SLACC Towards Transition

SLACC Towards Transition Report for 2009

This last year has been a notable success for SLACC Towards Transition. We have completed two major community projects, both of which were successful and the first of their kind (one of which was selected as one of two projects out of many in Cumbria to receive one off funding), and have also started on a third one.

We have developed close partnership working with the Energy Saving Trust and SLDC, to the point where they now provide match funding and resources for our projects, and are keen to continue working with us. We had no such relations the previous year.

We have developed excellent relations with two key funders – the Cumbria Strategic Partnership and Cumbria Community Foundation. Both are almost guaranteed to fund our projects and work ever year to the tune of several thousands of pounds as a result of the standard of projects we have completed this year

We have utilised well over 100 volunteers throughout the year, compared to about 20 the previous year. About 90 helped during CycleFest, and 15 during Staveley GTi. Another 10 have been active on HEAT, and we’ve probably had another 20 helping out at various other events. Our events, stalls, talks, film showings, ceilidh’s, projects, etc have reached in the region of 3,000 people. This figure rises to 6,000 when you include CycleFest. The year before we probably reached 1,000 people directly.

We have helped set up Carlisle Countdown to Copenhagen, which is now a very active and promising group in Carlisle who we continue to support. We also helped revitalise Ambleside Climate Forum and are working with Sedbergh who have expressed interest in starting a SLACC group.

Our monthly email newsletter now reaches 350 people (compared to 250 the year before), and gets emailed out to staff in various organisations (eg Cumbria wildlife trust). In addition, we email another 80 people with a cycling newsletter, and we have an additional 88 people in Staveley who receive occasional mailing regarding sustainable transport. This is a massive increase in the number of people we can reach compared to the previous year.

Our monthly stall at events across South Lakes has proved popular and we have begun receiving income from it. This year we expanded it by building bicycle powered generators and developing popular workshops such as tetra-pak wallet making and bicycle tyre belt making.

Sub-groups:

Transport is solid, and meetings have been as high as 20 this year. It has a stable contingent of people willing to volunteer and devote time to projects and come to meetings, and has developed good links with the County Council, Cycle Tourism group and a wide range of local cycling groups and businesses.

The food group have a solid team of regular people of around 8, and probably the largest email list of any group at around 60. They have been instrumental in setting up the CSA with Growing Well and in setting up local allotment working groups in Windermere and Kendal. With such a large email list they also produce a regular newsletter of food related events, courses and news. The food group also organised two events for the Kendal Festival of Food – a film showing of Pig business and an apple day in Kendal which were both very successful, particularly the latter. A sub group of the food group has been set up which is the Abundance group.

The Energy group have recently launched a series of presentations with various other groups, including the Women’s Institute in Longsleddale. They have started the HEAT project in conjunction with SLDC and the Energy Saving Trust, which so far has signed up around 100 households. They also now have around 70 smart meters which will be put to use after HEAT is over for another project with SLDC and SLSP.

Community Projects

Staveley GTi

Recognised as probably the most difficult issue to tackle in Cumbria, we decided to go head on and do the worlds first community smart travel initiative in the UK (and possibly the world!). It’s been a very influential project, and involved a wide array of partnership working. Stalls about it have been as far afield as Liverpool at national conferences on green community projects. Full report is available on the SLACC website.

Staveley GTi 2

Ruth is putting together a package for the second year of Staveley GTi to maintain momentum and build on what we have achieved.

Kendal GTi

The transport group are currently working on delivering a Kendal GTi project. At the moment the key sticking point is how to deliver this, and we may go for a radically different route than we did in Staveley.

CycleFest

Needless to say, this was a massive success, and involved partnership working with LOADS of local businesses and community groups as well as funding from a wide array of organisations..

Allotments

Debbie Binch has so far set up two allotment working groups in Kendal and Windermere. She has been working in close partnership with the respective town councils to achieve this.

Growing Well CSA

We were instrumental in setting up the Growing Well CSA this year – which currently delivers fresh organic veg to residents in Kendal. It is safe to say this would not have happened without our work, which involved a ceilidh and a four month series of very successful events around food in 2008.

Kendal Car Club SLDC paid SLACC £300 to promote the Kendal Car Club. We provided excellent value – gaining a major front page spread in the Gazette as well as running a series of promotion events across Kendal. Feedback from Car Plus was that they only rarely see a town that had manages to gain so much interest from the community. We continue to work with SLDC in setting it up.

Cycle Maintenance

Brian Woodward does regular cycle maintenance classes with Kendal Lads and Lasses on behalf of SLACC. The youth club is run by Young Cumbria and they approached us after a Kendal Neighbourhood Forum meet where we demonstrated the bike generator. Brian is keen to expand this with other youth clubs in the area.

Developed in conjunction with SLDC and EST, HEAT has so far gathered together 100 houses in Kendal Castle who are taking home energy action. Campaigns

We ran an 18 month campaign which finished this year for the Armistead wind farm in partnership with South Lakes Friends of the Earth, which involved gathering 600 letters of support via a wide range of events, attending local meetings, arranging site visits for locals, leafleting local houses, publicity, speaking at meetings, lobbying etc. Eight SLACC members attended the public inquiry to speak in favour. After a lot of hard work our efforts were repaid this year when it was granted planning permission.

We also ran a smaller campaign in support of Endmoor wind farm. Again we got about 9 people to speak in favour at the public inquiry. We have yet to hear the results.

Protests

We supported the G20 protests this year by providing bicycle power and PA systems. The street blockade in London’s financial district were largely aimed at showing the link between climate change and the economic system. We have also continued to support people going to Climate Camp, the Great Climate Swoop and Mainshill Solidarity Camp, and also provided coaches to Glasgow and Copenhagen.

Coal & Nuclear

We are currently planning to organise a protest in North West Cumbria to oppose the proposed development of an open cast coal mine there, and are currently in discussion with local residents and other local groups. We are also looking to join in with anti nuclear protests in Cumbria which we are jointly planning with other groups. Talks/Films/Workshops

Transition Training We have run these monthly workshops for over a year. Average attendance is about 7-10 people.

Monthly Talks & Film Screenings

I have run these every month for over a year. Some are hot, some are not. Average attendance is about 20 people, with highs of 160 and lows of 7. We are committed to running a talk and a film screening with the Energy Saving Trust in January and February, but after that I will not be organising any more.

Monthly Stall

We have run a stall in various locations every month for the past year. This is vital for several reasons – it gets people onto our email list, we get to market a wide range of information to the public, it improves our standing with the public and the organisers and we can communicate what we do. The last year we have had stalls at: Heron Corn Mill, Westmorland Shopping Centre, Cumbria Wildlife Trust, Ulverston Eco Fair, Gooseholme May Fair, Birdcage, Several conferences, etc. We need to ensure this continues and that the burden does not fall on a few people as it traditionally hs done. We could have done a lot more events if we had more people willing to do them as our stall is very popular.

This year we expanded our stall by building bicycle powered generators (cinema and bubble blower)and developing popular workshops such as tetra pak wallet making and bicycle tyre belt making. We are hoping to continue this by adding a trike sound system, renewable energy system and a bicycle powered smoothie maker (all of which require investment). This pays off – we have already received hundreds of pounds if income this year from it. We also need a professional display board, and a range of our own leaflets (see below)

SLACC Leafletsa “

In 2009 slacc tt produced a “Green Handbook” and a “Top 10 Climate Tips” More leaflets and updates of these are proposed for 2010.

Websites

There are currently the following websites. In 2010 these may need rationalising. www.slacc.org.uk - this is our main site. It has nearly 5 thousand individual hits. It is Page Rank 4 which means it is very widely linked to by other websites. Most of the pages are also widely accessed and used regularly. It also contains the SLACC Blog which is popular. www.transition-south-lakes.org.uk – the TSL site. It has page rank 2 and gets about 500 hits a year which is pretty good. However, most of the pages bar the landing page are rarely visited or used (zero page rank). It collects passing trade only, though we have had some queries from it. www.cyclefest.org.uk – another popular website. Page Rank 3 and has had thousands of hits in a short space of time. Many different pages accessed regularly. We are looking to massively redesign this site this year to link with Kendal GTi and become a cycling promotion site. www.staveley-gti.co.uk – Page Rank 2, not a massively popular site, but it is mostly aimed at Staveley so woldn’t expect massive hit rates. Has had around 500 hits over the last 6 months, and seems to be picking up hits as it gets more widely known. We will update it this year to reflect GTi 2. Campaign for Better Transport – we have a page on their site which sonny updates twice a year: http://www.bettertransport.org.uk/south_lakeland_action_on_climate_change it’s Page Rank 2 which is surprising so it helps to get us known.

Communigate – http://www.communigate.co.uk/lakes/southlakesactiononclimatechange/index.phtml and http://www.communigate.co.uk/lakes/transitionsouthlakes/index.phtml - both are rarely visited.

Campaign Against Climate Change - we have a page http://www.campaigncc.org/local#northwest which we have got a lot of queries from.

Email & Newsletter

SLACC monthly newsletter – goes out to 350 people and is very popular. We get a lot of positive comments about this – more than anything else we do. It’s important we continue with our current format and style and seek to expand the number of people we reach with it. We should actively promote this as something in its own right – with promotional materials etc.

CycleFest monthly newsletter – goes out to 80 people. We are looking to expand and promote it this year with Kendal GTi.

Staveley GTi – Has 88 people in Staveley on it. They receive occasional sustainable transport news.

Membership – we have an email list of members,

Email Accounts

Transition – this has an email account. We don’t get many queries on it, but we do get a few. We should merge the contacts with SLACC but keep it open for the time being until queries peter out,

SLACC – our main account, and it gets a lot of queries. Sometimes its quiet and gets maybe 10 emails a week, but other times it can get 20 emails a day.

GTi – this has an email account that forwards automatically to SLACC email. We get occasional queries from it.

CycleFest – this also has an email. It gets a reasonable level of queries, though these are dropping off fast.

Regional Links

Carlisle

We have helped set up Carlisle Countdown to Copenhagen – a now active community group. We have attended their meetings to provide advice, lent them our equipment several times, given talks at two of their events, provided model press releases and grant applications for them to use, and a whole host of other things.

Brampton

We have maintained close links with Brampton, and meet with them every 6 months or so, usually in Carlisle.

Ambleside We helped re-launch the Ambleside Climate Forum by giving a talk and providing ideas on what they could do.

Lancaster

We are in close contact with Transition Lancaster as well as climate change groups in the town.

Ulverston

We have attended several Ulverston Sustainability Group meetings and support their Eco Fair every year by having a stall with fun activities. We also help promote their annual walking festival in Kendal.

Transition Penrith

We have aimed to keep close links with Penrith and invited them up to give a talk recently to promote more links and idea sharing between the groups. Unfortunately, they left with a poor impression as very few people turned up! Still, they have supported us very well, including making the Eco Fair video and are currently producing a CycleFest video as well.

North Lakes FOE

Excellent contacts and have run a few joint campaigns over the last few years.

Sedbergh

Sonny spoke at a recent film showing of Age of Stupid on behalf of SLACC, and they are interested to starting up a SLACC group.

Keswick

We lent DVD’s to the Keswick group and Wendy Emmett went up to support and speak at one of their events. They ran a four month series of events much like we did to start TSL.

Obviously we have close links and have done loads of stuff with SENS, and will continue to do so.

Wider Links

Campaign Against Climate Change

SLACC are listed on their website a local group. We provide input to them and recently had Phil up to give a talk. We support their campaigns and get a wide amount of resources from them.

Climate Camp

We have excellent links, and have helped form a Cumbrian Climate Camp group. All told we have sent 7 SLACC members to climate camp so far.

Earth First Again, excellent links and we supported their recent gathering in Cumbria with bicycle powered equipment.

Campaign for Better Transport

We are listed on their website as a local group, and they have helped publicise many of our projects by featuring us on their blogs, publishing interviews with us etc.

Local Authority Links

SLDC – Caroline Turner is our key link for getting things done and supporting us with resources. She is due to leave soon.

SLDC Councillors – loads of them strongly support what we do.

Town Council – same as above.

CCC – good links with Phil, Alex and the Transport Team,

South Lakes Strategic Partnership - We have become an active member of the Local Strategic Partnership Environment Group, to the point where our projects are now part of the delivery plan for the South Lakeland Community Strategy. We are also leading on developing a radio campaign to begin in January about climate change involving a wide range of partners.

Cumbria Strategic Partnership – they continue to fund us and will no doubt continue to as we have strong support from them.

Cycling Tourism Group – we attend these seasonal meetings.

LDNP – excellent links from the Chief Exec to many officers.

Key Partner Organisations

Energy Saving Trust,BTCV, SLDC, Cumbria County Council Transport Team, Friends of the Lake District. Others who we have excellent links with and a prior working relationship are Cumbria Tourism, and Cumbria Wildife Trust.

Media Links

BBC Radio Cumbria, the Westmorland Gazette, and Border TV, covered us several times. The latter tend to go for spectacular or unusual events (protests, mass rides, driving simulator, etc).

Report written by Sonny Khan October 2009 (edited February 2010 by Chris Rowley for use as the annual report)