checking out the plantings from the first conker event with jon ofarrell

pictures from the conkertu.com local feb event.

Flying…

ConkerTU flyers arrived yesterday, so it was out in the snow to distribute them around local community centres and retailers in Measham, Overseal, Netherseal, Albert Village and Gresley. The response on the street has been fantastic and judging by ticket bookings last night, pretty immediate too! Can we keep up with it, I wonder? If you have any problems booking a ticket, please post a comment, so we can deal with it, ASAP. More distributions today around Ashby, Woodville and Swadlincote and through local schools in the week. Looking forward to meeting you all!

ConkerTU Local: the world without borders!

Another 25 Tickets Added Due to Demand.

We have added another twenty five tickets to the event.  We still have some more capacity possible outside of the tickets we have left up on the site but we might have to start moving furniture around! - things progressing nicely.  have a few conker video pieces and ideas i would like to post.

ConkerTU Local looking good for 27th February

It’s been a busy few days at ConkerTU central - aka the Paramount in Swadlincote, at least so it seems a lot of the time, as we sup lattes and hatch plans!

The great news is that almost all of the speakers and events we had planned for 16th January are now back on track for 27th February so we are delighted to announce:

A Youth Gig at the amphitheatre courtesy of The West Street Project, Swadlincote! Plenty of South Derbyshire talent is looking to collaborate with North West Leicestershire bands, so get the word out there because the kit’s all in place for a mammoth gig!

Moira Fire Station update - for all those wanting to know what’s happening with this crucial service there will be a full account of the lobbying involved in keeping the Station open and how to keep up to date with the news.

Transport Forum - trouble getting from A to B? Bus services ending too early or not taking the routes that you need? Come and share your concerns and learn how to get involved!

Meet your local representatives, local parish, town and district councillors even some prospective parliamentary candidates will be around on the day for break out discussions with local residents.

Tamworth Blog & Tamworth Twit will be sharing their experience of using social media to revitalise local communities, alongside relative newbies, Overseal Parish and the Forest Communities Group.

The ConkerTU fibre project - learn what 100MB connection is all about and how it will make a difference to life in the Forest.

ConkerTU Local: Saturday 27th February looking good and much, much more soon!

Sustainability Panelist, Julian Dobson

A writer, speaker and commentator on regeneration and social policy issues, Julian is editorial director and was the founding editor of New Start, a magazine established in 1999 as the UK’s first weekly publication for people involved in community regeneration.  Now a monthly, with a focus on in-depth analysis and showcase learning, New Start aims to inspire and inform the people who make a difference where it matters: the professionals, practitioners and public involved in tackliing disadvantage, building sustainable communities and renewing our neighbourhoods.

Julian is also director of NS+ Limited which helps makes sense of regeneration through research, writing, editing, face to face learning and communications services.  He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a voluntary board member of the Centre for Local Economic Strategies, and on the board of the journal Local Economy.

No such thing as a free lunch? Say cheese!

A huge shout out for the Leicestershire Handmade Cheese Company who have just given us a great discount on the Sparkenhoe Red Leicester we plan to serve on Saturday lunch time.

This is the ONLY genuine Leicestershire cheese produced in the County and is utterly delicious! Though I must say I’m glad they called it Sparkenhoe and not Gorsey Nob, which is apparently what Sparkenhoe means!

And don’t forget to bring your veggie to participate in our Buy Nothing Day free lunch at ConkerTU!  Steve is plotting his assault on the cauldron already!

Emma

I can’t bear it!

I’ve been spending my Sunday afternoon collating materials for next week’s ConkerTU launch and came across the really sad news that the Low Impact Living Initiative has suffered a major theft - £30,000 to be precise.

The resource offered by LILI is second to none, clear, concise, plenty of freebies to read up on before you part with any cash and all in all promoting the kind of independence from consumerism we need for sustainable living.

So, even though we have struggled to get in all the pennies we wanted to launch ConkerTU, right now, we’re comfy enough and have a damned fine day planned for you all.  There will be plenty of other times for swanky budgets, right?

Me? I get paid on Wednesday so I’ll be dipping into my Zerocredit pennies then, but in the meantime if you find you can’t Buy Nothing on 28th November, how about you slip a few quid to this lot?  They’ll be glad of your donation, I’m sure!

Emma

Green Voice of the UK, Piper Terrett, opens ConkerTU

Piper Terrett is a financial journalist and author.  She writes the Frugal Life blog for MSN.co.uk and her book of moneysaving tips The Frugal Life: How to Spend Less and Live More was published in April 2009 by the Good Life Press. A former Financial Times Group journalist, she was recently crowned Green Voice of the UK by the Energy Saving Trust.  She will spend the next 12 months in the voluntary role representing the public’s views on green issues.  Piper lives in Essex, with her partner Doug, pet chickens and vegetable patch.

49 plays

As we are fully supporting Buy Nothing Day also on the 28th we thought we would repost this great track Peter Lundy has recorded - ‘Stop Your Shopping’ - you can download it for free from http://pharaohhousecrash.blogspot.com.

We are currently working away to get more promotion regarding our event on the 28th and are in the process in contacting all the local newspapers and media makers.   If you have any direct contacts please forward them on.

ConkerTU Line Up

08.45 The Green Bus departs Tamworth Station GPS & WIFI enabled journey into the Forest

09.30 Meet, greet & tweet over caffeine fuelled infusions @ Waterside, Conkers!

10.15 Conkerchoo or saunter over to the Discovery Centre, Conkers

10.30 Green Voice of Britain, Piper Terrett officially opens ConkerTU

11.00 Sustainable communities panel, including Penney Poyzer & Julian Dobson

12.00 Musical interlude, from celtic folk fiddler, Sian Phillips

12.30 Voyage of Discovery - extended lunch to explore Conkers & tweet with Millie, the owl!

02.00 Rural Energy explain how Conkers’ new Biomass heating system works

03.00 Hyperlocal pecha kucha, a quick fired contrast and compare, session with Q&A
including Nottngham Eco House, Lammas Project, Ibstock does Climate Change,
Self help housing

04.00 Summing up and thanks

05.00 The Green Bus returns to Tamworth Station - Bon Voyage!

In addition to the above there will screenings of various Buy Nothing Day and Climate Change media in the Discovery Hall, with a further last minute surprise to be confirmed!

We would love you to nominate conkertu!

we just heard about this and we know that we do not stand a chance in hell of being in the higher sections as some of the awesome eco and green sites already out there but we do intend to make sure that our project/presence is known around the web in the hope like others to drive more people/traffic to our tweetups and ultimately the content that is shared at each one.  we would love you to nominate us for something and we have to give props and a hattip to the green web awards in general.  maybe 2010 will see us get some awards - we can live in hope! ;0

phil campbell (@philcampbell)

Penney Poyzer attending conker tweetup

Penney Poyzer and husband Gil Schalom co-own the Nottingham ecohome. The first radical eco retrofit of a Victorian house in the UK.

Penney is an author, broadcaster, special adviser and lecturer covering a broad spectrum of green issues. Gil is a green architect and NHER SAP assessor specialising in low carbon design for both new build and retrofit - including listed buildings.

They started ‘recycling’ their house 10 years ago and their pioneering project has been acknowledged as the  UK’s benchmark for domestic low carbon retrofit. The house has gone from an energy rating of G to an A. They live their with their daughter Jasmine aged 3 and Puzzle their cat.

50 plays

we have been very lucky to be allowed to use this track for ‘buy nothing day’ and our conker tweetup project on the 28th of November.  entitled ‘shop and buy’ we want to thank Eric Maddern again for allowing access to it.  i’m sure people are feeling the lyrics in this! :)

Low impact living at Lammas

*updated* video quicklink | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71lJZ-ANOmA

Lammas turned out to be not thirty miles from the childhood home my parents lost. To an extent, I knew this before I went - English people on land I call my own. Now there’s a racism which goes back centuries. And yet I knew that this was not going to be an uncomfortable journey for me. I am sorry if this is more personal than you may care to read, but I want you to understand what I learned.

Set where the fields meet the hillside, we’re talking land which has been the threadbare grazing of nothing but sheep for decades, windswept and washed away to the waterlogged valleys below. A few scraggly bushes and a band of trees are all that remain of what was once the crowning glory of this summit; the ready remnants of deforestation.

The first thing I notice is the base camp. I cannot help but recognise how well it is situated, tucked into the trees where no breeze may bear a chill, lifted off the ground to avoid the damp. Where I should never have pitched a tent come November, here I see how it can be done.  Above me are two banks of saplings bending to the wind as they shield the camp and provide a break to the expanse.  I learn later that they are willow, planted for a multitude of uses.

There’s a rope swing hanging from a tree - I used to play on one such and feel at home, for it was in places like this that I built my dens, half hedgerow, half woodland with thickets of hazel, bramble and sloes. I recall picking these with Dad, who gave gleeful account of his skill in Depression and War time, bearing gifts from the Black Mountain for tea.  Yet I can never forget that he’d eaten the ponies too. This always horrified me and I remember him close to tears whenever he saw a mountain foal. There used to be so many, he would say.

After half an hour of wandering free, I am joined by Simon Dale who comes down from the first house being built, for our interview. He has an elfin look which fits perfectly with his surroundings. I admire his tent and am told that it was three days and £6.50 in the making - Zerocredit_UK pays her respects! I ask about natural resources and learn that the spring will provide energy as well as water in the longer term, so there’s no need for solar panels: a few battered ones will provide light through the coming winter, then that’s it. Low impact living at 75% self-sufficiency and the remaining 25% derived from income through land based activity, or surplus stock so to speak.

Earlier this summer I had blogged on The Lie of the Land in neighbouring Ceredigion. Whenever I go home, I remain irked that I cannot myself afford such residence. I ask what, for me, is the ultimate question: how have the locals responded? The answer is as I expect, mixed. But the response to quibbles about building on land for which no other planning permission is granted is formidable. Here is an example of affordable housing, capable of bringing Wales back to the glory in which my father knew it and all for £35,000 plot and planning, three thousand to build the house, propagation of indigenous plants for food and not a mains supply in sight.

To me, most admirable of all, Lammas has a Welsh Language policy so as to become wholly cohesive with local culture and tradition. This is neither tree hugging exercise nor yet another Anglo Welsh invasion. Indeed here, for the first time, I can see my way home in a possibility which is utterly sustainable.  Dad would have loved it!

Emma, @Zerocredit_UK