TTK out and about in May 2013

Around the borough of Kingston

TTK was at various events in the borough in May, including May Merrie in Memorial Gardens, central Kingston on Monday 6th May, and Surbiton Food Festival in the week of 12-19 May.  

Green Open Houses 2013

 23 - 24 March, Kingston

 Members of TTK Energy Group opened  their energy-efficient houses to the public for the Superhomes weekend. See Green Open Houses event for what was on offer. 

Paint the Town Green 2013

4th - 10th March, all over Kingston

This year Paint the Town Green, Kingston's annual celebration of all things environmental, was timed for national Climate Week 2013. TTK was an active participant,  helping Kingston Environment Group's working party to organise the week's events, with TTK members and project groups running activities that included several swapping events and Professor Kayoss at the Rose ...

The 16 businesses that joined the Big Switch Off, switching off unnecessary lights and equipment when their shops and offices were not in use, were: WPG Surveys Ltd, Surbiton; John Lewis Kingston; Penmor, Surbiton; KEW Lighting, New Malden; Woodland Traditional Windows, Kingston; Seoul Residential, New Malden; Ditton Wine Traders, Surbiton; Simone Kay Stained Glass, Kingston; Kingston Citizens Advice Bureau; Parabola Software, Surbiton; Whitman Fry Wealth Management Ltd, Kingston; SJJ Limited; La Tasca, Kingston; Kingston Chamber of Commerce; Jivadental, Kingston; Cine Sanctuary. The local schools that ran an environmental assembly were  during the week were: Coombe Boys; Coombe Hill Infants; Corpus Christi Primary; Knollmead Primary; Christ Church, New Malden; Coombe Hill Juniors; The Study; Burlington Infant and Nursery School. And the local businesses and organisations that have so far made a Green Pledge to commit to their own environmental actions include: Parabola Software Ltd; Kingston Citizen Advice; Green Leaf Transportation; Rose Theatre Kingston; Surbiton Fire Station; From the Ground Up; Kingston Environment Centre; Save the World Club; Simone Kay Simone Kay Stained Glass; Kingston Council

See all the events that took place on the Paint the Town Green events page. (Greener Upon Thames were sorry that they had to cancel showing their documentary about the effects of plastic debris on our marine ecosystem and hope to reschedule sometime.) 

"Energy we can all afford?"

Friday January 8th, 2013, 7.00 - 9.30pm, Kingston Market House

"Warmer homes, lower bills, cooler planet" - how could we achieve these? TTK, working with Kingston's Save the World Club and the national Energy We Can All Afford campaign, hosted a panel discussion on this topic, covering fuel poverty, energy efficiency and the current Energy Bill. The Rt Hon Edward Davey MP for Kingston and Surbiton and Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change was keynote speaker, and the panel of experts, local and national, consisted of Shane Brennan, Chief Executive of Age Concern Kingston, Andrew Pendleton of Friends of the Earth, Martyn Williams from Transform UK, and Ben Farnes, Young Media Champion, National Children’s Bureau. Well attended, with good questions from the floor and a consistent message from the panel that insulation of our old and inadequate housing stock is a sustainable and feasible way to deal with fuel poverty, the event showed a keen local appetite for such discussions and left many wanting more.

Thanks to the many helpers from TTK and our co-organiser Save the World Club, it was both a sociable evening with plentiful refreshments and some interesting displays and giveaway energy-saving items, as well as one where important messages were delivered to the Secretary of State for Environment and Climate Change. 

TTK Energy Group event "Energy efficiency: whole house strategies"

Thursday December 6th 2012, 7.00pm, C-SCAIPE, Kingston University Penrhyn Road campus

This talk, hosted by TTK Energy Group, attracted a good diverse audience with lots of excellent questions for Marine Sanchez, Building Physics Engineer, and Inigo Harrison, Project Manager, of greentomatoenergy.  Marine and Inigo discussed the advantages of various energy-efficiency measures in the home, from the easy low-cost wins that everyone should do first, such as draught-proofing and LED lights, to high tech and expensive renovations and solutions, as well as the challenges and problems associated with retrofitting the older houses that most of us live in. Marine pointed out that most of the cost of work on your house is labour, so having extra layers of insulation while the work is being done is relatively inexpensive, and that an essential part of any energy-efficiency measure is "training" the householder to make it work for them. They expertly answered questions about condensation, cold spots and thermal bridges, triple and secondary glazing, conservatories, the merits of various forms of wall insulation and cladding, and how to keep houses cool as well as warm and healthy as well as air-tight. Like most interested observers, they are waiting for the Green Deal to be fully worked out, but warned that some Green Deal assessors and installers might only have a couple of days' training, that some suggested improvements could actually damage a property, and that the interest rate on Green Deal loans is likely to higher than one could get elsewhere. It was really useful to hear properly qualified experts speaking on an issue that concerns most of us and where there is almost as much bad advice as good to be had.

Think in Kingston 2012 - on Money

All October, around the borough 

TTK and many of our friends, supporters and affiliates organised events and contributed ideas during Kingston's annual festival of ideas. The Transition movement, as well as its interest in building reslience against climate change and peak oil, is interested in relocalising the economy - and this was our opportunity to explore these ideas with other members of the community in discussions about alternatives to conventional banks and money, the People's Budget, ethical investing, and what we can do as individuals and as a community about the state of the national and global economy. See www.thinkinkingston.org.uk for the full programme of events and brief accounts of some of the discussions.

Living Landscapes? 

Saturday 13th October 2012 Kingston Working Mens' Club

Do we really want wild nature in Kingston? Are we prepared to make space for it, live with its untidiness, pay for it? What's in it for us? The Transition Town Kingston event “Living Landscapes - making space for nature in the urban environment” on Saturday 13th October explored these questions – in displays about wild flowers, bees and other pollinators from River of Flowers, local beekeepers, Kingston Environment Centre and the Environment Trust, and in a panel discussion chaired by local ecologist and TTK supporter John Fellowes. Expert panellists, Kathryn Lwin of River of Flowers, Marie-Claire Edwards (Green Spaces Service Manager, Kingston Council) and Jacqui Weir of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds found much common ground in their concerns about declining populations of bees and other pollinators and once-common birds like the house sparrow, and shared practical and imaginative ideas about how to create, restore and maintain natural habitats in Kingston. See "Living Landscapes" for more about the project and ideas on suburban biodiversity.

TTK's wheel for the Olympics

August, in the window of Uniqlo, Clarence Street

TTK contributed to Kingstonfirst's "205 wheels" community arts project to celebrate the Olympic Cycle Road Race, and our creation ended up in the window of Unqlo (as originally created on the left and in the shop window on the right). Thank you Toni, Des and Steph for monkeys, fruit, flowers, and ribbons for our tribute to (happy, sustainable, peaceful) Costa Rica.

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"Nightmare on Fleet Street..."

Friday 13 July, 7.00pm, Kingston University

"Nightmare on Fleet Street... and Downing Street", hosted by TTK at C-SCAIPE, proved an interesting insight into where power lies (and it's certainly not with us!), as well as into some radical ideas about how democracy could be reshaped.  Ex-Reuters journalist Patrick Chalmers (pictured on the right) read from the opening chapter of his highly topical insider's account of the media's complicity with power, Fraudcast News - How Bad Journalism Supports Our Bogus Democracies, and then answered questions. Patrick's mission is "to contribute to the development of real democracy at the local, national and global levels of our society" - and his talk and book are part of that mission. It is clear, as the current Leveson Inquiry is revealing and Patrick confirmed, that the conventional media are failing to act in the public interest or to counter public powerlessness. Inadequate and inaccurate media coverage of climate change and looming energy shortages are probably of most concern to many environmentalists, but the discussion and references (with plenty of suggested reading) also ranged over: the Arab spring; participative democracy (with the example of the Zapistas in Mexico); the Power Inquiry report (Joseph Rowntree Trust); 9/11; jury service (a model for a reformed House of Lords?); the pamphlet From Dictatorship to Democracy; and the new on-line magazine Stir… It was not all gloom, as Patrick also suggested alternatives to our dependence on conventional media: contemporary electronic kit, the internet and social media enable anyone to become a citizen journalist (and/or to support radical journalism – see http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/133038413/stir-to-action or http://fraudcastnews.wordpress.com). Thank you to Patrick for a stimulating Friday evening, and to everyone who came along and contributed to the discussion, drinks and snacks.

Kingston Rio Connection event

Saturday 16 June, 2.00pm, Market House, Market Place, Kingston

TTK was one of the co-organisers of this discussion, part of a national debate organised by the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition to mark 20 years on from the Rio Earth Summit in 1992.. This summer government representatives from around the world met at a ‘Rio+20’ summit to discuss sustainable development, and this event was a invitation to join this pre-summit discussion in Kingston with our panel of experts: 

•  Ed Davey MP - (for Kingston & Surbiton, and Secretary of State (SoS for Energy and Climate Change) will discuss sustainable development and take questions from local people.
•  Christine Allen (Chair) - Director of Policy & Public Affairs - Christian Aid
•  Laura Taylor -  Head of Policy - Tearfund
•  Hilary Gander - Transition Town Kingston
•  Alban Thurston – Project Director - Juice From Your Roof

Ed said that we had made progress since the first Earth Summit in Rio 20 years ago but that it had been ‘far, far too slow’. He spoke about the importance of the sustainable development goals food security, access to clean water and access for all to green, clean energy and the ‘moral imperative of taking action in this area’. You can hear some of what Ed said here: http://tinyurl.com/6who8bs. Our audience had a chance to put questions and make comments after hearing from all the speakers and the topics ranged from the choice of investing in road building as opposed to other forms of sustainable transport, to the sustainability of global population growth./p>

At the end of the meeting, attended also by the mayor of Kingston, Mary Heathcote, OBE there was a chance for photos with the minister – this one shows he has put his name to the Rio-UK Declaration for a Sustainable Future. To read the text and find out about which other MPs have signed the declaration, see http://www.stopclimatechaos.org/rio-connection/

TTK out and about in Paint the Town Green, May 2012 

All over the borough of Kingston

Alongside ongoing work on all our projects, in May we we even more active and visible than usual with TTK volunteers on stalls at Kingston's May Merrie, the Seething Sports Day and the Alpha Road Fun Day, selling teas, coffees and cakes at All Saints Church, and Stitch in Time sewing workshops in Tolworth Library and at a lunch-hour session on making patches with a Refugee Action Kingston group.

We also held a public showing of "In Transition 2.0 - a story of resilience and hope in extraordinary times"  the new film from Transition Network, capturing inspiring stories of Transition initiatives around the world, responding to uncertain times with creativity, solutions and 'engaged optimism'. Watch the trailer here. And a series of 5 "carbon conversations", designed to explore climate change and develop your own solutions.  

Green Open House weekend 2012: "It's good to talk." 

All over the borough of Kingston, May 19-20

The first ever Kingston Green Open House, a TTK Energy Group contribution to Kingston's Paint the Town Green month, proved a very promising initiative – relatively small in numbers (of open houses and visitors) but providing useful and positive interactions between householders who had undertaken a variety of energy-saving and other green actions and visitors seeking (and occasionally offering) impartial advice, based on experience, on what worked, what didn't, what was cost-effective, which materials had been used and why, what would be practicable…

One satisfied visitor reported: "We visited four places on that day. Every one of them helped with questions I have been struggling to answer for a very long time. I can't tell you how good it is to have found people with such enthusiasm and such a depth of experience, so willing to talk and share their knowledge." And a TTK Open House host said: "I enjoyed it! I like chatting about these things and sharing what I've learnt so far... and I think that they enjoyed it. It worked well that all four visitors were here at the same time so they got to learn from each other's questions." Another was very relieved that she had invited her heat pump installer to come along to answer technical questions!

Thank you to the TTK-ers and friends of TTK-ers who opened their homes to visitors. To think about for next year: how to publicise better and expand the numbers of participating homes and visitors; how to follow up and continue the engagement with interested visitors.

TTK AGM and birthday party

24th April, C-SCAIPE Dept, Kingston Uni, Penrhyn Rd, KT1 2EE

At TTK's first AGM, in April 2012, the new constitution was discussed and agreed with some minor clarifications and 12 volunteers came forward for the new management team. You can read the draft minutes, the year's accounts and the newly approved constitution by clicking the button below. The formal part of the meeting was followed by a brief celebration of TTK's 4th birthday with cake and refreshments. Thank you to everyone to everyone who came along and participated or volunteered or provided refreshments, especially Toni for the splendid birthday cake!

Minutes

Where does your heat go? Thermal imaging "party", Feb 2012

Four very different houses in Kingston, and several lessons learnt at a February thermal imaging "party" organised by Kevin Burchell of Kingston University's Smart Communities project (smartcommunities.org.uk), hosted by Peter and Marilyn Mason of Transition Town Kingston (ttkingston.org), and conducted by John Gallop and Sue Williams of South West London Environment Network (swlen.org.uk). Key lessons included: take a critical look at your front door and your pet-flap (could be worthwhile fixes); seal those draughts (cheap and effective); consider double-glazing and other insulation (not so cheap, but effective); live in a modern house (not necessarily feasible). 

Write-Up

TTK's Kingston Green e-Directory goes public

Monday 5th December 2011, Kingston Market House

Green-minded consumers and Kingston councillors mingled with green and aspiring green enterprises to celebrate the launch of Kingston Green e-Directory... Read the full report here.

TTK "Tricky Time Trial"

Sat 16th July, outside Kingston Guildhall

Who went fasted in the TTK time trial: the BMW, the bicycle, the scooter, the skateboard or the roller-blades? There was a catch, as you might expect from a event organised by TTK for Zero Carbon Britain Day. Read the full report here.

TTK Open Meeting

Mon 7th June, C-SCAIPE, Kingston University, Penrhyn Road

An opportunity to find out about projects that are up and running but needed help: From the Ground Up veg box scheme, the Orchard project, Stitch in Time social sewing group, CRED (Cambridge Road Gardening Group)...

Free Entry

Learn a skill : making a raised vegetable bed

Sat 5th March, 11am-1pm, 32 Upper Park Road, Kingston KT2 5LD

A chance to learn how to build a raised bed from recycled materials and have a go at all the skills yourself. All materials, tools, knowledge and refreshments were provided and there was a picnic lunch afterwards.. For more information tel: 07749 633973 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting            07749 633973      end_of_the_skype_highlighting or email baizard@hotmail.co.uk

Free Entry

Eat and Meet with the From The Ground Up Food Cooperative

Weds 10th Nov, 6:30 for 7pm start, at Steph's house, 33 Woodside Rd, New Malden, KT3 3AW

From The Ground Up is a cooperative, which means that everyone's opinions count.  And because we are all volunteers we need your help and ideas.  From The Ground Up is growing - if you want to have a voice in its development and what it can offer the Kingston community, please join us at this event.  Discussions will cover policy, funding, marketing, products, volunteering, technology, community activities (e.g. schools) and anything else people want to talk about.  And all with great food!

Free Entry More Info

Diversity workshop

Sat 6th November, 10am-3.45pm, C-SCAIPE, Kingston University, Penrhyn Road, KT1 2EE

Catrina Pickering of the Transition Network (the charity set up to support Transition initiatives) will be travelling up from Devon to run this workshop.  We will be exploring issues around power and diversity, and learning how to take effective action to reach the corners of our local community we haven't yet managed to engage.

Everyone is welcome at this free event.  Catrina will also be providing ongoing support to TTK as we put the lessons of this workshop into practice.

Free Entry More Info