1.  Community gardens – TT South of members to help Shirley write up and promote the community garden set up at Marine Park Primary as something that could be done in other schools.  Anna to chase up what is happening about the community gardening and local food shop proposals that were in the Bill Quay Farm bid.  Shirley noted that there are several volunteers interested in working a plot that has become available in South Tyneside and that these people are happy for surplus product to be shared with the community.

2. Locally grown food box schemes – a couple of people at the meeting were willing to become distribution points.  It was suggested that the TT could help schools and community centres to get matched up with suppliers and produce leaflets promoting a list of local schemes.

3.  South of Tyne Green Festival – it was suggested that we could try and tag onto Jarrow Fest in May and share their publicity.  Or as an alternative, the Saltwell Park flower show.  The fest could included the low impact living initiative, woodcraft folk, circus stalls, and interactive activity showing the likely effects of various government interventions on the environment, a fun consultation stall (e.g. flags and sand), a talk in a tent from the perma-culture network, a fun test of people’s knowledge of what comes from oil, a sports recycler, Boldon Solar Energy.

4.  Ultra-local activity – TT could support people to set up very local websites for people who want to swap free stuff within walking distance.  Alternatively we could promote the idea of a day of the week when people leave out free stuff for others to pick up, which is what they have in Germany.  We can also promote a list of environmentalist films that can be screened free of charge in pubs and community centres (as they have been doing in Gosforth).

Anna

“Welcome to Transition Town South of Tyne.  The Transition Town initiative is a national wide network of community groups working together to make our cities, towns and villages more self-reliant and less dependent on oil.   Transition Town South of Tyne is the coordinating group for South Tyneside and Gateshead.   We are very new but we have already successfully completed the first stage of one project: the tranformation of the food group coordinator’s garden into a food garden (see the video link below for how we went about clearing the ground, and then constructing and planting the first raised bed all within five hours including a tea break and a lunch break).