Thank you to the people who suggested books for our library. We lend to anyone who has completed, or is taking part in, Carbon Conversations. If you want a list of what we have, email the office.
And here are details of our latest news, and upcoming events and workshops:
Carbon Conversations Autumn Series starting in September
If you haven’t yet taken part in one of our popular courses, why not give it a try this Autumn?
CCF Events
Grow your Own Autumn Review
Tuesday September 7th, 7.30-9.30
Special to this season: we’ll look back over the last season – how was it for you and your garden? Bring along some produce you have grown. Saving seeds and storing produce. Start making plans for next season and preparing soil before conditions become too wet and sticky.
Venue: Ross St Community Centre, Ross St, CB1 3UZ. No need to book.
Eco-renovation: Getting started
Thursday September 16th, 7.30-9.30
Andy Brown (Engineer) and Tim Acheson (Builder), both specialising in sustainability, will introduce you to the principles and planning behind successful projects, explain what may be appropriate for different types of house and guide you through systems, materials and technologies
Venue: St Luke’s Church Centre, Victoria Rd, CB4 2DE. Numbers limited to 20 – Booking essential
Seasonal Meal for 10:10:10 Day
Sunday 10th October
CCF are signing up to the 10:10:10 Day of Positive Action and celebrating with an autumn seasonal meal. The meal will be from 7-9.30pm at Ross Street Community Centre. Please bring food and drink to share, with as much of it local, seasonal and home-cooked as possible! Let us know what is in your dish and where the ingredients came from with a tempting label! There will be a prize for the best dish made with all-local ingredients. Tell your friends and bring as many people as you can! If you’re planning your own 10:10:10 action, we’d love to hear about it
Eco-renovation of Victorian and listed homes
Thursday October 14th, 7.30-9.30
Architect David Crowther will talk about the issues and solutions and answer your questions.
Venue: St Luke’s Church Centre, Victoria Rd, CB4 2DE. Numbers limited to 20 – Booking essential.
Communication Workshops
We have a programme of Communication Workshops for our facilitators and volunteers. These training workshops equip them to communicate effectively and sensitively, one-to-one and in groups. The workshops are based on the latest research about climate communication, on psychology and on group work. If you are not a volunteer, but have a particular interest in attending any of these, get in touch. The next one is:
Monday 27th September 7.30-9.30pm Talking about climate change
Opening up a conversation about climate change isn’t always easy. Rosemary Randal will help us explore:
- framing climate change to connect with people’s concerns and aspirations
- talking to different kinds of people
- picking a positive message
There’ll be time to talk about the issues that concern you and we’ll role-play some typical situations. This workshop will be held at the CCF office, Citylife Social Enterprise Centre, 182-190 Newmarket Rd, Cambridge, CB5 8HE
Sustainable Streets
We’re delighted that we’ve got funding for a new pilot project creating friendlier communities and tackling global warming called ‘Sustainable Streets’. We’ll be working with residents in 4 streets in Abbey, Arbury, Queen Edith’s and Petersfield wards with the help of City Council community workers. The plan is to help people decide how to make their communities truly sustainable places, fit for the 21st century. All the usual CCF services and activities will be on offer but we’re hoping that each street’s residents will make this project truly their own, reducing their impact on the climate and creating a better place to live in their own special way.
We’re currently looking for 2 more streets to join the project, one in Abbey ward and one in Queen Ediths. If you’d like your street to be involved, particularly if you’d like to help on the project, we’d be delighted to hear from you. Please contact the office – , email info@cambridgecarbonfootprint.org as soon as possible.
Funding News
Yes, I know it’s not the most exciting topic around, but it is incredibly important for us, particularly at the moment! And I assume you wouldn’t be reading this newsletter if you didn’t support what we do•….. Fundraising for environmental causes is a difficult job – research shows that environmental groups receive less than 2% of funding from the big charitable trusts and that, even within that 2%, groups working on behaviour change get much less than, say conservation organisations. So it’s a hard slog! (And CCF is very grateful to all our funders, whether charitable trust, city council or generous individual.)
There are a couple of ways you can help:
1) We are setting up a fund-raising group, and would love people to come forward who are interested in different aspects of fundraising. My main experience is writing bids for big national charitable trusts, but, for example, we would love to have people get involved who enjoy organising local fundraising events. Please contact me for a chat if you want to find out more. (Let Mary know in the office and she will pass the message on.)
2) Another way you could help enormously is to pay us a regular amount through a standing order – with funding so difficult and getting worse all the time in the present economic climate, it is really helpful to have regular amounts coming in, however small. (This is one of the ways Obama financed his presidential campaign!) Several of our projects are in urgent need of funding, such as Climate-Friendly Homes, which currently only has enough money to keep it going until Christmas, so please help if you can.
Bev
Volunteer fundraiser
By the way, we recently got a free copy of the Directory of Social Change’s new environmental funding directory, which looks really useful – I would certainly recommend it from the bits I have read so far. This is what they say about themselves:
“New Environment Funding Guide from the Directory of Social Change
This guide provides users with an understanding of general fundraising (i.e different fundraising approaches, budgeting, etc) and contains vital information on where to obtain funds that are specifically related to your organization. Priced at £35, this excellent resource is a really useful guide for all those working within the environmental charity sector or those responsible for raising funds for environmental causes. For more information and to order your copy visit DSC Online today (http://www.dsc.org.uk/Publications/Fundraisingsources/@54048).”
You may or may not know that our ground-breaking Carbon Conversations project is now being rolled out to the rest of the country and has been run in the Scottish Parliament! We urgently need money to continue this work.
Other local events
4 Season’s Fair in Queen Edith’s Ward
Tuesday 7th September 5-8pm
Queen Ediths’s ward has the highest gas and electricity use per home in the whole of Cambridge. Come to the first of the City Council’s 4 Seasons Fairs and see the help that is on hand: 4 Seasons Fair
Eco-refurbishment for householders
Starting on Tuesday 21st September
This excellent new course at CRC is a must for anyone wanting to put their house in eco-order! Starts Tuesday September 21st for 5 weeks. Cost: £45 for further details and to apply, please contact Sarah Bearpark, Curriculum Leader Sustainable Development, Cambridge Regional College Phone: Email: sbearpark@camre.ac.uk
2010 Milton Produce Show
12th September
to be held at Milton Country Park on 12th September as part of the Food, Farming and Countryside Day. Produce show entries are welcomed from anyone living in Milton, Cambridge or surrounding villages. We have all the usual village show categories of fruit, vegetables, flowers, home produce and handicrafts, as well as categories for children and young people and a photography competition. Because 2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity, we have added two new categories to celebrate the wealth of nature: heritage fruit and vegetables, and wildlife gardening. Full details of all the categories and how to enter can be found at http://www.milton.org.uk/produceshow/
SOHAM 36th Pumpkin Fair
25th September
Apple Weekend, Audley End Walled Kitchen Garden, Saffron Walden
25th & 26th Sept, 10am-5pm
Visit the thriving organic Kitchen Garden and enjoy a variety of apple themed activities, stalls, apple identification by the East of England Apple & Orchard Project. www.england-in-particular.info/cg/appleday/a-events.html
Can you help……..?
Rachel Howell, a researcher at Edinburgh University would like to interview people who are involved, or have been involved, in community initiatives promoting lower carbon lifestyles, in order to learn more about why people get involved, their experiences of involvement, and how such groups help – or don’t help – them to change their lifestyles.
She writes: “ I am especially interested in talking with people who had not already taken action before joining a group (or not much), and/or who had higher-than-average carbon footprints, and to people who did not regard themselves as especially ‘green’ beforehand, though she would be glad to hear from others too.
I’d be very interested in including people who’ve taken part in Carbon Conversations. I would expect interviews to take 1-2 hours, arranged at a time to suit the interviewee and probably in their home, though we could meet elsewhere if preferred. I’ll also be asking interviewees to complete a short written exercise about driving habits. All information given will be confidential and anonymised. I should be able to offer a small payment for people’s time. If you might be interested in being involved please get in touch with me (which will of course not commit you). Thanks!”
Rachel Howell email: r.a.howell@sms.ed.ac.uk Tel: .
The Cost of Climate Change by Tom Bragg
My brother in Tasmania is pleased the Greens have done so well in the recent Australian election. They’re now among the “kingmakers” of the hung parliament. He says Tony Abbott, the Liberal leader, famous for saying climate change “is absolute crap”, “is now regretting those oft-quoted words”. The severity of their drought and bushfires has swung Australian public opinion towards realising that climate change could be particularly serious for them. See George Monbiot’s brilliant analysis:
TIME reports similar changes in Russian public attitudes to climate change, as a result of their heat-wave:
Of course public opinion can be fickle, as with increasing UK scepticism during our cold winter, but I suspect a cumulative effect towards getting real about climate change.
Scientists have avoided claiming any particular weather event is caused by climate change, but their ability to state the probability of such a connection is now improving, as reported here.
Maybe those affected by climate disasters will one day be able to sue those who caused them!
The horrendous floods in Pakistan cry out for all the assistance we can give. Already their probable climate change origin is being debated, as in this New Scientist editorial .
Gardening in September: protect your Brassicas! by Keith Jordan
Following months of dry weather, crops are now growing very well in damp, warm conditions. August was by far the wettest month this year. Take a look at the Cambridge weather graph Cambridge weather graph ! Many of the quicker growing leafy/salad crops can be sown now (lettuce, radish, beetroot, early carrots, etc.) for a later crop. Swiss chard and perpetual spinach sown now will produce a wonderful crop next spring.
Brassicas (cabbages, broccoli, brussels sprouts, cauliflowers, etc.) will also be thriving, but so will their No.1 pest – the cabbage white butterfly: Small White . The Small Cabbage White and less common Large White are still on the wing in great abundance everywhere, searching out your Brassica plants to lay their eggs. I even spotted a few one mile out to sea on the end of Southend pier!
Their ‘very hungry’ caterpillars munch through tons of Brassica leaves each year – down to the leaf mid-ribs. In fact, in the Second World War, school children were encouraged (and paid!) to go out and swot them by the thousand, it was so significant for self sufficiency. Seventy years later, without the help of ‘professional swatters’, covering any brassicas with netting (1cm square max., as rigid as you can get) is very effective at physically preventing the butterflies from laying eggs. Make a frame and ensure the netting is 100% complete. Destroy/remove any existing eggs or caterpillars.
