How to use this guide 1. Use the contents page or the index to find out the contact details of the organisation you want to contact 2. Contact that group 3. Contact them again when they don’t reply 4. Contact Climate Emergency Manchester ([email protected] or @ClimateEmergMcr on Twitter and we will make use of the limited amount of your time/energy that you have to share, making sure not to exploit you as we do it. We will even try to make it rewarding and fun. On a serious note, just dive in. Or you can read it from page 1 to whatever. Why to use this guide The current system is not delivering even for the people it used to deliver for, let alone for those who have always been on the pointy end - women, people of colour here and elsewhere, other species, future generations. You know this, we’re not going to hit you over the head with the latest horrifying and all-too- believable unbelievable statistics. You are probably, because you are smart, quite skeptical that any group you are going to get involved with has All The Answers and will fix any of the problems. One individual, one group, no chance. Lots of groups, in movements? Movements linking with other movements? Who knows? We absolutely do not have all (or any) of the solutions to this, but we’re hoping that this directory can help point you in some semblance of a direction. Disclaimers We make no claim to being “complete” or up-to-the-minute. Apologies to groups we’ve left out this time round - if you think you should be included, please let us know! Some groups featured here will disappear. There’s also no guarantee of quality of groups, and our acknowledgement of the groups featured here as of our launch date of 12/7/2021 =/= unwavering, unconditional support. All information decays. Dead Tree Format (paper) information decays exponentially. Next snapshot edition will appear on Tuesday 4th January 2022 Exclusion criteria Anything racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, classist or achingly neoliberal (Also, all this info-deficit/behaviour change stuff and the horse it rode into town on, it can go fuck itself) Contents Why to use this guide 2 1) What is Project Strawberry? 4 What a network is 5 What a movement is 6 What movement building is 6 What movement building is NOT 6 What success would look like (our current answer. Iterative blah blah) 7 2) Climate Emergency Manchester 7 Services to the movement 8 Active Citizenship Toolkit 8 3) Key concepts and info we think we all need 9 4) Groups 10 Campaigning Groups 11 Climate Emergency Manchester 11 Global Justice Manchester 12 Greater Manchester Housing Action 12 Manchester Oxfam Campaigns Group 13 Steady State Manchester 13 Rehabilitating Earth 13 Think tanks 14 COMPASS (Manchester Local Group) Contact Details 14 Media 15 GND Podcast 15 Social and Community Enterprises 15 Carbon Coop 15 Climate Hive 16 GM Freeze 16 The Kindling Trust 17 Manchester Intergenerational Cohousing 17 Stitched Up Community Benefit Society 17 Education 18 Manchester Museum Contact Details 18 Greater Manchester Law Centre 19 Manchester Environmental Education Network 19 Manchester National Education Union (NEU) 20 Political Parties and affiliates 20 Greater Manchester Labour for a Green New Deal 20 Making Votes Matter Manchester 21 Geographically located campaigns 21 Aytoun Barks Back 21 Northern Quarter Forum 22 Save Hough End Fields 22 Save Carrington Moss 22 Save Ryebank Fields 23 Trees not Cars 23 Wythenshawe Waste Warriors 24 Manchester Urban Diggers (MUD) 24 Index 25 Skills/Knowledge/Resources groups can share: 25 Skills/Knowledge/Resources groups want: 27 1) What is Project Strawberry? “Project Strawberry” is an attempt by Climate Emergency Manchester to be an active part of improving the culture of active citizenship/campaigning/whatever you wanna call it in Manchester (and by that, we mostly mean the city of Manchester, although some of the groups in this directory are based more widely in Greater Manchester). It has three elements. 1. Strawberry meetings. Monthly networking and skill-sharing meetings. These started well, but attendance dropped off quickly. Currently suspended, may be restarted in September. 2. This - the directory in your hands 3. Strawberry Statements - a monthly news sheet, in both dead tree format and online. We are going to try this out for five months,from September 2021 through to January 2022. If it “works” (and the success criteria and metrics are currently under discussion) AND we also have capacity, and the opportunity costs are not too severe, then we will continue it. In a nutshell, all of this is based on the following aim: we want to make it easier for people to find other individuals and groups in Manchester. We want to make it easier to find people with skills and knowledge that you lack. Ultimately, we want to create a social norm that makes it normal for you to contact them and say “help”, and for you to be contacted by other folks who say “help” to you.. Maybe sometime, if you buy us a pint and a packet of crisps (the big ones) at the Sandbar, we can bore you to death with metaphors about ecosystems and infrastructures of dissent and resistance (Sears, Shantz and all that jazz). But now is not the time for that. A disclaimer - Project Strawberry is not an attempt by CEM to be a vanguard, to demand others follow our repertoires or analysis. But then, if we were that kind of eco-Leninist (or even eco- trot) we would say something like the above, wouldn’t we… Final point: words like network and movement and movement-building get thrown around loosely, as if everyone knows what they mean, as if everyone shares a common understanding. Decades of painful experience have taught me that this is not a safe assumption. So What a network is A network is simply a bunch of people/organisations connected to other folks through formal and informal ways.. Some networks are densely connected, others have a few central gatekeepers - if these got taken out, the network would become much more fragile. There is a whole science around this. It’s not ALWAYS the case that more densely-connected networks are “better”, but it is usually the case that people who get themselves into gatekeeper roles tend to like the power and want to keep it. So, how is a movement not the same thing as a network? A network is just a phenomenon that allows for the communication of information back and forth and around. It doesn’t act to try to change anything in the world What a movement is As Diani notes, one definition has it as “a group containing 'a plurality of individuals, groups and/or organizations, engaged in political or cultural conflicts, on the basis of shared collective identities.” (Diani, 1992) It has a shared opponent. So, while there is an issue network around climate change in Manchester, many of the groups have either no particular focus, or else a semi-amorphous national/international focus, occasionally dipping into local issues. We (CEM and others) need to walk and chew gum at the same time. We need to both create a larger and more densely-connected network and ALSO to build a movement. The network will always be bigger than the movement - there will be members of the network who do not (or cannot) be seen in public opposing the particular stupidities- and-worse of the City Council, but who are able to offer types of useful support. So, this brings us to movement building. What movement building is “Movement building” is a term gets bandied about to cover any number of things that an individual or group might be doing or want to do, or find easy to do. We at CEM would say that this is not movement-building (see below). We would say that movement building at a minimum includes Care for the self (performative martyrdom and (inevitable) burnout helps nobody, hurts almost everyone) Care for the other, their (developing) capacities, while being aware of their other commitments. Creating and maintaining a collective memory so that the opponents can’t keep using the same basic tactics. At least force the opponents to innovate, for heaven’s sake Creating increased skills and knowledge within and “between” groups What movement building is NOT Relentless mobilising to go on marches, especially in other cities Talking at people and telling them they are wrong/ignorant/duped Bludgeoning them into buying papers Being stuck in an endless cycle of emotion-based “getting out on the streets” What success would look like (our current answer. Iterative blah blah) If individuals and groups across the city started • thinking strategically about what skills and knowledge they have, and how to share those with other groups. • thinking strategically about what skills and knowledge they lack, and how to ask other groups for help • thinking (and doing) around thickening the network (making contact with other groups and individuals) and making it easier for new individuals and groups to “join” the network. • understanding some of the basic pathologies that groups (and networks) experience, and taking steps to make those pathologies less likely to occur and less damaging if (when) they do. Climate Emergency Manchester will do what it can to help build this network/movement. Obviously, we cannot (and should not) be doing this on our own…. 2) Climate Emergency Manchester CEM is a group of people in Manchester, set up in March 2019. It has two aims We are weak alone.