Sat 17th, 2.30 to 4.30pm Stitched Up Free Upcycling Workshops – Trafford
“Stitched Up are super excited to be bringing you some fabulous FREE workshops this Autumn. With the help of Recycle For Greater Manchester we will be providing workshops encouraging you to stitch, upcycle and create yourselves a new wardrobe from your old or unwanted clothing.
You are invited to bring along any clothes from your wardrobe that are in need of a new lease of life. All the equipment and materials you need will be provided, including sewing machines, second-hand clothes, fabric scraps, threads, needles, pins, scissors and fastenings such as zips and buttons. No sewing experience is required as our experts will be on hand to help. So bring along a friend and learn new lifelong skills to save money on your wardrobe! To book onto the workshop drop as an e-mail below: stitchedupuk@gmail.com”
If you know of other weekend events that are about “climate” (and that includes food growing, or cycling or whatever), then let us know and we can include them in future “Something for the Weekend”s…
Thursday 22 November 2012 9.00am – 4.30pm
Duration 6 hours
Venue University of Salford
Aimed at: Energy managers, Sustainability managers, HR managers, Marketing and internal communication managers, Health, Environment and Safety managers, Facilities & Building managers, Energy & sustainability champions
Course Outline
Innovations and investment in energy-efficient technologies is simply not enough.
The power to change and work in more sustainable ways lies with people.
As the concern around energy use and environmental performance intensifies, psychological insights into workplace behaviour can offer ways to create, enhance, and sustain more energy efficient organisations.
This course is part of a series of training courses providing participants with a deeper understanding of the psychology behind energy use behaviours and practical solutions for creating a sustainable energy culture.
Professor Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Centre Manchester has written a foreword to the “In Place of Growth” report that is being launched next Tuesday evening. Professor Anderson, who regularly presents his findings at meetings throughout the city and the country, concludes
“… for the Annex 1 nations, the UK and for Manchester the choice is the same. To begin immediate and deep reductions in emissions at the same time as transitioning towards a steady-state economy. Or to continue with economic growth in the short-term, with “extremely dangerous” and “devastating” impacts collapsing such growth in the medium term.
“Alternatively, we could continue with the eloquent rhetoric of green growth and win-win opportunities; reject integrity, placate our paymasters and embrace cognitive dissonance – but ultimately renege on our responsibilities to both the current and future generations.”
The report “In Place of Growth,” which is launched next Tuesday evening at a free event in the city centre, also has a foreword by Ed Mayo, Secretary General, Co-operatives UK.
A second report, called “Living Well: Practical Solidarity and Steady State Economics” is being launched at the same event. Disclaimer: MCFly co-editors Arwa Aburawa and Marc Hudson have been heavily involved in the production of both reports.
Virtual Migrants present the latest of their ‘Passenger’ events using live music and spoken word, plus a panel discussion in response to Platform’s new book The Oil Road.The Oil Road, quotes BP – the fourth largest company in the world – describing their operations as “Safe, Silent & Unseen”, but we need both to “see” and to “hear” at whose expense are their billions of dollars of annual profits.
This event by Virtual Migrants with support from Platform will explore the themes of the book and ask, “How does the sanitisation of difficult, violent processes and imperialist histories inform the fight for climate justice today?”
The panel includes:
JAMES MARRIOTT – Platform & co-author of the book
ANNA GALKINA – Platform
JAYA GRAVES – Southern Voices
DEYIKA NZERIBE – Hulme Green Party
MARC HUDSON – Steady State Manchester
ARWA ABURAWA – Manchester Climate Monthly
KOOJ CHUHAN (chair) – Virtual Migrants
The ‘Passenger’ performance will involve Virtual Migrants’ artists:
www.virtualmigrants.comPlatform (London) are a social justice organisation combining Arts, Activism, Education and Research. For more info on The Oil Road and their work including the campaign for justice in the Niger delta, Remember Saro-Wiwa see http://platformlondon.org/.
a preceding event at the same venue as a part of “The Oil Road” launch in Manchester is:
MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES
– film screening by MANCHESTER FILM CO-OPERATIVEJennifer Baichwal’s compelling documentary of photographer Ed Burtynsky’s voyage of discovery in today’s industrial China.
Two reports on the vital issues of Manchester’s economy and relation to the rest of the world have been released today. Written by locally-based activists, with input from a wide range of other people, academics and policy-makers, the reports tackle the need for a “steady state” economy in Manchester (and the world!) and also practical steps that people can take (and are taking) in solidarity with people in the Majority World.
The reports will be formally launched next Tuesday evening (20th November). The event, which is open to all, is at the Mechanics Institute, on Princess St, at 7.30pm. You can book here.
Disclaimer: MCFly co-editors Arwa Aburawa and Marc Hudson have been heavily involved in the production of both reports, and are members of the Steady State Manchester collective.
we are biased, but we think that you all should get along to the launch event that Steady State Manchester group is putting on next Tuesday evening at the Mechanics Institute. Two reports – “In place of growth” and “Lessons on Living Well” are being launched. Here’s a short youtube about it…
Monday 12, 11am Tree planting Fog Lane Park Community Orchard
Don your scarf and join us as we create a new community orchard in Fog Lane Park in Didsbury. We’ll be planting 420 wild fruit and nut trees that will be a free source of luvverly local produce for years to come! To confirm your attendance and, for full meet-up instructions, please email community.growing@yahoo.co.uk
Tues 13, 6.45pm-9pm Friends of the Earth meeting
Our monthly full group meeting this month will provide people with an opportunity to find out more about the group, what you can get from joining in and what campaigns we hope to run next year.
Join us for a glass of wine (or something non-alcoholic) and cake from 6.30 onwards, giving you ample opportunity to chat to our campaigners in a relaxed environment.
Activities that you can get involved in from 7pm onwards:
talk to some of our key campaigners about getting involved and how you can learn new skills or develop existing skills through volunteering
have your say on planning and prioritising our campaigns for 2013
put your creative skills to use by helping to make a bee costume and banners for future events
find out more about some of the key roles within the group that we are looking to fill for next year
suggest other groups that we can work in partnership with in addition to running our key campaigns
find out about national Friends of the Earth and Manchester Friends of the Earth – how we work, how we are funded, how we run the local group, what awards we have won…
see a stall in action – we regularly run stalls at local community events and always want volunteers to come and help out – if you’re not sure what this entails come along to see a mock up of a stall in action
see some photos and press cuttings about the group from the last year
have a look around our website, find out what the ‘wiki’ is and how you can use it, see our flickr site for hundreds of photos of our group events and actions, take online actions on environmental issues
This is a perfect meeting for those who are new to the group and for those who might want to get more involved and want to know how! When: drinks and cake from 6.30pm, event 7-9pm, Tuesday 13 November Where: Green Fish Resource Centre, 46-50 Oldham St, Manchester M4 1LE
Tues 13 6pm to 8pm Tim May in conversation with MIT’s Mike Joroff on Future Cities.
Professor Tim May from SURF will be in conversation with MIT’s Mike Joroff who will talk about ‘inventional’ parts of our cities. You will be invited to imagine future cities where citizens shape their own experience, delight themselves, learn and build community, and how scientists and artists can transparently enable such creativity through working in partnership with one another.
Book here
Salford Quays
M50 2HE Salford
United Kingdom
Tuesday, 13 November 2012, 7pm to 9pm Refreshments available from 6pm
An Interactive Evening of Exploration with Christopher & Sheila Cooke Join us for an evening of exploration into the latest thinking on values, leadership and change in the context of a rapidly globalising world, where 7 billion earthlings are seeking a first world lifestyle that consumes the resources equivalent to 74 billion.
Imagine for a moment, that the multiple and simultaneous pressures for change are actually early indications of the probability of the emergence of a new era, and that, in the apparent turmoil, many innovative solutions are being discounted or hidden.
Do the following statements ring true with you?
• The economic, environmental, social, and political indicators tell us clearly that
conventional ways of thinking are no longer working.
• There is growing demand for solutions based on a new way of thinking, where attaining a desirable quality of life and taking responsibility for the planet go hand-in-hand.
• I have a clear sense that something needs to change but I am not sure what!
If these words align with your thinking, then join us to explore how the latent resilience that exists within you can be released and utilised. We invite you to come with the questions you have not yet voiced about aspects of your life that are important to you, and come prepared to talk about what you are observing in the world that you have not yet had the chance to discuss.
Christopher and Sheila are dedicated to accelerating the release of this new era through an understanding of the deeper dynamics of worldviews. Christopher is a co-founder of Be the Change, and is considered to be a leading practitioner in the design-focused application of Spiral Dynamics Integral. Sheila is recognized internationally for her skills facilitating groups, and training others to act as facilitators of group process.
A highly interactive evening with space afterwards to mingle and talk.
Manchester Cheadle Village Hotel, Cheadle Road, Cheadle SK8 1HW http://www.5deep.net No charge. Donations accepted.
Register via – jon.twigge@rpssoftware.co.uk
Exhibition at the Whitworth Art Gallery :
Jane and Louise Wilson’s The Toxic Camera and Atomgrad (Nature Abhors a
Vacuum); also featuring Vladimir Shevchenko’s Chernobyl: A Chronicle of Difficult
Weeks film (1987)
My first reaction to an arts exhibition about Chernobyl and Pripyat (the workers’ nearby abandoned town) was of disgust. The Chernobyl disaster as art? Distasteful voyeurism more like. Still I was at the Gallery anyway, so after meandering around the other pieces of work by the same artists downstairs, I went upstairs.
You need about 1½ hour to fully take in the displays and I would recommend you start with gallery 10, on the left of the centre staircase. Surrounded by darkness, the only object on show is a bronze cast of a 35mm Konvas Avtomat similar to Shevchenko’s camera. As you gradually make sense of its presence as a reminder of the footage taken within days of the disaster by the filmmaker, you are told that the original was so radioactive that it had to be buried as toxic waste. Your mind starts racing.. access in the early days? Who was this man? What about the crew and people involved? What did they see? What film is this? …
Well the film is showing on a small TV screen at the back of the gallery with subtitles. As a first hand record of the seriousness of the disaster it was suppressed at first, but released after Shevchenko’s death of radiation in 1987. You can sit through its 40 minutes or so, transfixed by the aerial views of the plant, the radioactive spots on the film but mostly by the people, workers, inhabitants, children evacuated and volunteers working there. There is a pro-communist slant to some of the comments, but what you see is extraordinary: members publicly excluded from the party in shame for having run away, letters from 10 year olds offering their blood and houses to the victims, men leaving their jobs to help decontaminating land, pouring concrete on the reactor or building new villages for the evacuees… solidarity.
After that there’s the artists’ own film The Toxic Camera, on a large screen in the centre of the gallery. A booming voice-over gives an account of the original film crew, and the radioactivity on the film. It questions human impact, and the ruins we are left with as we are presented with footage from Kiev exclusion zone and Orford Ness’ MoD disused testing site. More desolated photos of Pripyat’s ruins are exhibited in the following gallery. The Atomgrad set of works is printed in large scale, and as you stand in front of each of them, you are in the very rooms, taking in the story and scale of each location: here a kindergarten, here a swimming pool… This has ceased to be art, it is a social comment on man’s temporary agitation yet leaving invisible permanent footprints.
I stood up alone in the dark watching the film for 18 minutes again. Iodine-131’s half-life is 8.1 days, Plutonium-241, 14 year; Strontium-90, 29 years; Caesium-137, 30 years; Americium-241, 430 years. 18 minutes only to remember the radiated, the ill, the dead and the brave, the destruction, the helplessness and the panic, but yet trees grow, and species live on.
They say art should provoke a reaction. The weight of this show well worth the visit is evident, but you need time to absorb it. This is not art as entertainment: it relates to real-life issues permanently on the agenda and by generating personal reflection, it reaches its objective and its public.
And this weekend, the only “eco” event we know of is this –
Sunday 11th, 1.30pm A Promenade Parade to the [official] Grand Opening Ceremony of the OK Cafe!!
The OKasional Café would cordially like to invite you to the official grand opening ceremony of the Café! Location tbc. Bring your bikes, your feet, slogans, mops, trumpets, top hats, top cats, gloves, Sunday Best, and creative ideas to decorate the Cafe!
If you know of other weekend events that are about “climate” (and that includes food growing, or cycling or whatever), then let us know and we can include them in future “Something for the Weekend”s…
After this, we were even invited to attend the Steering Group to talk about MCFly and what (else) we do. We said “yes, on the condition that the group justify its exclusion of members of the public from its meetings.” The invitation was withdrawn. (We made an “Open Video” to them about this, to fulfil our promise to attend.)
More recently, we just decided that enough was enough, and once/if ever it started doing something then we might devote some very limited bandwidth to it (print edition only). Well, recently there’s been a report produced about buildings and the (likely) missing of carbon reduction targets. Now there’s this below what has landed in our inbox.
If any reader of MCFly ends up on the Steering Group, perhaps they’d like to raise the thorny questions of democracy and transparency. And speed; meeting the scale of this problem with the breadth, speed, force and nuance that we need to.
Volunteers needed to chair sub-groups
Manchester’s climate change action plan – Manchester: A Certain Future – is overseen by an independent steering group of volunteers who regularly meet to assess progress against the plan, gather evidence and engage with all of those people and organisations across the city who can help us hit our goal of reducing carbon emissions, creating a
low-carbon culture and making sure the city is well-adapted to future changes in our climate.
In 2013 the Steering Group is set to change the way it does business, by basing five out of its six annual meetings on a specific, thematic area of activity. To deliver each of these five annual reviews of progress, we’re going to establish five sub-groups to tackle that area in detail. The five groups we want to establish are:
Buildings
Energy
Transport
Green and Blue
Sustainable Production and Consumption
To lead those five groups, we’d like to recruit a new chairperson who, if they’re not already a member, will be co-opted onto our full M:ACF Steering Group. We’re looking for someone who has some background in each of the five areas we want to cover, who has experience of chairing groups of this sort and who, of course, is supportive of our
wider climate change plan for Manchester. We’d like to recruit all five chairs in the next few weeks and if possible, confirm their appointment at our next full Steering Group meeting in December.
So let us know if you’d like to play a part. Simply send a short statement of your commitment to Manchester’s climate change plan and a short CV or biography to Kate Morley at Groundwork Manchester: kate.morley@groundwork.org.uk by the end of November.
Many thanks,
Steve Connor, Chair
MACF Steering Group www.manchesterclimate.com
Linked In Group: Manchester: A Certain Future
Our "leaders" are going to keep making empty promises. It makes them feel good. It gets the activists to act like zombie kittens. If you want to have some self-respect and perhaps make a difference (actual facts may vary), then find a functioning group that cares about your skills and knowledge - what you have, what you want.
One useful group might be www.climateemergencymanchester.net - you can email them on contact@climateemergencymanchester.net
manchester climate monthly 