres)</p>
<p>Willesden Sports Centre</p>
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<p>Now read on to find out why.....</p>
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<p>Our first installation on Queens Park Community School has been up and running for 18 months now. The 198 PV panels on their science block have produced 47,500 kWh of electricity in the first year of operation. The installer's model predicted 42,129 kWh, so that's good news! We get a guaranteed 12p/kWh Feed-in-Tariff for it plus 5p/kWh sale to the school, which makes our financial model work: we pay interest to our 35 member-investors and repay capital (up to 5% p.a. on demand) . Running costs include insurance, maintenance, accountancy and a fund to replace the inverters after 10 years. This still leaves some surplus for our community benefit fund which should total about £1000 a year. Applications for local green project funding will be considered. </p>
<p>Imagine then the problem when the FIT was reduced to 4.5p/kWh at the beginning of 2018! This time next year the FIT disappears altogether. So much for the government's environmental commitment. Well, we can still just about make the model work by increasing the sales tariff to 7.5 p/kWh and reducing the interest offered to members. We're trying to interest as many potential community sites in Brent as possible and have written to 14 schools, 2 medical centres and a sports centre. Sadly, there tends to be nil response in the first instance. Forget technical issues or fund raising, persuading organisations to lease us their roof space proves to be very difficult! Despite the offer of electricity savings worth several hundred or thousand pounds, an innate resistance to new technology, a search for trivial reasons to reject the offer (reflection of light from panels annoying neighbours has been cited), perhaps a climate change denial attitude or refusal to do anything about, it kick in!</p>
<p>We do have interest from The Avenues Youth Project and are awaiting confirmation.</p>
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<p>Many thanks,</p>
<p>Nick Hartley</p>
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<p> </p>Foraging at the Cemeterytag:ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com,2017-05-08:3499303:BlogPost:831322017-05-08T20:59:46.000ZHelene Lateyhttp://ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com/profile/HeleneLatey
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<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404544766?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-center" height="336" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404544766?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750"></img></a></p>
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<p>Aged gravestones, inscriptions effaced by time, sit heavily at angles in ancient rows. Carved angels and women, draped in sorrow, melt into the stone plaques, their faces covered in lichen, their feet hidden in tufts of grass. Surrounding, covering and emerging from these stony beds: the unstoppable verdant life of goosegrass, bramble, hawthorn and…</p>
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<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404544766?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404544766?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center" height="336"></a></p>
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<p>Aged gravestones, inscriptions effaced by time, sit heavily at angles in ancient rows. Carved angels and women, draped in sorrow, melt into the stone plaques, their faces covered in lichen, their feet hidden in tufts of grass. Surrounding, covering and emerging from these stony beds: the unstoppable verdant life of goosegrass, bramble, hawthorn and nettles. Cherry trees, dandelions and ground elder. Between crumbling graves stands a proud lime tree, flushed with new spring growth. Beneath this tree I stand together with a group of people, hands stretching eagerly upwards to meet drooping branches. Searching through glossy leaves, fingers dismiss the large heart-shaped leaves for the younger tender greens newly forming at the branch tips. Prizes secured we examine the specimens in our hands, scrutinizing their form, texture and scent. And then, with a mixture of bravery and trepidation we place the vibrant green leaves into our mouths and chew. Mouths working, heads nodding, we perform the thoughtful, purposeful chew of people attempting to work out a new flavour, and deciding whether or not we like it. With mutters and murmurs of assent we add more lime leaves to a bowl that’s filling with foraged greens for our communal salad.</p>
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<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404546232?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404546232?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center" height="294"></a></p>
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<p>We’re not actors performing in some post zombie apocalypse survival movie, we’re a bunch of Londoners on a foraging walk through Old Paddington Cemetery on Willesden Lane, Kilburn. The walk is led by Michael Stuart, local resident and core member of Transition Town Kensal to Kilburn. It is Michael who has taught us to choose the smaller lime leaves, explaining that, just as with the “bread and cheese” hawthorn leaves, the younger the leaf the tastier it will be. It is Michael who also teaches us the diuretic properties of the dandelions clustered at our feet and Michael who warns us to avoid the deadly Hemlock, killer of Socrates and ignorant foragers alike.</p>
<p>Michael was introduced to foraging through blackberry picking expeditions as a child. This yearly tradition eventually led him to start the local fruit harvesting group, Kensal to Kilburn Fruit Harvesters, which nurtured his growing concern for avoiding food waste. Members of other fruit harvesting groups that Michael connected with encouraged him to join foraging walks in and around London. Embarking on his first edible plant exploration five years ago, Michael has since become a seasoned forager, building his knowledge from year to year. Now he leads his own walks, sharing his expertise and passion for foraging through regular ambles with the general public and nearby school groups through his local patch at Old Paddington Cemetery.</p>
<p>It is at the gates of the cemetery that around forty people gathered on a recent Sunday afternoon, bags and notebooks ready, eager to harvest and learn. Michael started the walk through showing and describing his favourite foraged treat: bittercress. Full of flavour this small leaved smidge of a plant grows almost everywhere and seems particularly well adapted to an urban environment. Michael says to look “where the wall meets the pavement” as this is where you’re likely to find bittercress waiting to be snapped up. This introduction highlights how foraging awakens a completely different way of seeing and responding to the world, encouraging a deeper multisensory experience with our environment. Those straggly weeds growing feebly between the concrete cracks become tasty snacks. The cemetery, a place of sombre peace, dog walkers and quiet wanderers, becomes a veritable food store. I see different layers of reality coexisting in one space, superimposed upon each other, with the knowledge gained on our foraging walk unveiling an edible world, previously obscured by a curtain of ignorance that denoted these plants as worthless weeds.</p>
<p>Michael’s knowledge seems boundless as he introduces us to plant after plant, explaining the variety of culinary uses, the etymology of the plant names, and historical footnotes such as their introduction to Britain. From Michael we learn that Ground Elder was brought here by the Romans, probably as a food crop, but that it has now been reduced to a floor covering, edible, weed. Lesser Celandine was once connected to the ‘Doctrine of Signatures’ its pile shaped tubers once thought to cure the aforementioned bodily discomfort that its form resembles. We also learn about an inconspicuous plant called “garlic mustard” so called for the two distinct flavours of the leaf that, just as when Alice tastes the shrinking potion, come in sequential order: garlic...and then mustard.</p>
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<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404548638?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404548638?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center" height="318"></a></p>
<p>Michael does warn us that he has built his extensive knowledge slowly, gaining complete confidence in identifying around one new plant per guided foraging walk. This is said not to deter us from pursuing our plant hunting adventures but to highlight that it is common sense/important to really know what you’re doing when eating wild plants, or to be with someone who knows what they’re doing until you build solid knowledge for yourself.</p>
<p>Having said this, Michael explains that he values the regaining and passing on of knowledge that foraging entails and throughout the walk he encourages people to share any experience they may have. Many of the plants we look at and taste would once have formed a common part of peoples’ diets, perhaps providing essential nutrients as the winter stores waned and the new farming year was just beginning. The knowledge of how and when to forage for them, how best to eat them, and, importantly, where to find them, would have been passed down from generation to generation in the times before supermarkets, refrigeration...and going back even further, before agriculture.</p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404549530?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404549530?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center" height="512"></a></p>
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<p>Michael, sitting on a tree stump, garlic mustard and hogweed rising around his feet, branches of nearby shrubs partially obscuring his face, seems to morph into an urban variation of the mythical green man. It occurs to me then that foraging creates a bond between forager and place, a connection that intertwines nature, the seasons and a particular locality with the person who forages within that space. Michael has created a hand drawn map of the cemetery marked and keyed to denote what grows where and when. Built over the last few years, it is a beautiful representation of his ties with this particular place. His foraging knowledge and mapping extend beyond the cemetery patch into the wider North West London area; he knows where to find local almond trees, birch trees (to make birch water syrup) and also knows the location of one of the five Stone Pine trees (for pine nuts) that currently grow within the borough of Brent – also knowing when to harvest the nuts before the squirrels get to them! Michael is not the only forager on the walk who describes his or her foraging ground as their ‘local patch”. Others discuss their foraging routes with equal familiarity and warmth. One man regularly runs a foraging circuit of Hampstead Heath. Starting with an empty backpack he runs and stops to forage at his known patches, arriving home with a full backpack ready to make a freshly foraged soup.</p>
<p>The walk finishes with us back at the local pub eating our delicious foraged salad and reading through foraging cook books. I take the opportunity to ask some of those around the table what has brought them to the walk today. One fellow forager runs a local restaurant and has come to see if she can include locally foraged food into her cuisine. Another is an experienced forager who takes every opportunity to gain further knowledge. He foragers because he believes in the health benefits of increasing the variety of freshly picked seasonal food into our otherwise potentially stagnant supermarket restricted diets. Yet another, when asked why she enjoys foraging, states simply that “it’s free!” and connects this back to her interest in “Freeganism” – a whole different level of foraging that would need a blog post to itself!</p>
<p>On the walk Michael had crouched beside a clump of chives growing happily amidst the nettles and ground elder. He termed this herb an “escapee”, laughingly describing how he imagined this domestic plant “jumping” to freedom from a local back garden into the wild. I reflect on our walk through the cemetery, goosegrass plastered to our coats, bags full of wild greens and mouths chewing on blackberry buds as we move amongst the trees. We are human escapees leaping from the urban streets of London to reconnect with our wilder beginnings. But afterwards in the pub we leave our hunter gatherer past behind us and search through botanical books to identify a plant picked up by one of the walkers. In the end the book falls short and it is through crushing and smelling the small green rosette that we discover it to be camomile (another garden escapee?!) I say my goodbyes and, with a recipe for sorrel and wild strawberry smoothies in my head, I walk home from the pub observing, somewhat proudly, the chickweed and bittercress growing where “the wall hits the pavement”. </p>
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<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404550667?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404550667?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center" height="517"></a></p>Kilburn Station Book Exchangetag:ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com,2017-04-08:3499303:BlogPost:827942017-04-08T20:02:25.000ZHelene Lateyhttp://ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com/profile/HeleneLatey
<p></p>
<p>The bookshelf is a series of lime green squares, each holding a haphazard collection of books. Titles range from ‘Hermeneutic Philosophy and the Sociology of Art’ to ‘Around Bruges in 80 Beers’, from ‘Fundamentals of Industrial Administration Vol. 1’ to ‘Dragon Bones’. I crouch with curiosity, head tipped to read the vertical spines. My fingers track through tall hardbacks and thin dog eared paperbacks as I assess the titles, often pulling books out to read the blurb. I’m at the…</p>
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<p>The bookshelf is a series of lime green squares, each holding a haphazard collection of books. Titles range from ‘Hermeneutic Philosophy and the Sociology of Art’ to ‘Around Bruges in 80 Beers’, from ‘Fundamentals of Industrial Administration Vol. 1’ to ‘Dragon Bones’. I crouch with curiosity, head tipped to read the vertical spines. My fingers track through tall hardbacks and thin dog eared paperbacks as I assess the titles, often pulling books out to read the blurb. I’m at the Kilburn Station Book Exchange, a recent addition to the station and one that’s grabbed my attention every time I go there to garden on the platform. Around me, people tap in and out of the ticket barrier while others queue to top up oysters. I remain perching low in front of the shelves, oblivious to this human traffic, lost in a reverie of books and the stories that they tell.</p>
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<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404542901?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404542901?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center" height="292"></a></p>
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<p>It isn’t only the stories told through print that interest me. I love book exchanges for the hidden back stories contained within the physical object of the book. My imagination gets to work: how did these books get here? Why were they abandoned? Has the chemist finished their studies and bought new, more recent reference books? Or did those textbooks belong to someone who gave up science long ago - someone who found them hidden in some dusty box, a painful reminder of forgotten dreams not realised? Or perhaps a local college just had a clear out. And who will pick these books up next? I see threads of knowledge interwoven from person to person as books pass from hand to public shelf to hand, a shuttle weaving ideas and stories from mind to mind, a tapestry whose common thread is the Kilburn Station commuters.</p>
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<p>Suddenly I become aware of legs standing next to me. Looking up I see a tall man with white hair holding a handful of books and a stamp. He looks down at me and asks, slightly awkwardly, “Are you Helene?” I stand up abruptly and extend my hand. “Yes, and you must be Gerry.” Gerry Weston , a core member of the local Mapesbury Residents Association, is the brain behind the book exchange and is still the main co-ordinator, regularly replenishing the shelves with donations from the local area.</p>
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<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404544640?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404544640?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center" height="293"></a></p>
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<p>I watch as he stamps each book before placing them on the shelves. “To stop people from just taking them to sell on” he explains. Sitting over steaming coffees a little later Gerry tells me that he was initially inspired by the Acton Central station pop-up library. Then Cricklewood library co-ordinated with Willesden Green station and set up one there. Gerry thought – why not have one at his local station in Kilburn? Lia Colacicco, local councillor, took the initiative with Carl Painter, the Kilburn Station manager, supporting the idea; so Gerry and his wife, after struggling with the flat pack bookshelf, set up the book exchange in January this year.</p>
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<p>Since then book donations have arrived from around the local community, including contributions from Cricklewood library and four stacks of books handed on from the Cricklewood station book exchange. While Gerry is still having to make regular visits to restock the shelves he hopes that “soon it will become self-sustaining” as people return books or bring their own used books on their way to the train.</p>
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<p>In the days of e-books and public library closures there is something so reassuring about this humble bookshelf at the station. It’s also exciting in its unpredictability. Unlike a traditional library there’s no reference system, no way to locate a specific book. It’s a lucky dip that ignites the treasure hunter in me, the thrill of finding that jewel of a book that will contribute to my life in some small or large way. And in this book, maybe a stranger’s name inscribed on the endpapers - a reminder that someone else’s life also contains the imprint of this book, a reminder that knowledge and stories are shared experiences.</p>
<p>This random nature of a public book exchange is, for me, a celebration of human diversity unfettered by formal structures or exclusivity. It makes me think of something Virginia Woolf wrote when asked to answer the question “How should one read a book?” She says:</p>
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<p><i> After all, what laws can be laid down about books?.....To admit authorities, however heavily furred and gowned, into our libraries and let them tell us how to read, what to read, what value to place upon what we read, is to destroy the spirit of freedom which is the breath of those sanctuaries. Everywhere else we may be bound by laws and conventions- there we have none.<a title=""><b>[i]</b></a></i></p>
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<p>With libraries becoming increasingly scarce perhaps it will become more and more the role of pop-up libraries and book exchanges such as the one at Kilburn Station to provide us with these “sanctuaries” where we are free to explore the world and our humanity through the act of reading.</p>
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<p>Our coffees now reduced to cooling puddles at the bottom of our cups Gerry declares that he needs to go and help someone prune their apple tree. Before he runs off I ask him, “What are you reading at the moment?” Elena Ferrante, an Italian saga, is the answer. He’s also quite into thrillers, Ian Rankin being a favourite. I shake my head, no I haven’t read these. After he’s gone I reflect, with gratitude, that while Gerry and I both share a love of books we have each had individual reading ‘journeys’. We have read different books, learnt different things, while navigating through the “conglomeration and huddle of confusion”<a title="">[ii]</a> that is the world of print. Without such differences, how could a book exchange flourish and function?</p>
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<p>A couple of weeks after this meeting I come to the station for my monthly gardening. This time I come charged with a handful of books, already read and no longer needed. I place them in a gap on the shelf and entrust them to the vagaries of the Kilburn public. One person’s discarded book, another person’s unputdownable page turner.</p>
<p> <a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404546186?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404546186?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center" height="302"></a></p>
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<p><b>Please bring your used and no longer needed books to Kilburn Station and stock up the shelves of the Kilburn Station Book Exchange. Feel free to browse and take a book too!</b></p>
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<p><a title="">[i]</a> Virginia Woolf, <i>How Should One Read A Book</i>, 1932. From “On Reading, Writing and Living with Books”, pg 7-8 The London Library, Pushkin Press, 2016</p>
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<p><a title="">[ii]</a> Virginia Woolf, <i>How Should One Read A Book</i>, 1932. From “On Reading, Writing and Living with Books”, pg 8 The London Library, Pushkin Press, 2016</p>
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</div>Refugee Allotments at Queens Park Allotmenttag:ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com,2017-03-28:3499303:BlogPost:827872017-03-28T20:16:39.000ZHelene Lateyhttp://ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com/profile/HeleneLatey
<p></p>
<p><i>“We journey towards a home not of our flesh. Its chestnut trees are not of our bones.”</i></p>
<p><i> </i>– Mahmoud Darwish <b>We Journey Towards Home<a title=""><b>[i]</b></a></b></p>
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<p><i>“My hometown, like the stars just blinking on,</i></p>
<p><i>Is somewhere on the other side of a wide, wide river …</i></p>
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<p><i>“We journey towards a home not of our flesh. Its chestnut trees are not of our bones.”</i></p>
<p><i> </i>– Mahmoud Darwish <b>We Journey Towards Home<a title=""><b>[i]</b></a></b></p>
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<p><i>“My hometown, like the stars just blinking on,</i></p>
<p><i>Is somewhere on the other side of a wide, wide river -</i></p>
<p><i>More sensation, more memory than town.”</i><i> </i></p>
<p><i> </i> –Hahm Dong-Seon <b>Journal in Jumunjin<a title=""><b>[ii]</b></a></b></p>
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<p>Spades cut rhythmically into the soil, collect their quota of crumbling earth, sweep horizontally through the air and tip their charge into the raised beds. It’s a bright spring Saturday at Queens Park allotment when a group of us perform this industrious dance: dig, sweep, tip, dig, sweep, tip. Jackets accumulate on the fence as the sun emerges. It’s hard work but we talk and laugh through it, suffused with purposefulness. One of the bags of soil must have been stored beneath a blossoming tree as crisp white petals polka dot the earthy browns. The petals scatter and drift as the soil drops heavily down. Intermittently we all have reason to pause, spades shoved unceremoniously into the soil, we stand breathing hard and watch Mick Guerin, the park attendant, come blazing in, manoeuvring the park’s cumbersome tractor through a narrow gap in the fence to deliver yet another enormous sack of loam.</p>
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<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404542956?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404542956?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center" height="274"></a></p>
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<p>A man walks past the allotment and stops to watch our progress. He calls out to Maggie, obviously the one in charge, and asks: “Is this just an allotment extension or is there a bigger story?” Maggie smiles and responds, “There’s a much bigger story.”</p>
<p>And the story starts with a story. A story told through a BBC documentary about refugees, “Exodus: Our Journey to Europe”, screened last July on BBC 2. Described as a “terrifying, intimate, epic portrait of the migration crisis”<a title="">[iii]</a> this intense piece of journalism had a deep impact on Maggie Turp, the person who currently coordinates the Queens Park Allotment. Already aware of and moved by the refugee crisis, the experiences portrayed within the BBC documentary compelled Maggie to get up and do something. She started talking to the people at Salusbury World, a local refugee charity, as well as the Queens Park managers. Soon she had devised a plan to extend the existing allotment to include seven new raised beds solely for the use of refugees. Here refugees referred through Salusbury World will have the opportunity to grow food produce, share skills and knowledge, and work alongside fellow refugees as well as the current allotment holders. Maggie also plans to have a system in place where either someone who already works on the allotment, or a keen gardener on the waiting list, can buddy up with a refugee to help them feel welcomed into the space.</p>
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<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404544739?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404544739?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center" height="255"></a></p>
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<p>Maggie, a writer herself, is intrigued by the power of stories and holds high hopes that the new allotments will provide a platform for sharing histories and experiences. She says, “It’s about stories inspiring action and action bringing more stories to light. And then stories inspiring action again.” Maggie goes on to explain that there is something about working ‘alongside’ someone that allows the person to open up, to talk and share, in a way that would be much harder under different circumstances.</p>
<p>This is evident already at this founding stage of the project. As we, a group of volunteers, many of whom haven’t met before, work together to create the new garden beds, stories begin to emerge and connections are made. With exclamations of amazement I discover that one of the other volunteers and I were born in the same hospital in the same town in Australia all those thousands of miles away. Other volunteers share recipes for the food produce grown on their plots while a volunteer with a mini home brewery connects with an allotment holder who’s been growing hops. Already the project has enabled human connections to come to light and inspired further collaborative projects.</p>
<p>Maggie has been overwhelmed by the positive response to the project. She applied for and received funding from Transition Town Kensal to Kilburn to purchase the wood, brackets and other sundries including a starter pack of gloves, fork and trowel for each refugee. The Queens Park managers have provided enormous support including supplying the soil, weed suppressant matting and bark chips for the paths. Miko,an ex-plot holder and sometime jobbing builder, volunteered to be onsite to build the beds while a large number of volunteers have turned up to help out. The plan is to recruit seven people for the new garden beds by April 22<sup>nd</sup>, the day of the “Big Dig” event. If the project is a success Maggie hopes that it can be a model for community allotments all across the country.</p>
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<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404547500?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404547500?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center" height="270"></a></p>
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<p>The thwoosh and thud of soil being transported from one site to the next continues across the day. Miko saws and drills, machinery buzzing, as he creates the wooden frames. He works around us, the mounds of earth building within the centre of the open ended beds. With the final screws in place we spread and flatten the earth towards the four corners, stretching the blank canvas of soil across the frames.</p>
<p>As we work, Miko’s daughter sits and idly draws on a wooden block. When she’s done she presents us with her artwork: a garden, lush with growth, birds and insects flying around and the word “Green” written across the top. A beautiful prophetic vision revealing the latent potential of this new allotment space.</p>
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<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404549772?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404549772?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center" height="270"></a></p>
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<p>As we wind up the work I reflect on my own experience of living far away from my home. I moved to London five years ago and I’m often asked if I miss Australia. Apart from missing my family and friends I miss the nature of my home: the scent of eucalyptus, cycadas grating noisily under a beating sun and the reds and yellows of the soil. Gardening here in London has helped me connect with this place as my new home, the woody smell of the soil and vibrant greens becoming part of the fabric of my sense of belonging here. I moved here by choice. There were no horrors to drive me away and I can return to Australia if I choose. I sincerely hope that the refugees who come to garden at Queens Park Allotment will also gain some sense of belonging, will find some solace in the people and nature of their new home.</p>
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<p> <a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404551239?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404551239?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center" height="337"></a></p>
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<p><a title="">[i]</a> <i>Unfortunately, It Was Paradise</i>, <i>Selected Poems</i> by Mahmoud Darwish, Sinan Antoon (Editor), Amira El-Zein (Editor), Munir Akash (Translator), Carolyn Forché (Translator), Fady Joudah (Foreword),University of California Press, 2013.</p>
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<p><a title="">[ii]</a> <i>Three Poets from Modern Korea</i> (with Hahm Dong-Seon and Choi Young-Mi) translated by Yu Jung-yul & James Kimbrell, Sarabande Books, 2002</p>
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<p><a title="">[iii]</a> <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07ky6ft">http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07ky6ft</a> Go to this link to view “Exodus: Our Journey to Europe”</p>
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</div>Worm Deliverytag:ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com,2017-03-16:3499303:BlogPost:829482017-03-16T21:12:09.000ZHelene Lateyhttp://ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com/profile/HeleneLatey
<p>"To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow" - Audrey Hepburn</p>
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<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404544139?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-center" height="256" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404544139?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750"></img></a></p>
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<p>I arrive home, arms weighed down with Kilburn High road spoils, to find a small square box nestled against the door. The shopping bags thunk disregarded to the ground as I kneel to read the label on the box: “If not home leave in a cool/safe spot”. I smile. This could only mean…</p>
<p>"To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow" - Audrey Hepburn</p>
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<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404544139?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404544139?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center" height="256"></a></p>
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<p>I arrive home, arms weighed down with Kilburn High road spoils, to find a small square box nestled against the door. The shopping bags thunk disregarded to the ground as I kneel to read the label on the box: “If not home leave in a cool/safe spot”. I smile. This could only mean one thing: The worms have arrived at last!</p>
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<p>Tentatively I open the box to find a frustratingly opaque mesh bag inside. I’m tempted to open this, just to check on them, but the worms still haven’t completed their journey so I decide it’s best to leave them be. I rustle my daughter up, drag her bike to the street and together, with the mesh bag held carefully in my arms, we traverse the streets of Kilburn to the worms’ final destination: Kilburn Jubilee Line Station train platform.</p>
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<p>While this is no ordinary delivery of goods to a train station, neither is it an ordinary station. Kilburn station is home to a community food produce garden consisting of four raised beds filled with hardy, drought resistant edible plants. The garden was founded six years ago by Sanchia Dunn and Michael Stuart, members of Transition Town Kensal to Kilburn, who continue to maintain the raised beds through monthly visits, along with other members of the voluntary TTKK gardening group, the “Kilburn Station Planters”. This station allotment contains herbs such as marjoram, chives, sage and thyme, plants with edible flowers such as marigolds, fruit and vegetables such as strawberries, potatoes and garlic and various other munchable greens from wild rocket to salad burnett. An almond tree and apple tree reach vertically into the open skyline above the platform. Left for a month to its own devices, this public garden is exposed to the elements and countless human passers-by. Signs encourage commuters to take the produce and to come and join in at the monthly gardening sessions.</p>
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<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404545498?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404545498?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center" height="310"></a></p>
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<p>I’ve been a volunteer at the garden since May 2016 and gardening at the platform has become a regular calming pause point within the hectic bustle of my city life. The inception of the worm delivery plan occurred on one such calm and crisp Sunday morning last year. It was November 6<sup>th</sup> and I had a fuzzy head, filled with the echo of fireworks sizzling and popping through the air. Climbing the concrete stairs at Kilburn station it could have been any season, except for the tell tale posters for cold and flu remedies and upcoming Christmas fairs that lined the diagonal walls. As I approached the raised planters Michael was already busy weeding. We greeted each other and I took stock of the garden beds. All was reduced, pared back. Secateurs had clipped the mounds of herbs into truncated clusters of twigs, hedgehogs curled defensively upon themselves. Dandelions continued their relentless invasion while chickweed spread contentedly throughout the newly opened spaces. Joined by more gardeners we moved from bed to bed, clearing the soil of these burgeoning pests. As we dug deep, unearthing dandelion roots, I commented on the absence of worms - I had never seen them in the soil here. A peculiarity of raised beds on a concrete train platform: where would the worms come from? Michael explained that over the years he had sent a call out through the Transition network for a donation of earth worms. Strangely, no one had ever come forward...</p>
<p>A few months (and an order through an online gardening catalogue) later and I find myself standing at Kilburn Station platform ripping open a bag of 100 earthworms, peeking through the jagged hole into a dark cool world for my first sight of the long awaited wriggling invertebrates. Before I can stop her, my daughter plunges her hand deep into the bag and extracts a handful of writhing tubular creatures. Coiled in soft pinks and greys, coated in a granulated film of dirt, they completely fill her cupped hands. One clings instinctively to some sort of hold within the bag, stretching elastic like as she pulls it out. “Gentle, gentle!” I say. Can they have survived their journey this far only to be traumatised by an overenthusiastic seven year old?</p>
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<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404547917?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404547917?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center" height="321"></a></p>
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<p>Michael, my daughter and I dig shallow holes throughout the beds and place the worms into their new home. Far from slimy, they feel cool and somehow “wobbly”, like jelly just out of the fridge. Gently, we cover the worms with soil before the local birds take note. A passer-by stops to watch and give advice: “Don’t put too many worms together in one hole, they’ll bite each other’s heads off”. We dutifully split the territorial worms up.</p>
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<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404549007?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404549007?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center" height="497"></a></p>
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<p>At the final hole I pause. It feels like we should say something ceremonial. As we softly pat the earth above the last worm we recite - “Thank you for helping our soil and thank you for being so wriggly, tiggly, higgly, piggly.” A statement we hope will catch on amongst all worm deliverers everywhere.</p>
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<p>Leaving the platform I take note of the garden. The daffodils have flowered and the herbs are beginning their soft green growth. Springy, moss like mounds of marjoram rise above last year’s clipped dead wood. Most beautiful of all, the almond tree is in flower. Suggested to us by the founder of the Transition Town movement, Rob Hopkins, on his visit to us last year, this is the first time the almond tree has flowered in its new Kilburn home. We hope the worms will settle in just as well.</p>
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<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404550002?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404550002?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center" height="278"></a></p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>To get involved come and join us at Kilburn Jubilee line Station on the first Sunday of the month from 11am-12:30. No need to oyster in, just sign in at the station office, telling them you’re there to garden.</strong></p>Meanwhile: Endings and Beginningstag:ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com,2017-03-04:3499303:BlogPost:828282017-03-04T23:14:37.000ZHelene Lateyhttp://ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com/profile/HeleneLatey
<p>January: darkened days, morning frosts melting into winter gloom, and an email sent around from the Meanwhile @ the Corrib organising team confirming that we’ve pulled out. We’re no longer going ahead with Meanwhile @ the Corrib community hub.</p>
<p></p>
<p>There’s a moment of mental disconnect when you receive bad news about something for which you’ve been holding out hope, however tenuous. Time seems suspended as your brain absorbs this disappointing information and then, with an almost…</p>
<p>January: darkened days, morning frosts melting into winter gloom, and an email sent around from the Meanwhile @ the Corrib organising team confirming that we’ve pulled out. We’re no longer going ahead with Meanwhile @ the Corrib community hub.</p>
<p></p>
<p>There’s a moment of mental disconnect when you receive bad news about something for which you’ve been holding out hope, however tenuous. Time seems suspended as your brain absorbs this disappointing information and then, with an almost audible click, the mental synapses spark to action, thoughts shift track, and the mind journeys towards a new destination.</p>
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<p>So what happened? To put it simply, we lost faith that the owners of the Corrib were seriously committed to supporting the project. Through the many months of planning to try and get the premises up and running, there was a distinct lack of clear communication from the Corrib owners. Being a generally optimistic bunch (perhaps naively so) we gave them the benefit of the doubt...again and again. Finally, and following many weeks of delays regarding essential financial agreements, we were at a stand still. And so we decided that enough was enough.</p>
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<p>Jump ahead a couple of months and the organising committee hold a meeting. It’s time to reflect on the Corrib journey and answer the question – what next?</p>
<p></p>
<p>There are some undeniable facts to consider: the overwhelming response from the community at the open meeting, the vast number of people who came forward with ideas for the space and offering to volunteer their time and knowledge, the variety of different community groups that were beginning to engage with the project and the mailing list of over 400 interested locals. Michael Stuart, core member of Transition Town Kensal to Kilburn and the Meanwhile planning group, said that at the beginning he felt unsure about the project, that it was potentially “too ambitious”. However, the positive response from the public convinced him, and the rest of us, that there is a genuine need for such a community hub in our area. We are now determined to keep searching for a new space and pick up where we left off.</p>
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<p>There are also some not so cheery reflections to be had. The discomfort of reflecting back over our mistakes is reduced by the fact that we know these are lessons learnt and therefore won’t be repeated next time. We now see the essential need for building a transparent and strong relationship with the owners of our next Meanwhile space right from the outset. Early access to the building is also now understood as the cornerstone for creating an accurate budget and all the clarity that flows on from this. It certainly would have helped our budgeting if we’d known sooner that the Corrib needed entirely new electrical certification.</p>
<p></p>
<p>But it wasn’t all bad news. Sophia Flucker, another core member of TTKK and the Meanwhile planning group, pointed out that, considering it was TTKK’s first attempt at a community hub, we managed to get a long way down the track to making it a reality. We moved beyond the idea and into the practicalities...we did more than just say we were going to do it, we got up and did it, albeit not successfully through to completion this time.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Another interesting experience was learning how we were able to adapt and respond to the unique characteristics of a specific place. The Corrib Rest has much larger proportions than we originally imagined for our first attempt at a TTKK Meanwhile space. However, the history of the Corrib as the heart of an existing community meant that we could rise to this ambitious location. In a sense we were becoming the facilitators of a reconnection of people with place. Through keeping an open, welcoming, positive and respectful attitude we were able to respond to the lingering emotional links between the building and its local community and, in many ways, valued this, and the wider community, over our own TTKK remit. This is valuable knowledge for us moving forward. The location comes first, the activities held there and community groups engaged with it work in response to this.</p>
<p></p>
<p>But what of the Corrib Rest? This place that we invested in mentally and emotionally for the last 6 months is not somewhere that we can walk away from lightly. The owners have sent the planned redevelopment of the space through to planning permission and there has been extensive conflict within the local community in response. One local group “Save the Corrib” are actively protesting against the proposed changes, which will see the large upstairs function room divided into residential flats as opposed to remaining a shared community space. TTKK, although a separate entity to the Save the Corrib Group are simultaneously in the process of drafting a letter to the Council expressing our concerns about the stewardship of the community space.</p>
<p></p>
<p>And so we are now searching for a new TTKK Meanwhile community hub. Somewhere in the Kensal to Kilburn area there is an empty building waiting for our vision to fill its vacant walls. A place that will be creative, welcoming, nourishing, experimental, grass roots and diverse. And hopefully have a recent electrical certificate...</p>
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<p>March: Light glancing through the curtain cracks when the morning alarm goes off, green spears thrusting through London clay soil, intimations of the vibrant yellow trumpet blooms to come, and a blog posted on the TTKK website saying, “we are now searching for a new TTKK Meanwhile community hub” Watch this space!</p>
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<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404543389?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404543389?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center" height="314"></a></p>Meanwhile @ The Corrib: Beginningstag:ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com,2016-12-08:3499303:BlogPost:815622016-12-08T14:57:00.000ZHelene Lateyhttp://ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com/profile/HeleneLatey
<p>The Corrib Rest, 76-78 Salusbury Rd, NW6 6PA</p>
<p>October 18th 2016</p>
<p></p>
<p><b>Hub</b>:</p>
<p></p>
<p><b>1.</b> The central part of a wheel, rotating on or with the axle, and from which the spokes radiate.</p>
<p><b>2.</b> The effective centre of an activity, region, or network.</p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p>The large downstairs room at the Corrib Rest was positively thriving. Long held friendships and connections were evident as people grouped together, conversing with familiar…</p>
<p>The Corrib Rest, 76-78 Salusbury Rd, NW6 6PA</p>
<p>October 18th 2016</p>
<p></p>
<p><b>Hub</b>:</p>
<p></p>
<p><b>1.</b> The central part of a wheel, rotating on or with the axle, and from which the spokes radiate.</p>
<p><b>2.</b> The effective centre of an activity, region, or network.</p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p>The large downstairs room at the Corrib Rest was positively thriving. Long held friendships and connections were evident as people grouped together, conversing with familiar ease. Interested newcomers were warmly welcomed and introduced into the milling crowd, name labels displayed on autumn coats. Queues formed at the pop up bar, donations given in exchange for drinks, including locally produced NW6 cider. The aromatic smell of the samosas supplied by Spice Caravan, a local cooking group, also drew an eager crowd and the heaped mounds of golden finger food were demolished with relish. In one corner there was a large poster mounted on a stand with “Volunteers needed” scrawled across the top. Underneath this title a list detailed: social media guru, admin support, community activities, outreach to local groups, plumber, tech support, running upcycling workshops...to name a few. Fluorescent post-it notes were passed from hand to hand. Pens scratched out generous offers of time and skills and the sticky squares were layered to construct a colourful framework surrounding the poster, symbolic of the supportive structure these volunteers will provide in the weeks and months ahead. More and more people arrived, flowing down the entrance ramp, filling the space with increased excitement as conversations rose to a pulsing clamour. We were all there to find out what the future held for the Corrib Rest.</p>
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<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404543678?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404543678?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center" height="312"></a></p>
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<p>Vacated since February 1<sup>st</sup> 2015, the Corrib Rest was a pub on Salusbury Rd Queens Park. Originally set up by the Brent Irish Cultural and Community Association in 1983 it has been an important feature within the Irish community and the local community at large. The upstairs rooms were used for classes and functions while the pub was valued as an ‘old school’ pub, an alternative to the more contemporary gastro-pubs in the area. Following the pub’s closure the Queens Park Residents Association (QPRA) applied to Brent Council for the Corrib Rest to be listed as an asset for community value (ACV). They were successful and now any future developments of the pub will need to take this ACV status into account. Currently, the future planning is pending and the premises remain empty. This is where Transition Town Kensal to Kilburn (TTKK) comes in to the picture. TTKK are planning to use the Corrib Rest as a ‘Meanwhile Space’, inhabiting the building for 6 months, using it as a community hub to promote Transition values and encourage community outreach and involvement. And here we were, at the first open meeting for the TTKK hub, fittingly named Meanwhile @ Corrib, and the community had shown up in enthusiastic hordes, ready to engage.</p>
<p></p>
<p>We were encouraged to take a tour of the premises. I had never been to the Corrib Rest before so I joined a cluster of people working their way up the dark wooden staircase to the upper rooms. As we climbed they joked about the carpet, an eye bending concoction of intertwining greens and reds, not helped by the layers of accumulated dust. Their joking held the nostalgic tenderness that comes with deep familiarity. At the top of the stairs a lone highchair stood abandoned on the landing, empty plastic bottles among the litter at its feet. As I turned the corner and entered the first of the two upper rooms any sense of gloom that the stairs had evoked rapidly dissolved in a flood of light and airy space. Empty but for an upright piano this room was brightly lit with white walls and elaborate fixtures. The piano, standing to silent attention amidst the structural pillars, beckoned. Soon enough a woman confidently ran her hands across the keys and an octave trill burst throughout the space, making people laugh in surprise. Murmurings ensued between the couples and groups circling the room as visions took on verbal form. The room suddenly filled with mirrors, ballet bars, shared working space...a blank canvas filling with paint.</p>
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<p>On one side of the room there was an opening, a door leading to another space. Walking through this I was confounded, even perhaps a little awestruck at the unexpected grandeur. And I was not the only one. I was now standing in the Corrib Rest’s largest function room and it was vast. Just as effectively lit as the previous room the high ceilinged, wooden beamed expanse had ballroom proportions. Filled now with close to 100 people from the local community the room seemed somehow sated, its function fulfilled. This enormous space, charged with latent possibilities, set the crowd buzzing and we descended the stairs with a lighter energy, a bouncing exuberance, ready to find out more, to take part.</p>
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<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404544940?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404544940?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center" height="430"></a></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p>Back downstairs in the old pub area Michael Stuart, core member of TTKK and the Meanwhile @ Corrib team, climbed up and stood waiting on the overturned crate ‘soap box’. The noise settled down and heads turned up expectantly. After welcoming the crowd, Michael handed the soap box to another founding member, George Latham, who outlined TTKK’s vision for the space. George emphasised community involvement and TTKK values, highlighting that the purpose of the meeting was to open the floor to ideas from the community at large. Then other members from the core Meanwhile @ The Corrib team stood and gave short and energetic presentations on the various activities starting to take shape for this exciting venue. This included bicycle repair services by Cycletastic, a volunteer led community group who promote the joys and benefits of cycling. Also pop up catering, including a regular slot for Spice Caravan, a catering group connected to Salusbury WORLD (the refugee support charity based in Salusbury school). Co-working spaces, community workshops and skills building, Restart parties and the reinstating of the pub all featured. Following this exposition, each member took a corner of the space and invited open discussion and suggestions on how to best use this opportunity for the local community. People flocked purposefully to the various areas of interest and ideas flew across the room with palpable energy. Film nights, art exhibitions, local music, a men’s shed, local business advice/mentoring services, and yoga classes for parents and children were just some of the ideas brought forward. A catalyst for community connection - Meanwhile @ The Corrib was set in motion.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Amidst the Transition Town members, local residents curious to see what was happening, and the community makers and shakers conversant in the lingo of ‘Meanwhile Spaces’, there was another crowd of people who turned up. A father and son walked down the entrance ramp and I greeted them with name labels and pen in hand. After joking around with name spellings, making me fumble foolishly between ‘i’s and ‘y’s the father asked me “Do you know what happened here at the Corrib?” with an intensity that belied his light-hearted exterior. “We were here drinking at our local pub one week and the next week we came down and the whole place was shuttered up. No one told us anything.” And there were more of these Corrib Rest regulars present, one telling me that he had come to say “goodbye” to the place. This sense of sudden loss, of abandonment, was reflected in the ghost town feel of the pub, a space that hadn’t been used for the last 18 months. There were empty shot glasses arranged in neat succession on a circular tray, waiting to be filled...rows of hooks in the narrow cloakroom, each holding a single key ring, redundantly bereft of coats. A pile of Christmas cards, “To the staff of Corrib Rest” left in a forlorn and dusty box behind the bar, symbols of human connection intrinsically connected to the locality of this place.</p>
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<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404547625?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404547625?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center" height="273"></a></p>
<p></p>
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<p>It is this thread of community connection, disrupted but not severed, indeed so strong that it brought people to the meeting to see their ‘local’ again, that will help bind the fabric of Meanwhile @ The Corrib. The Christmas cards, though temporarily abandoned, were nevertheless not thrown out. Centres of community activity, whether it be for jam making workshops, yoga classes or meeting up for a drink and a natter hold longstanding importance and value in people's lives. They are a place to share ideas, share skills and, just as importantly for many, share the light-hearted banter that keeps isolation and loneliness away.</p>
<p></p>
<p>I see the people connected to the Corrib’s past as integral in helping to move it forward. Like the electronic devices that Restart parties revive, the broken bicycles that Cycletastic fix, the clothes that sewing workshops transform, the Corrib Rest is being upcycled by Transition Town Kensal to Kilburn <i>with</i> and <i>through</i> the solid structure of the existing community that value and belong to it.</p>
<p></p>
<p>As the night came to a close I stood by the door helping to gather emails as people left. There were those who had already put their details down inside but gave them again, not wanting to miss out on any news. One woman wrote that she would help with admin but admitted that this was not her main interest in the project- she wants to run daytime activities for local families- but that she was more than happy to do admin or DIY work “just to get this thing moving!” said with a beaming smile.</p>
<p></p>
<p>After the crowd had left the core Meanwhile @ The Corrib team lingered on, tidying and relaying the evening’s success. The previously empty email forms were now scrawled with blue and black lettering. The butchers paper, blank and reflective at the start of the night, was now covered with ideas for workshops and community activities. The once desolate and abandoned Corrib Rest was now filled with vibrant potential, the enduring imprint of the people who had gathered that evening to “get this thing moving”.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>For more information and to get involved join the Corrib Rest Community Pub group:</p>
<p><a href="http://ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com/group/corrib-rest-community-pub?commentId=3499303%3AComment%3A81324">http://ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com/group/corrib-rest-community-pub?commentId=3499303%3AComment%3A81324</a></p>
<p>Or email: <a href="mailto:corribrest@gmail.com">corribrest@gmail.com</a></p>Meanwhile @ The Corrib: Planningtag:ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com,2016-12-08:3499303:BlogPost:818042016-12-08T14:55:04.000ZHelene Lateyhttp://ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com/profile/HeleneLatey
<p></p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404545328?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-center" height="277" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404545328?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750"></img></a></p>
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<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>11.10.2016</strong></span></p>
<p></p>
<p><b><i>“In every one of them, in spite of their diversity, their different people and settings, he found the same spirit, the same sense of people coming home to the place, to each other”…</i></b></p>
<p></p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404545328?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404545328?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center" height="277"></a></p>
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<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>11.10.2016</strong></span></p>
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<p><b><i>“In every one of them, in spite of their diversity, their different people and settings, he found the same spirit, the same sense of people coming home to the place, to each other”</i></b></p>
<p>- ‘ What the long, red-legged Scissorman did next’ by Rob Hopkins, founder of the Transition movement.<a title="">[i]</a></p>
<p></p>
<p>The days are drawing in and by the time I arrive at the meeting the sky is darkening. In contrast, the meeting room is warm and bright. As the working office for the Salusbury WORLD refugee charity there is evidence everywhere of regular use: papers piled high, boxes crammed with activity kits and a recently washed assortment of colourful mugs and cups drying by the kitchen sink. The meeting room table is a jumble of schoolroom rectangles jig-sawed together and surrounded by long wooden benches complete with ineffectual cushions. These benches soon fill up with people and we exchange smiles as we reach for copies of the agenda. While this meeting room and some of the people in it are new to me, the food on offer is typically and comfortingly Transition Town in character: home baked apple pie and NW6 cider both made from locally picked apples.</p>
<p></p>
<p>We are at the core group meeting for a new community project, a Meanwhile space in the currently vacant Corrib Rest pub on Salusbury Rd. Present at the meeting are some of the core members of the Transition Town Kensal to Kilburn (TTKK) group. Also attending are representatives of Spice Caravan and Cycletastic – two local initiatives that are keen to be involved in the Meanwhile project. There is a manager of a local community sports centre and also some ‘Transition students’ one of whom is writing a dissertation on the Transition Towns movement. And then there’s me, TTKK member and enthusiast, local resident and now, blogger.</p>
<p></p>
<p>The meeting opens with excellent news: planning permission has been granted for the Meanwhile space. There are still many details to sort out, but this initial and essential first step elicits triumphant whoops. It is then decreed that we will continue with ‘whoops’ for good news/actions ticked off...and perform dramatic desolate sighs with heads dropped into hands at bad news/actions not yet achieved. I’m beginning to realise (with absolute joy) that this meeting and the people at it are wonderfully different.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Methodically we move through the agenda but it soon becomes clear that the underlying directive of the meeting is the need to understand the form that this project is taking, to retrieve the individual visions, assumptions and ideals within the room and verbalise these into a cohesive structure. Ideas thread together, voice to voice conjoining, weaving organically through assenting nods to take tentative form. Corrib Rest will be used as a TTKK community hub for at least 6 months. It will be a place that actively encourages community engagement and resilience, supporting local people and initiatives. It will retain its function as a pub but become a ‘community pub’ where community activities and workshops strongly feature. Intrinsically malleable as this early vision is, it takes on a tangible presence, and we hold it there, this formative bundle of hopes and ideals, as a beacon for forward motion.</p>
<p></p>
<p>With this vision now in front of us we move onto planning for the open meeting the following week. Emphasis is placed on reaching out to as many people as possible to come along and get involved. An email will go out to all the groups we can gather through our collective local networks. There is uncertainty about how well attended it will be...”Well, there’s 12 of us here, so if we each bring 5 people that’s 60 right?”someone quips. Also, we ask ourselves if we need a person to act as allocated event planner? “No, we are anarchic,” a core member jokes but then soberly adds that “we will all be there to support each other.”A statement that effectively sums up this group and their values.</p>
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<p>Last but not least we decide on a name. And so Meanwhile @ The Corrib takes its formative steps.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>25.10.2016</strong></span></p>
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<p>Peering through the frosted glass I ring the doorbell, hoping I’m not the last one to arrive. The door number shines brassily, reflecting the street lamp in the dark street. I shift the bag of vegetable crisps, my last minute offering, into my left hand as I hear someone approaching the door from inside. I enter to a hand shake and a welcoming smile and am led to the dining room where familiar and new faces sit, meeting agendas held aloft. I’m not the last one in and once I’ve received my glass of NW6 mulled wine I too sit and make small talk, restless to get started. A dog investigates the newcomers, tail wagging and eyes roaming in anticipation of human attention, or perhaps vegetable crisp crumbs.</p>
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<p>Eventually all the seats are filled, the dog curls reluctantly in a corner, and we start the meeting with a congratulatory air. The open meeting on the 18<sup>th</sup> of October was an enormous success. Over 120 people attended the Corrib Rest to hear about our plans and offer support. The pub, empty these last 18 months, had thrived with renewed energy. Tonight we are at the first core group meeting following this success and there is a justified sense of positivity filling the room. People share their stories of connections made, ideas generated and follow up meetings arranged. There are up to 15 local people already interested in using the co-working space. Ceramics workshops, Men’s shed woodwork skills, involvement from the local radio station K2K radio, and numerous local catering offers are just some of the emerging ideas for the project. We are buoyed up, the overwhelming response from the local community lifting our ideals and ambitions for the Meanwhile Space to even greater heights.</p>
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<p>With enthusiasm running high, discussion moves onto the practicalities of getting this project off the ground. A draft business rates proposal is being formulated. Budgets are being clarified, tightened. Long term goals for the space need to be established and proposed to the local residents group. Procedures and criteria for activities and workshops are being written...and re-written. Words jostle around the room: inclusion, security, health and safety, governance, communication. There is still so much to be done and impatience trickles in. Discussion bounds enthusiastically forward to decisions that we realise we can’t yet decide. And so we backtrack, frustration surfacing at the succession of steps required in order to achieve our goal.</p>
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<p>The positive response from our local community at the open meeting has boosted our motivation and drive. We are poised with anticipation, ready to go, and therefore restless with the hurdles in our way. As we begin to leave the dog stirs and fidgets, nose sniffing the night air with every opening of the door. Tomorrow’s walk can’t seem further away.</p>
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<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>15.11.16</strong></span></p>
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<p><b><i>“Slow and Steady, the Tortoise, challenged him to a race.”-</i></b> Aesop’s fable<a title="">[ii]</a></p>
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<p>Barriers, obstacles, hoops to jump through. Or over. Or around. Even getting to the meeting room had proved a challenge today. A group of us waited patiently for over 10 minutes by the wrong gate before realising our mistake. Sheepishly we take our places around the meeting room table, apologising for the delay.</p>
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<p>And, as though deciding to move forward as we began, delays and misunderstandings become the meeting motif. There are still so many processes to go through. Legal agreements need to be written and approved. Building access arrangements need to be clarified. Meetings have been set up with elusive parties who then slipped through fingers. Frustrating circular discussions result from the confines of these barriers.</p>
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<p>Ever silver-lining thinkers we use these enforced delays as time to form solid structures of governance, a clear vision for the space and a marketing strategy. Next week the group will elect the board of directors who will in turn appoint a centre manager. Newcomers still arrive and make generous offers of help such as marketing expertise. We have heard that kitchen appliances are available for loan. More local groups are coming on board. Someone knows a brewer who could turn our local allotment hops into liquid amber. The miasma is taking ever more solid form.</p>
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<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404547881?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404547881?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center" height="274"></a></p>
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<p>Today we eat a rye baguette that a core member brought along. The only one to bring food he placed it with an unceremonious thunk onto the table. Despite derisive laughter the baguette is soon demolished, eager hands tearing through the crust, pulling off chunks and sharing it around. Washed down with water this simple sustenance seems a fitting foil for the complexity of the discussion and decisions being made.</p>
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<p>And despite the frustrations and delays, decisions <i>are</i> being made. We move constantly forward, fuelled by optimism and the residual momentum from the open meeting’s success less than a month ago. Slow motion but continuous motion. The tortoise does win after all.</p>
<p><b><i> </i></b></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>22.11.2016</strong></span></p>
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<p>On my way to the meeting, rushing as usual, my mind wanders over the name ‘Corrib Rest’. Wiki had filled me in a little, “Lough Corrib is the second largest lough in the island of Ireland”, and apparently the place name ‘Corrib’ derives from ‘Oirbsiu’, a mythic god of the sea. Delving a little deeper I find that Oirbsiu, also known as Manannan mac Lir, was connected in Irish mythology with the notion of ‘regeneration’. Considering the aims of our project this feels like a good omen.</p>
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<p>I arrive to the warm glow of a core member’s living room. No meeting table today, we sit in a circle of chairs and sofas, a coffee table replete with drinks and snacks placed in the centre. Introductions and apologies given we start the meeting with a wave of good news. We’ve been promised that we’ll have our draft agreement to occupy the building within the next 24 hours. We have two meetings arranged at the Corrib over the coming days to kick off the building essentials such as wifi, plumbing, kitchen work, security and health and safety checks. A group of volunteers is forming to help ‘beautify the space’ and get the Corrib back to working order. The agreed target is to officially have the keys to the building in three weeks time.</p>
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<p>The momentum of the project, contained somewhat during this period of procedures and legalities, is ready to push forward once more. As we sit discussing all of these positive advancements the living room is charged with energetic anticipation, our ears pricked for the starting whistle and the resulting relief of purposeful action.</p>
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<p>With the upcoming flood of activity set to take us ever closer to the opening of the Meanwhile space, it seems a pivotal time to solidify the backbone of the project. The meeting moves to the main business at hand: governance and electing the board of directors. Since our meeting last week emails have circulated within the group in regards to the proposed structure of the board. As with any project, these early stages of forming the leadership structure are essential in ensuring its longevity and success and there are often different views on how to do this. As a result there is a palpable tension in the room. What follows is a demonstration of how the core values of the people behind this project can be used to simultaneously resolve and respect differences, shifting the mood from dissonance to accord, from isolation to togetherness. Optimism, honesty, experience, intelligence, sincerity, trust and a collective desire to make this thing work, and work <i>really well,</i> results in a complete dissolution of tension. Through open and inclusive discussion we undo the knots of misunderstandings and miscommunications. Through professional procedures we move swiftly and decisively through voting the structure of the board. The board of directors are then voted in. Meanwhile @ The Corrib is in good hands.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Travelling home I reflect on how much our planning meetings have involved a sense of motion or restlessness. Each week we have moved from different meeting place to different meeting place. Each week we have discussed and acted on steps to move us ever more forward. With clarity I understand how our insistent eddying motion has been carrying us towards our goal: the creation of a place for the community to come together, to stop and share ideas, skills and a sense of place - together.</p>
<p></p>
<p><b>Rest: Come to rest, to stop, usually in a particular place.</b></p>
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<p></p>
<p><b><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404548934?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404548934?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center" height="308"></a></b></p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
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<p><a title="">[i]</a>From “There was a knock at the door- 23 modern folk tales for troubling times” edited by Andrew Sims</p>
<p>Extract at <a href="https://transitionnetwork.org/news-and-blog/long-red-legged-scissorman-next/">https://transitionnetwork.org/news-and-blog/long-red-legged-scissorman-next/</a></p>
<p> </p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title="">[ii]</a><a href="https://www.storyarts.org/library/aesops/stories/tortoise.html">https://www.storyarts.org/library/aesops/stories/tortoise.html</a></p>
<p> </p>
</div>
</div>Meanwhile @ The Corrib: The Visiontag:ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com,2016-12-05:3499303:BlogPost:819062016-12-05T14:04:08.000ZHelene Lateyhttp://ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com/profile/HeleneLatey
<p>I enter the flat to the overwhelming smell of buttery popcorn. The scent brings such strong associations that my mind relaxes into the expectation of passive movie night viewing. While we, the Meanwhile @ The Corrib planning group, <i>are</i> gathering together to view something, it will be a much more active viewing process than the popcorn suggests. We are at our ‘vision’ workshop, facilitated by local ideas development coach Emma Rae. The plan is to extract the individual Meanwhile @ The…</p>
<p>I enter the flat to the overwhelming smell of buttery popcorn. The scent brings such strong associations that my mind relaxes into the expectation of passive movie night viewing. While we, the Meanwhile @ The Corrib planning group, <i>are</i> gathering together to view something, it will be a much more active viewing process than the popcorn suggests. We are at our ‘vision’ workshop, facilitated by local ideas development coach Emma Rae. The plan is to extract the individual Meanwhile @ The Corrib ‘screen plays’ from within our heads and use them to create a cohesive and enduring image.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Before we get started my mind wanders into the realm of semantics. What is a ‘vision’? Is it something that encapsulates our values, ethos and aims? A clear definition of who and what we are? Is it what we imagine success to look like? An ideal. A dream. A collective wish?</p>
<p></p>
<p>Emma guides us through a visualisation. Projecting forward 6 months, our time at the Corrib has come to an end. We’re locking the doors for the final time and reflecting back on our occupation of the Meanwhile space. We ask ourselves, what did we achieve? What meaning did the Corrib gain within the local community? It has been a success...so what was the essence of that success? Emma asks us to answer the above questions through a few key points on our note pads.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Blank yellow sticky-note-pad panic ensues. It can be so hard to put ideas into words. With resolve my pen begins to glide across the yellow surface. All around the table heads are bent, hands translating the intangible into concrete written form. Taking turns to verbalise our scribbled notes we see that, thankfully, many of our ideas for the project are aligned. Recurrent themes include: building strength, connections and friendships within the local community, the sharing of skills and experiences, being an incubator or platform for new projects and ideas, becoming a model for other community projects. These thoughts and more are collated onto a large sheet of butcher’s paper for all to see.</p>
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<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404541022?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404541022?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center" height="328"></a></p>
<p></p>
<p>Then we pan for gold. Through collaborative and staggered sifting we reduce the phrases and then the words to the essential. Clarity is our goal. Soon we get caught in the nitty gritty of subtle gradations in word meanings: Friendly or approachable? Innovative or experimental? A thesaurus is on hand, a resource that we initially scoffed at, but that ends up being invaluable as the workshop becomes increasingly about getting the words ‘just right’.</p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404543399?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404543399?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center" height="247"></a></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p>Finally our golden nuggets are all that remain. Creative. Grass roots. Experimental. Diverse. Welcoming. Nourishing.</p>
<p></p>
<p>A revised mission statement will now be forged from these crucial words. There is a noticeable sense of achievement in the room- as though reaching such a clarified vision for the project took on marathon proportions. So now we just need to pick the popcorn out of our teeth and act upon the collective dream vision. Make the ideal become real. </p>
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<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404543399?profile=original" target="_self"> </a></p>Consulation for new bike infrastructure at Queens Park Gyratorytag:ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com,2016-11-25:3499303:BlogPost:816262016-11-25T17:28:17.000Zjosie warshawhttp://ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com/profile/josiewarshaw
<p></p>
<p>One minute action:Go to the consultation <a href="http://lcc.org.uk/articles/take-action-support-brents-carlton-vale-tracks">http://lcc.org.uk/articles/take-action-support-brents-carlton-vale-tracks</a> and click on Start survey.<br></br>Click "Yes" to agree to the proposals and give your details on the second page.<br></br>Ideally, in the comments box, add your thoughts on the scheme in your own words. Brent Cyclists suggest asking for: semi-segregated measures or "stepped" tracks on the…</p>
<p></p>
<p>One minute action:Go to the consultation <a href="http://lcc.org.uk/articles/take-action-support-brents-carlton-vale-tracks">http://lcc.org.uk/articles/take-action-support-brents-carlton-vale-tracks</a> and click on Start survey.<br/>Click "Yes" to agree to the proposals and give your details on the second page.<br/>Ideally, in the comments box, add your thoughts on the scheme in your own words. Brent Cyclists suggest asking for: semi-segregated measures or "stepped" tracks on the south side of Carlton Vale in the Westminster section (only a painted mandatory cycle lane proposed currently); the stop line in Fernhead Road to be moved back so that vehicles don't block access to the cycle track; a raised table at the end of Fernhead Road to reinforce cycle priority; semi-segregated protection on the north side of Carlton Vale to continue further west; and the 20mph limit to run throughout the scheme, including in Westminster (it might be worth mentioning the two schools nearby).<br/>Don't delay, fill out your response today.(Open until the 28th November 2016)<br/>The main elements of the scheme are cycle tracks protected by semi-segregated "Orcas" on both sides of the road in Brent, "bus stop bypasses", and parallel cycle and pedestrian crossings for easy two-way cycling between Salusbury Road and Carlton Vale, without having to negotiate the Premier Corner gyratory (by Queens Park Station).</p>Consulation for new bike infrastructure at Queens Park Gyratorytag:ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com,2016-11-25:3499303:BlogPost:818032016-11-25T17:21:31.000Zjosie warshawhttp://ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com/profile/josiewarshaw
<p></p>
<p>One minute action:Go to the consultation <a href="http://lcc.org.uk/articles/take-action-support-brents-carlton-vale-tracks">http://lcc.org.uk/articles/take-action-support-brents-carlton-vale-tracks</a> and click on Start survey.<br></br>Click "Yes" to agree to the proposals and give your details on the second page.<br></br>Ideally, in the comments box, add your thoughts on the scheme in your own words. Brent Cyclists suggest asking for: semi-segregated measures or "stepped" tracks on the…</p>
<p></p>
<p>One minute action:Go to the consultation <a href="http://lcc.org.uk/articles/take-action-support-brents-carlton-vale-tracks">http://lcc.org.uk/articles/take-action-support-brents-carlton-vale-tracks</a> and click on Start survey.<br/>Click "Yes" to agree to the proposals and give your details on the second page.<br/>Ideally, in the comments box, add your thoughts on the scheme in your own words. Brent Cyclists suggest asking for: semi-segregated measures or "stepped" tracks on the south side of Carlton Vale in the Westminster section (only a painted mandatory cycle lane proposed currently); the stop line in Fernhead Road to be moved back so that vehicles don't block access to the cycle track; a raised table at the end of Fernhead Road to reinforce cycle priority; semi-segregated protection on the north side of Carlton Vale to continue further west; and the 20mph limit to run throughout the scheme, including in Westminster (it might be worth mentioning the two schools nearby).<br/>Don't delay, fill out your response today.(Open until the 28th November 2016)<br/>The main elements of the scheme are cycle tracks protected by semi-segregated "Orcas" on both sides of the road in Brent, "bus stop bypasses", and parallel cycle and pedestrian crossings for easy two-way cycling between Salusbury Road and Carlton Vale, without having to negotiate the Premier Corner gyratory (by Queens Park Station).</p>Hedgerow Harvesttag:ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com,2016-10-12:3499303:BlogPost:812552016-10-12T13:22:41.000ZHelene Lateyhttp://ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com/profile/HeleneLatey
<p><strong>Kensal to Kilburn Fruit Harvesters Fryent Country Park Event</strong></p>
<p></p>
<p><b>Sunday 2<sup>nd</sup> October 2016</b></p>
<p><b>Fryent Country Park, Fryent Way NW9 9SE</b></p>
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<p>The undergrowth within the hedgerow is a tangled mass of thistles, bramble and nettles held together in stringy nets of coiling bind weed. Littered amidst the tangle lie misshapen spheres of brown, gold, green and red: fallen apples. Crumpled flesh softens through brown bruising,…</p>
<p><strong>Kensal to Kilburn Fruit Harvesters Fryent Country Park Event</strong></p>
<p></p>
<p><b>Sunday 2<sup>nd</sup> October 2016</b></p>
<p><b>Fryent Country Park, Fryent Way NW9 9SE</b></p>
<p></p>
<p>The undergrowth within the hedgerow is a tangled mass of thistles, bramble and nettles held together in stringy nets of coiling bind weed. Littered amidst the tangle lie misshapen spheres of brown, gold, green and red: fallen apples. Crumpled flesh softens through brown bruising, the doomed early apples slowly rotting to feed the soil. While the sun is hot and the leaves still green on the surrounding trees, these windfall apples signify the change of season and that the time for apple harvest has arrived.</p>
<p>With this purpose in mind I join the 40 or so people gathered in the carpark. Empty cardboard boxes, salvaged from street vendors, are held in ready anticipation. Metal pickers, gripped like spears, stand proud above the crowd, their pronged crowns pointing upwards. We are at the Fryent Country Park pick, the largest annual harvesting event for the Transition Kensal to Kilburn Fruit Harvesters. Joined by wellie boot clad enthusiasts from Transition Willesden and Mapesbury as well as other interested locals we split into three groups and spread out across our allocated portions of the 108 hectare expanse.</p>
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<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404543401?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404543401?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center" height="234"></a></p>
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<p>To step through a field in Fryent Country Park is to step through time. The medieval partitioning of the land is on such a smaller scale to the grand vistas of contemporary farming. Enclosed on all sides by majestic, dense hedgerows, the fields feel simultaneously expansive and intimate: nature wild and abounding yet also contained. The field boundaries and hedgerows conform to the layout as recorded in the 1597 Hovendon map of Kingsbury currently held at All Souls College, Oxford. Maintained and restored by Brent Council and Barn Hill Conservation Group, the park hedges are a beautiful, gnarled and living connection to the past. Oak, ash, maple and elder with damson, blackthorn, hawthorn and roses interspersed, the park also contains over 25 varieties of apple tree. There are naturally occurring crab-apples and ‘back-cross’ apples while pre-1900 varieties have been deliberately planted to imitate the local farmstead orchards of that time. This includes the rare Pinner Seedling, a variety discovered around 1834 in Harrow. As an example of traditional Middlesex countryside the park is a site of Metropolitan Importance for Nature Conservation to London. Walking through the tall grass, eyes panning the varied greens of the trees against the sky, you can’t help but feel that this is a special place. Listen closely and you may even hear, echoing across the centuries, the regular refrain of the slicing scythe through the hay meadow, the wild flowers dropping swiftly and gently to join the grasses on the ground to then be gathered, dried and carted to Hay market as rich, sumptuous feed.</p>
<p></p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404544854?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404544854?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center" height="202"></a></p>
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<p>Excitement permeates the group of harvesters now spreading across the Park. We disperse and station ourselves at regular intervals along the field boundary. Boxes are laid out on the dewy grass, visual signposts for the industrious activity hidden behind the screen of greenery. Every so often someone will clamber out, shoulder bags stuffed with apples to empty into the waiting box. A stretch of apple trees that runs parallel to Fryant Way is named “Apple Heaven” by one of the children in our group. And to an apple picker this is an apt description. Everywhere apples cling tentatively, often bulging in bunches, the branches burdened and bent beneath their weight. Cries of joy run along the line of harvesters as the telescopic picker reaches and secures its target. The lower apples we pick by hand, my favourite method by far. Palm cupped under the fruit, a gentle twist then the easy snap as the apple comes away with reassuring solidity into my expectant hand. Then the soft thud as the newly picked apple joins the satisfying weight of the others in my bag. Crashing through the path I emerge, encrusted with broken vegetation, to join those seated by the boxes. Kneeling on the wet grass I tip my bag and watch as the apples tumble rhythmically into the now brimming box. A toddler sits eyeing the enticing bounty in front of him while two apples lie ignored on his lap, tiny bite indentations in each. “You can’t take a bite from each apple. You have to finish one first and then start the next.” his mother patiently explains. She turns to me, “I had hoped that we would pick enough apples so that the kids could have at least one each on the way home.” We both look pointedly at the enormous quantity surrounding us and laugh.</p>
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<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404546098?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404546098?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center" height="223"></a></p>
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<p>And then, the culmination, the big weighing in. Retrieved from the midst of tangled, almost impenetrable hedgerows come the clean crisp contours and warming colours of the apples, piled to overflowing in box after box, bag after bag. <strong>418 kilos of them.</strong> The bulk of the harvest is donated to Sufra Foodbank in Brent and Hawkes Urban Orchard Cider, a London cider company who value local produce and food waste reduction. The rest of the apples are distributed between the proud and joyful pickers.</p>
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<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404547867?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404547867?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center" height="216"></a></p>
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<p>To celebrate we forge through fields and find a sunny sheltered spot. Picnic blankets unfurled and food piled high we eat and drink, languid and lazy after the morning’s work. The children perch by the pond, entranced by the lacy wings and crimson body of an obligingly motionless dragonfly. Or else they follow me, pied piper like, and harvest the jewel like rosehips that, along with the hawthorn berries, shine red in the sun amidst the myriad of greens. Amongst the adults talk turns to recipes for rosehip syrup and tea. Knowledge is shared about best methods for drying and removing the ‘hairy’ seeds. I’m encouraged to try one, the flesh a persimmon orange beneath the smooth scarlet skin. Soon I adventure to try a sloe. The sour taste is less offensive than the drying chalky effect it has on my mouth. Now I understand why we only make them into gin. More foraging wisdom is imparted such as how to tell horseradish leaf from dock leaf and tales of the green ‘bread and butter’ hawthorn leaves of earliest spring.</p>
<p>The clouds come over and unanimously we start to pack up. New friendships are confirmed: ‘what was your name again?’ and ‘Hope to see you next time’. Walking back through the park my eyes can now distinguish the hawthorn from the blackthorn, the bullace from the damson. I’m reminded of the magic eye pictures where suddenly you can see, emerging from the homogenous patterning, a clear picture, just waiting to be discovered. However, in this case, my increased knowledge doesn’t leave me cross eyed...instead I feel a deeper connection with the surrounding landscape and the bounty hidden within it, waiting to be picked.</p>
<p>Home again, a pile of apples and a container of rosehips on the table, I sit down and look up a recipe for sloe gin. </p>Treading NW6tag:ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com,2016-09-30:3499303:BlogPost:807682016-09-30T21:30:00.000ZHelene Lateyhttp://ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com/profile/HeleneLatey
<p><b>Unthinkable Drinkable Brent wine making event<a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404544284?profile=original" target="_self"><br></br></a></b></p>
<p><b>Saturday 24<sup>th</sup> September 2016</b></p>
<p><b>Harvist Rd, Queens Park</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<p>Tumbling, overflowing crates fill the front garden, mimicking the flow of people spilling onto the pavement. Convivial chatter, bursts of laughter and many ready smiles pass between the crowd as glasses…</p>
<p><b>Unthinkable Drinkable Brent wine making event<a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404544284?profile=original" target="_self"><br></a></b></p>
<p><b>Saturday 24<sup>th</sup> September 2016</b></p>
<p><b>Harvist Rd, Queens Park</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<p>Tumbling, overflowing crates fill the front garden, mimicking the flow of people spilling onto the pavement. Convivial chatter, bursts of laughter and many ready smiles pass between the crowd as glasses of sangria and red wine pass from hand to hand. No haphazard gathering, there is an underlying focus and purposeful atmosphere as the people form a loose semi-circle facing the two large barrels. In one of these barrels lie the grapes harvested from local vines in the Kensal to Kilburn area, in the other, grapes from Montepulciano in Italy and local garden centre Clifton Nurseries. The former will be made into sangria, the latter into NW6 wine. Last year’s produce stand proud on the garden wall. Wine bottles display their NW6 logo while locally harvested apples and Mexican mojito mint bob on the surface of the crimson sangria.</p>
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<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404541516?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404541516?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center" height="465"></a></p>
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<p>When I arrive there is a boy waist deep in liquid and almost engulfed by one of the barrels. He nevertheless fills it to the brim with his stomping squelching exuberance. He drops down, completely disappearing within the depths and suddenly bobs back up, two fists full of the split, oozing grapes. The purple liquid drips long rivulets down his arms as he squeezes, teeth clenched, before dropping the fruit with a splash beneath the assault of his joyous surging feet.</p>
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<p>Paolo Santini, now in his eighties, stands in serene contrast to the yelping youth in the barrel. He leans gently against the concrete wall and talks to me of growing up in Italy and the winemaking of his youth. Originating from Borgo Val di Taro in the province of Parma, Paolo moved to London when he was 25. Now a local resident of the Kensal area he is one of the wine making gurus of the Unthinkable Drinkable initiative. He talks of how harvest in his home town was always at this time of year. The rhythms and cyclical processes of nature reach across time and space, connecting a 1940’s community in an Italian town to this gathering on a Queens Park street in London 2016. He talks of the physicality of the process of wine making, his body moving gracefully to demonstrate the desired motion of the feet. He explains how using your feet is the best method, smoothing one palm against the other to illustrate the removal of grape skins and the release of the sugary juice. Laughing, he remembers how he would walk through the local town and hear his name called “Paolo, Paolo!” to come and press the grapes for other families. The sleepless nights, exhaustion and sore, red raw feet that would follow. But I can’t keep Paolo chatting for long. Soon he is needed to taste test a new delivery of local grapes or to check the liquid level in the press.</p>
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<p>My attention is soon drawn to the host, Leo Johnson, as he warmly welcomes me to the group. While Paulo is the teacher Leo Johnson, author, radio presenter and cofounder of Unthinkable Drinkable Brent, is the initiator and one of the main driving forces behind this project. Curt nods of acknowledgement, perhaps a twitch of a smile, but most likely downright avoidance of eye contact are the more typical forms of social interaction between neighbours on an anonymous London street. Leo, a Queens Park resident, was sick of feeling like “one of two thousand people” none of whom knew each other. He decided to make change. A chance conversation with the Italian neighbour from down the road, an invitation to try the grapes from the vine in his garden and Paolo’s seal of approval- yes you could make these into wine- were the founding sparks of this community initiative. This was back in 2014. Two years on and the word has spread.</p>
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<p>People arrive with baskets brimming full with grapes from their vines, harvested specifically for this day. The hidden cornucopia of private garden and allotment produce revealed. All hands are on deck to sort the green unripe grapes from the red. We taste the green and scrunch our faces, laughing at the sour tang. Laura Matthews, a grape donor, local resident and musician, sums up the event as “a metaphor for sharing the love”. Legs stained purple from his turn treading grapes, Leo now buzzes with energy through the front garden, central to the action and essential to the welcoming warm atmosphere of the group. Familiar faces walk confidently across the threshold of the garden path to jubilant shouts of greeting. New faces, with bemused, incredulous but pleasantly surprised expressions stop to stare. They remain hesitant on the pavement before Leo crosses over to them, sharing the wine, enthusiasm and the invitation to join.</p>
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<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404542988?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404542988?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-center" height="271"></a></p>
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<p>This open nature of the event invites chance encounters and happy co-incidences. Ramak, a local resident, happened upon the wine making event a few years ago while walking to the shops. He is now an annual and invaluable member, bringing knowledge and different stories to tell. Through him I learn the process of drying the grapes before plucking them from the stalks to create the sweetest wine. Then Gaetano from Spoleto in Umbria happens to walk past and stops in bewildered pleasure. He lives locally now but his family in Italy have been making wine for over 60 years. Smiling, he talks of how harvesting and wine making is all about family and community. “This is the essence of it” his arm sweeps to include the party of people, the barrels, the crates full of grapes.</p>
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<p>While the wine making has become more efficient, and the wine more drinkable over the three years since its inception, the heart and soul of Leo’s vision has always been and remains the same: community connection and sharing. The wine making functions as a catalyst for this social connectivity. I sense that it is this process of making and not the product produced that is the true core of Unthinkable Drinkable Brent. Shayne Whitaker, also a local resident, has a bottle of NW6 2014 on her shelf that she bought for £400 at a charity auction. The wine, never opened, was bought more for the strength of the idea and people behind it than for the strength of its taste. Michael Stuart, a core member of the Transition Kensal to Kilburn group, stands knee deep in grapes and states with a happy grin “I don’t even like wine.”</p>
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<p>Walking home, my local Kilburn streets feel imbued with a welcoming spirit. The buildings glow with the low light of the end of September sun. The stories I’ve heard and people I’ve met suffuse my thoughts, filling me with warmth and spilling out in smiles.</p>
<p> <a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404545297?profile=original" target="_self"><br></a><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404545400?profile=original" target="_self"><br></a></p>
<p>To find out more go to: <a href="http://unthinkabledrinkable.org/">http://unthinkabledrinkable.org/</a></p>
<p></p>Resurgence & Ecologist magazines offeredtag:ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com,2016-09-10:3499303:BlogPost:809052016-09-10T09:10:21.000ZCarol Lowhttp://ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com/profile/CarolLow
<p>Dear all</p>
<p>I have a series of more than 2 years worth of this wonderful and inspirational magazine (featuring the columnist and TTK2K member Leo Johnson what's more!). Has been a great bonus to me to have these - but alas as I am travelling away they need a new home. Do contact me... including ideas of a community space they may go to. </p>
<p></p>
<p>Dear all</p>
<p>I have a series of more than 2 years worth of this wonderful and inspirational magazine (featuring the columnist and TTK2K member Leo Johnson what's more!). Has been a great bonus to me to have these - but alas as I am travelling away they need a new home. Do contact me... including ideas of a community space they may go to. </p>
<p></p>Old Stories for New Times: inspiration for sustainable livingtag:ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com,2016-05-29:3499303:BlogPost:802402016-05-29T11:02:59.000ZCarol Lowhttp://ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com/profile/CarolLow
<p>Dear all </p>
<p>Do have a look at the report Sue Arthur and I have put together about how we went about doing this Transition project. We have added resources in case you want to do a similar project. This has also been part of our evaluation to the Heritage Lottery Fund who part-funded the project. </p>
<p></p>
<p>We would also like to thank TT K2K and the core group who have been and continue to be such supporters of the concept from the beginning. Your…</p>
<p>Dear all </p>
<p>Do have a look at the report Sue Arthur and I have put together about how we went about doing this Transition project. We have added resources in case you want to do a similar project. This has also been part of our evaluation to the Heritage Lottery Fund who part-funded the project. </p>
<p></p>
<p>We would also like to thank TT K2K and the core group who have been and continue to be such supporters of the concept from the beginning. Your practical support and information and encouragement have made it all possible. Thank you!</p>
<p></p>
<p>Carol Low and Sue Arthur</p>
<p>PS see the Events pages for future incarnations of the exhibition which finished its 3 month run with the Brent Museum in late January. </p>
<p></p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404541427?profile=original" target="_self">Old%20Stories%20for%20New%20Times%20evaluation%20report.pdf</a></p>cultural geography of Kilburntag:ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com,2016-03-20:3499303:BlogPost:791082016-03-20T09:50:56.000ZTransition Kensal to Kilburnhttp://ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com/profile/ttkk
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">This is about Kilburn by Doreen Massey, a Kilburnite who’s just died and was an author of the Kilburn Manifesto about neoliberalism.</span></p>
<p class="p2"></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1"><a href="https://www.unc.edu/courses/2006spring/geog/021/001/massey.pdf%C2%A0">https://www.unc.edu/courses/2006spring/geog/021/001/massey.pdf </a>;…</span></p>
<p class="p3"></p>
<p class="p1"></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">This is about Kilburn by Doreen Massey, a Kilburnite who’s just died and was an author of the Kilburn Manifesto about neoliberalism.</span></p>
<p class="p2"></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1"><a href="https://www.unc.edu/courses/2006spring/geog/021/001/massey.pdf%C2%A0">https://www.unc.edu/courses/2006spring/geog/021/001/massey.pdf </a>;</span></p>
<p class="p3"></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1"><a href="https://www.lwbooks.co.uk/soundings/kilburn-manifesto%C2%A0">https://www.lwbooks.co.uk/soundings/kilburn-manifesto </a>;</span></p>
<p class="p2"></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">Take, for instance, a walk down Kilburn High Road, my local shopping centre. It is a pretty ordinary place, north-west of the centre of London. Under the railway bridge the newspaper stand sells papers from every county of what my neighbours, many of whom come from there, still often call the Irish Free State. The postboxes down the High Road, and many an empty space on a wall, are adorned with the letters IRA. Other available spaces are plastered this week with posters for a special meeting in remembrance: Ten Years after the Hunger Strike. At the local theatre Eamon Morrissey has a one-man show; the National Club has the Wolfe Tones on, and at the Black Lion there's Finnegan's Wake. In two shops I notice this week's lottery ticket winners: in one the name is Teresa Gleeson, in the other, Chouman Hassan.</span></p>
<p class="p1"></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">Thread your way through the often almost stationary traffic diagonally across the road from the newsstand and there's a shop which as long as I can remember has displayed saris in the window. Four life-sized models of Indian women, and reams of cloth. On the door a notice announces a forthcoming concert at Wembley Arena: Anand Miland presents Rekha, life, with Aamir Khan, Salman Khan, Jahi Chawla and Raveena Tandon. On another ad, for the end of the month, is written, 'All Hindus are cordially invited'. In another newsagents I chat with the man who keeps it, a Muslim unutterably depressed by events in the Gulf, silently chafing at having to sell the Sun. Overhead there is always at least one aeroplane - we seem to have on a flight-path to Heathrow and by the time they're over Kilburn you can see them clearly enough to tell the airline and wonder as you struggle with your shopping where they're coming from. Below, the reason the traffic is snarled up (another odd effect of time-space compression!) is in part because this is one of the main entrances to and escape routes from London, he road to Staples Corner and the beginning of the M1 to 'the North'.</span></p>
<p class="p1"></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">This is just the beginnings of a sketch from immediate impressions but a proper analysis could be done of the links between Kilburn and the world. And so it could for almost any place.</span></p>
<p class="p1"></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">Kilburn is a place for which I have a great affection; I have lived there many years. It certainly has 'a character of its own'. But it is possible to feel all this without subscribing to any of the static and defensive - and in that sense reactionary - notions of 'place' which were referred to above. First, while Kilburn may have a character of its own, it is absolutely not a seamless, coherent identity, a single sense of place which everyone shares. It could hardly be less so. People's routes through the place, their favourite haunts within it, the connections the make (physically, or by phone or post, or in memory and imagination) between here and the rest of the world vary enormously. If it is now recognized that people have multiple identities then the same point can be made in relation to places. Moreover, such multiple identities can either be a source of richness or a source of conflict, or both.</span></p>
<p class="p1"></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">One of the problems here has been a persistent identification of place with 'community'. Yet this is a misidentification. One the one hand, communities can exist without being in the same place - from networks of friends with lie interests, to major religious, ethnic or political communities. On the other hand, the instances of places housing single 'communities' in the sense of coherent social groups are probably - and, I would argue, have for long been - quite rare. Moreover, even where they do exist this in no way implies a single sense of place. For people occupy different positions within any community. We could counterpose to the chaotic mix of Kilburn the relatively stable and homogenous community (at least in popular imagery) of a small mining village. Homogeneous? 'Communities' too have internal structures. To take the most obvious example, I'm sure a woman's sense of place in a mining village - the spaces through which she normally moves, the meeting places, the connections outside - are different from a man's. Their 'senses of the place' will be different. Moreover, not only does 'Kilburn', then, have many identities (or its full identity is a complex mix of all these) it is also, looked at in this way, absolutely not introverted. It is (out ought to be) impossible even to begin thinking about Kilburn High Road without bringing into play half the world and a considerable amount of British imperialist history (and this certainly goes for mining villages too). Imagining it this way provokes in you (or at least in me) a really global sense of place. And finally, in contrast the way of looking at places with the defensive reactionary view, I certain could not begin to, nor would I want to, define 'Kilburn' by drawing its enclosing boundaries.</span></p>Energy Coop Bluestag:ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com,2016-02-11:3499303:BlogPost:787282016-02-11T13:01:02.000ZNick Hartleyhttp://ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com/profile/NickHartley
<p>Following on from my last post (hopefully not the Last Post!), finally met with the decision makers at Preston Manor School, Wembley: Head, Chair of Governors, Business and Site managers. I presented our offer (Saving on electricity of around £2700 a year, no cost to school, 5% to investors) and got some awkward questions in return. What if a child were to climb on the solar roof and get injured? What if a hurricane were to blow a panel off and damage people or property? (answer: our…</p>
<p>Following on from my last post (hopefully not the Last Post!), finally met with the decision makers at Preston Manor School, Wembley: Head, Chair of Governors, Business and Site managers. I presented our offer (Saving on electricity of around £2700 a year, no cost to school, 5% to investors) and got some awkward questions in return. What if a child were to climb on the solar roof and get injured? What if a hurricane were to blow a panel off and damage people or property? (answer: our insurance would cover all of these and no, the child shouldn't have been on the roof in the first place!) What if the panel mounting damages the sealed flat roof causing leaks (has happened to them before)? The neighbours on Carlton Avenue East might complain at the appearance of the panels or reflections of the floodlights from them. Apparently this has been an issue before and aforementioned lights must now be switched off after 9 pm. I answered as well as I could and sent them insurance details and a list of 50 schools with solar panels the next day, but all to no avail, they decided against the project the following day. No specific reason given.</p>
<p>It seems there are people like us who recognise the need for bold action to alleviate climate change, then there are the deniers, fewer of them now, but dangerous. That leaves the vast majority in between who bury their heads in the sand, acknowledging it's a big problem, too big for them to act on or do anything about, but nonetheless unwilling to change their lifestyles or purchasing choices in order to reduce their Carbon footprint; who feel the need to buy a large 4WD and impress the neighbours rather than renewable technology or energy-saving appliances or insulation. Or maybe reduce the number of flights they make. How do we get through to them? It's particularly worrying when school staff are among that group. I don't think pupils or parents at PMS would be impressed by their leaders' decision.</p>
<p>Anyway, we're going ahead with QPCS. Hopefully a share offer in March and installation late July. In the meantime there is much discussion on how to make solar pay at the current minimal 4.5 p/kWh FIT + sales at 6.5 p. Watch this space.</p>
<p>Best Wishes, Nick</p>
<p></p>
<p></p>Brent Energy Cooptag:ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com,2016-01-21:3499303:BlogPost:789062016-01-21T12:46:33.000ZNick Hartleyhttp://ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com/profile/NickHartley
<p>Just wanted to let you all know that there is an Energy Coop functioning in Brent!</p>
<p></p>
<p>A group of us from TTKTK and Brent FOE started meeting about 18 months ago responding to FOE's campaign to get local schools to 'Run on Sun'. (i.e install Solar PV panels) We looked at the various ways of raising funds, ranging from local council money (no chance with the cut-backs) through donations (as e.g. organised by 10:10) to forming a Coop, which we have done. I attended a meeting…</p>
<p>Just wanted to let you all know that there is an Energy Coop functioning in Brent!</p>
<p></p>
<p>A group of us from TTKTK and Brent FOE started meeting about 18 months ago responding to FOE's campaign to get local schools to 'Run on Sun'. (i.e install Solar PV panels) We looked at the various ways of raising funds, ranging from local council money (no chance with the cut-backs) through donations (as e.g. organised by 10:10) to forming a Coop, which we have done. I attended a meeting organised by UCEF (urban community energy fund - part of DECC) in January last year and learned of the grants available to start an Energy Coop. I also spoke with Petra Morris of Cooperatives UK, who arranged for us to be mentored by Brighton Energy Coop.</p>
<p>The process has felt like a hurdle race! First there was applying to become a CBS (Community Benefit Society or 'Bencom' - a form of Coop allowed to issue shares) with the FCA, next applying for a grant - up to £20k available (we got just over £10k as various items were disallowed, including money spent before receiving the grant!). Then this 'greenest government ever' decided to cut the Feed-in-Tariff for Renewables to an uneconomic amount (12p/kWh down to 4p approx.) in January this year. Next they decided to cut the pre-registration concession which allowed Coops to fix the FiT for a year ahead. That was in September last year, and was a very hectic time, with two of our members on holiday. We managed to sign up Queens Park Community School, Preston Manor School, Charteris Sports Centre and Manor School in time. Unfortunately we've had to drop the last two, as they have smaller roofs and shading issues.</p>
<p>I should explain the 'model' which originated in Denmark with community-owned wind power in the 80s. Capital for the renewable energy project comes from local people, who become Coop members with a say in running the organisation, regardless of their investment level. Some of the energy generated is consumed on site, the remainder is fed into the national grid. Income comes from the government's guaranteed FiT for all energy generated regardless of where it is used. It runs for 20 years. </p>
<p>Now here's the interesting thing: the electricity generated actually belongs to the Coop and can be sold, which we will do, at half price, to the schools. Essentially, the government is rewarding you for being a power station. Yes , it is a subsidy, and some have complained that it's unfair to charge electricity consumers for this. (Actually, all generators get subsidies, including gas, coal and especially nuclear - more in most cases). </p>
<p>To put some figures on it, we plan 50 kW installations on each school, costing about £1150/kW. They generate around 850 kWh/kW p.a. so total income will be about £15,000 p.a. So the panels generate about 13% of their cost p.a. (7.7 year payback) We pay investors back capital at 5% p.a. and interest of 5% p.a. We need the 3% for admin, maintenance , insurance, etc. Schools are advantageous for solar power as they have large roofs and daytime use. Data from Oxford low-Carbon hub predict more than 98% of the solar electricity will be used by the school. This means the school get 50 x 850 x 0.06 = £ 2550 p.a saving on electricity, assuming we sell at 6p and their supplier charges 12p. We think this is a useful saving for them and CO2 saving for all of us. In addition, the schools get to keep the panels after the 20 years. They still have useful life up to 30 years. By that time perhaps much more efficient panels will have come along....Oh, did I forget to mention that there is no cost to the school at any stage?</p>
<p>In order to secure the FiT, you have to apply to OFGEM, then get permission from UK power networks to connect your solar power system to the grid. These organisations don't move quickly, and we are still waiting confirmation for PMS after 10 weeks! Meanwhile the clock is ticking. We have to get both installations up and running and registered by the end of September. Our initial timetable was to do this during the Easter holiday so as not to disturb school life, as the installation which takes about a week and involves a lot of scaffolding!</p>
<p>Unfortunately, we have yet to meet with PMS and get the go-ahead from them. It has generally been very hard to persuade schools of the advantages of solar power. I suppose it's partly inertia, partly being very busy, maybe distrust of an outside organisation, unfamiliarity with the technology.....</p>
<p>A lot of this is work for the group, but in a few weeks we hope to launch our share offer and then we will need help in spreading the message: - please invest in our renewable energy project. I think we are short on social media experience, for example.</p>
<p>Anyway, enough for now. If any of you would like to get involved, have a look at <a href="http://www.brentpureenergy.org.uk">www.brentpureenergy.org.uk</a> and contact me via this site. Thanks.</p>
<p>Nick Hartley</p>BBC London Radio programme about Kilburn online till about mid-Febtag:ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com,2016-01-17:3499303:BlogPost:790042016-01-17T23:01:12.000ZTransition Kensal to Kilburnhttp://ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com/profile/ttkk
<p><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03cg3xy">http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03cg3xy</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03cg3xy">http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03cg3xy</a></p>An Introduction to Harlesden Town Gardenstag:ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com,2015-09-15:3499303:BlogPost:762382015-09-15T10:38:11.000ZGabriel Parfitthttp://ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com/profile/GabrielParfitt
<p><b>HARLESDEN TOWN GARDENS</b> <b>AN INTRODUCTION</b></p>
<p><b><a href="https://www.flickr.com/gp/133034257@N08/Pm2AC7" target="_blank">Find us on Flickr</a></b></p>
<p><b><a href="https://www.facebook.com/harlesdentowngardens?ref=hl" target="_blank">Find us on Facebook</a></b></p>
<p><b><a href="https://twitter.com/HarlesdenNW104B" target="_blank">Find us on Twitter</a> </b></p>
<p></p>
<p><b>THE VISION</b></p>
<p>The Harlesden Town Garden project was started in March 2013. The…</p>
<p><b>HARLESDEN TOWN GARDENS</b> <b>AN INTRODUCTION</b></p>
<p><b><a href="https://www.flickr.com/gp/133034257@N08/Pm2AC7" target="_blank">Find us on Flickr</a></b></p>
<p><b><a href="https://www.facebook.com/harlesdentowngardens?ref=hl" target="_blank">Find us on Facebook</a></b></p>
<p><b><a href="https://twitter.com/HarlesdenNW104B" target="_blank">Find us on Twitter</a> </b></p>
<p></p>
<p><b>THE VISION</b></p>
<p>The Harlesden Town Garden project was started in March 2013. The main aim was to improve the green space located at Challenge Close, St Mary's Road and create an accessible and inclusive urban facility that will enable and promote community cohesion and contribute to improving local biodiversity.</p>
<p>The <b>Friends of Harlesden Town Garden</b> along with <b>LIFT</b> and the new <b>Park Coordinator</b> and <b>Gardening Trainer</b> will support and guide volunteers and the local community to develop the physical transformation of the park, and ensure the project will provide a greater knowledge and understanding of environmental issues as well as conveying a passion for community development and well-being through the use of a public garden.</p>
<p>The Harlesden Town Gardens key aim is to deliver the project in a way that will lead to new and exciting volunteering and engagement opportunities. Disadvantaged people will build their skills, confidence, well-being and employability. Community members who have lacked access to local green space and have been concerned about anti-social behaviour will feel safer, more connected to other local people, and better able to engage in outdoor activities near their home and feel there is an outdoor space that belongs to them – where they can garden, meet with neighbours, exercise, learn about nature, or just enjoy being in a quiet green space. </p>
<p>By becoming involved in the design, development and implementation of rejuvenating the park, local residents will also learn more about the importance of biodiversity and food growing and the steps they can take to achieve that in their own homes. By that we hope to contribute to outcomes such as the consumption of fresh produce and in turn create a reduction in food related carbon emissions and an increase in individuals eating a healthier diet and improving overall health.</p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<p><b>KEY AIMS</b></p>
<ul>
<li>Promoting the health and well-being of all the residents of the area</li>
<li>Involving local people and supporting them, through training and guidance</li>
<li>Continuing the redevelopment of park facilities and infrastructure</li>
<li>Carrying out and promoting environmental improvements and conservation</li>
<li>Promoting sport, community recreation and play facilities</li>
<li>Working with similar groups and exchanging information</li>
<li><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404541182?profile=original" target="_self"></a></li>
<li><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404541182?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404541182?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-full"></a><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404541182?profile=original" target="_self"></a></li>
<li><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404543246?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404543246?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-full"></a></li>
</ul>Looking for volunteers for Brent Mind youth mental health projecttag:ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com,2015-08-17:3499303:BlogPost:762022015-08-17T11:23:50.000ZRochelle Battenhttp://ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com/profile/RochelleBatten
<p>Brent Mind is recruiting volunteers for an exciting new peer mentoring service for young people with mild to moderate mental health issues. Volunteers will be required to meet with their mentee for up to two hours each week to focus on working together to support recovery and build resilience. If you are interested in volunteering for the service or accessing, please contact Rochelle Batten on rochelle.batten@brentmind.org.uk</p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p>Brent Mind is recruiting volunteers for an exciting new peer mentoring service for young people with mild to moderate mental health issues. Volunteers will be required to meet with their mentee for up to two hours each week to focus on working together to support recovery and build resilience. If you are interested in volunteering for the service or accessing, please contact Rochelle Batten on rochelle.batten@brentmind.org.uk</p>
<p></p>
<p></p>Nettle pesto, anyone?tag:ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com,2015-05-19:3499303:BlogPost:749622015-05-19T14:26:13.000ZAmandine Alexandre-Hugheshttp://ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com/profile/AmandineAlexandreHughes
<p>Sometimes knowing that you can cook something without too much hassle is not enough for you to try it, even when you are quite curious to try new plant-based food. I’ve been meaning for quite a few weeks now to cook with nettles, for example. But, without the intervention of Kensal to Kiburn harvesters, I would still look at the <i>urtica diodica</i> specimen in my garden with suspicion.</p>
<p>As I had signed up to the workshop organized by Michael Stuart from Transition Kensal to Kilburn,…</p>
<p>Sometimes knowing that you can cook something without too much hassle is not enough for you to try it, even when you are quite curious to try new plant-based food. I’ve been meaning for quite a few weeks now to cook with nettles, for example. But, without the intervention of Kensal to Kiburn harvesters, I would still look at the <i>urtica diodica</i> specimen in my garden with suspicion.</p>
<p>As I had signed up to the workshop organized by Michael Stuart from Transition Kensal to Kilburn, there was no going back. So, last Saturday, with my gardening gloves pulled up to my elbows, I harvested some nettles and put them in a plastic bag. Quite an achievement in itself! Yes, I felt brave because I still remember how I stumbled into a high bunch of nettles as a kid with bare legs. And I remember how painful it was.</p>
<p>Even Gemma from <a href="https://urbanharvestuk.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Urban Harvesters</a>, who was leading the workshop, confessed that using nettle in her cooking didn’t come to her very naturally. And she is probably one of the most knowledgeable and daring people in London when it comes to cooking with foraged plants!</p>
<p></p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404531751?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404531751?profile=RESIZE_180x180" width="160" class="align-center"></a><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404533668?profile=original" target="_self"><br></a></p>
<p>During the workshop, we transformed nettle into nettle pesto with some garlic, olive oil and pine nuts. This is how I learned that you can use nettle either cooked or raw. Obviously, if it’s raw, it needs to be crushed with a pestle and mortar or pulverized. You don’t want to take the risk to get stung. (Nobody did, by the way!) We also tasted it in a smoothie, mixed with some apple juice. We even got a second round of it. Yep!</p>
<p>Emma also introduced us to a natural fast food alternative to an Indian take-away –which I will definitely try at home. You can cook a handful of nettle in the microwave with a bit of water – or boil them in a pan, if, like me, you don’t have a microwave. Open a tin of <a href="http://hodmedods.co.uk/shop/british-vaal-dhal-400g-can/" target="_blank">Hodmedod's vaal dhal</a> which are British beans cooked with Indian spices, and mix both ingredients together, et voilà! You don’t need any other ingredients. It’s a super quick and highly nutritious meal.</p>
<p>We also experimented with wild garlic (scrumptious as a base for a pesto!) and wild garlic flowers. I had never seen them before and the wild garlic flowers look really beautiful and are delicious covered in a bit of batter and deep-fried.</p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404531935?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404531935?profile=original" width="240" class="align-center"></a></p>
<p>Finally, despite there not being an abundance of elderflowers this season –the weather has not been dry enough over the last (few?) week - we did have enough to prepare some elderflower cordial and also some elderflower fritters.</p>
<p></p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404532778?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/404532778?profile=RESIZE_180x180" width="160" class="align-center"></a></p>
<p>Cooking with foraged food turned into a bit of a food feast! I didn’t count the number of wild garlic flowers fritters and elderflowers fritters that we ate as a group. The fritters disappear from the plate too quickly for that.</p>
<p>Surprisingly, you can taste the delicate elderflower flavour through the batter. And, once you’ve tasted it, you’re hooked! Yes, it’s deep-fried food but it’s foraged deep-fried food, my friend…</p>Food growing project in Neasden - on-liine vote for fundingtag:ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com,2015-05-08:3499303:BlogPost:747452015-05-08T10:56:44.000ZRob Groverhttp://ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com/profile/RobGrover
<p></p>
<p>Dear Transition Town colleagues,</p>
<p></p>
<p>The Suffra Food bank at St Raphael's estate (next to Ikea) is trying to set up a food growing project on the estate. They have a site. The food bank (and the project) are both worth supporting.</p>
<p>Please vote on-line to support the project, so that they can access an Aviva community fund.…</p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p>Dear Transition Town colleagues,</p>
<p></p>
<p>The Suffra Food bank at St Raphael's estate (next to Ikea) is trying to set up a food growing project on the estate. They have a site. The food bank (and the project) are both worth supporting.</p>
<p>Please vote on-line to support the project, so that they can access an Aviva community fund.</p>
<p><a href="https://community-fund.aviva.co.uk/voting/Project/View/536">https://community-fund.aviva.co.uk/voting/Project/View/536</a></p>
<p></p>
<p>many thanks</p>
<p></p>
<p>Rob Grover</p>ttKensaltoKilburn vs. Childhood Illiteracytag:ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com,2015-01-08:3499303:BlogPost:738372015-01-08T10:11:52.000ZRachel Ellishttp://ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com/profile/RachelEllis
<p><span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;"><font face="Century Gothic" size="2">Hi everyone!</font></span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;">I work for a charity called Beanstalk (formerly ‘Volunteer Reading Help’) which tackles the problem of childhood illiteracy by facilitating community volunteering in local primary schools. You…</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;"><font face="Century Gothic" size="2">Hi everyone!</font></span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;">I work for a charity called Beanstalk (formerly ‘Volunteer Reading Help’) which tackles the problem of childhood illiteracy by facilitating community volunteering in local primary schools. You might have seen our 'Get London Reading' campaign in the evening standard.</span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;"><font face="Century Gothic" size="2">Did you know that l</font></span><span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;"><font face="Century Gothic" size="2">ast academic year a quarter of all primary school leavers were unable to read adequately, and this figure rises to 2 out of 5 children in poverty? Interventions such as Beanstalk's volunteers have already made an impact; putting Kensal and Kilburn into the top quarter of areas for getting kids reading and closing the poverty gap. But there is still a long way to go before every child has the skills they need to succeed in life.</font></span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;"><font face="Century Gothic" size="2">By volunteering as a Reading Helper you can make an outstanding contribution to a child's reading ability, self-confidence, love of reading and overall school work. Spending an hour a week of quality time with each of 3 primary school children really does change their lives. And it looks like this: <a href="https://vimeo.com/115081871" target="_blank"><font color="#0000FF">https://vimeo.com/115081871</font></a></font></span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;">I wondered if ttKensaltoKilburn might be able to partner with us in recruiting Reading Helpers. </span><span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;">While I understand that childhood illiteracy is a little different to the issues you usually tackle, I believe this partnership could be a springboard to making a huge difference in the lives and welfare of the children from Kensal to Kilburn. P<font face="Century Gothic" size="2">erhaps I could speak at one of your meetings and invite all our current volunteers who live in your area to join you.</font></span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;"><font face="Century Gothic" size="2">Looking forward to meeting some of you soon,</font></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;"><font face="Century Gothic" size="2">Rachel</font></span></p>
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<p></p>This Changes Everythingtag:ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com,2014-10-10:3499303:BlogPost:734312014-10-10T06:59:53.000ZCarol Lowhttp://ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com/profile/CarolLow
<p>I was fortunate enough to go and hear Naomi Klein talking on her new book This Changes Everything on Monday night. (Me and 1999 others!) She spoke very positively about the Transition Town movement and what we do on a local level.</p>
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<p>Another point she made well was the need at this time for peer education groups on climate change and on our responses to the crisis. This resonated with me - feeling the need to be more specifically informed and the need to join with others to…</p>
<p>I was fortunate enough to go and hear Naomi Klein talking on her new book This Changes Everything on Monday night. (Me and 1999 others!) She spoke very positively about the Transition Town movement and what we do on a local level.</p>
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<p>Another point she made well was the need at this time for peer education groups on climate change and on our responses to the crisis. This resonated with me - feeling the need to be more specifically informed and the need to join with others to learn, share insights and to keep our spirits up. </p>
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<p>Would you like to join me in this? Thinking of a small group meeting on a regular basis for say 6 times and working with Naomi's book as a base. </p>
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<p>There are probably other resources too.. I know the Australian Greens produced a Climate Change Champion kit.</p>
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<p>Love to hear more from you</p>
<p>Carol Low</p>