Zero Carbon Britain: Making it Happen!
Tues 5th – Thurs 7th Sept 2017.
Course starts at 10am and ends at 2pm on the Thursday.
Course fee (not including food and accommodation) :-
Standard £100, Low waged / Concessions £70.
Food and Board options are available.
An in-depth introduction to CAT’s latest Zero Carbon Britain research, offering a robust, evidence-based scenario that explores ways we can deliver a climate positive future, whilst also maintaining a modern lifestyle.
The course also covers how Zero Carbon Britain can be successfully used as a powerful tool for groups and individuals to inspire positive action, stimulate debate and build consensus in their communities and places of work.
The course is aimed at Local Green Groups, Transition Towns, FOE groups, CAT members, activists etc.
Participants will leave with:-
• Overview of the key environmental challenges
• Long term perspective on relationship between human beings and energy
• Detailed introduction to the ZCB scenario and how it meets climate challenges
• Detailed session on energy modelling and land-use/diets
• How ZCB can offer an national perspective to local action
• Suggestions on how ZCB has been used as a tool for local groups
• Training on how to use/present ZCB.
• Exploration of zero carbon scenarios from other parts of the globe.
Please note that a session runs until 9.30pm on Wednesday evening.
The course fee does not include food or board.
Fees Course fee – Standard £100, Low Waged/Concession £70.
Art and Energy outdoors – 19 July – Bidwell Woodland, Devon
The invitation:
Come and join me in the beatuful Bidwell woodland to play with energy in the stream 🙂
We will go for a short walk through the woodland and then set up ‘camp’ by the stream where we will have a go at making a water wheel from things that we find in the vicinity.
What you need:
- We will be outside throughout the session, so please bring appropriate clothing. (I suggest trousers and walking boot/shoes given we will be in grass and woodland….but also something you could paddle in!)
- Perhaps a blanket to sit on?
- We’ll have a bit of string and some snippers for you to use in the making session, but if you’d like to bring anything else you’d find useful, that would be great. (Nothing too heavy!)
- Please bring refreshments and water with you.
- There are no toilets on site.(The nearest toilet is at The Church House Inn which is about 10-15 minutes walk away)
Location:
Andrew Lithgow has kindly offered to host us at Bidwell Woodland where he lives off grid and we might be able to see how he harnesses and uses energy sustainably.
Parking:
There is imited parking at Bidwell Woodland so places on the sessions are limited and need to be booked in advance.
Art and the end of the world (as we know it) – A five day course at Schumacher College
Course leaders: The Dark Mountain Project – Paul Kingsnorth and Dougald Hine
Date: 20th — 24th March 2017
Location: Schumacher College, Devon, England
‘The end of the world as we know it is not the end of the world full stop.’
– Uncivilisation: The Dark Mountain Manifesto
We live in a time of great unravelling.
The climate is changing, a mass extinction is under way, and our economies, cultures and technologies are changing everything. The future no longer seems to serve as a vessel for our hopes, but a shadow that we try not to think about. Much that we grew up taking for granted will not make it into the world that waits for us there.
So what does it mean to live in such a time? What can we do with this kind of knowledge? And what does art have to do with any of it?
In 2009, Paul Kingsnorth and Dougald Hine published the Dark Mountain manifesto: a call for honesty about the depth of the trouble the world is in – and for recognition of the deep cultural roots of that trouble. From a short self-published pamphlet, the Dark Mountain Project grew into a global network of writers, artists, musicians, performers and creative thinkers, many of whose work has appeared in the pages of the Dark Mountain books or on the stages of the Uncivilisation festival, Base Camp, Carrying the Fire, The Telling and other events.
At the heart of the Dark Mountain Project is the claim that the global crisis we are facing is not a crisis of politics, economics or technology, but a crisis of stories. The stories which our culture likes to tell itself about humanity’s place on Earth and its relationship to the rest of nature are like bad maps, leading us towards unmarked hazards. We have narrated ourselves to the edge of a cliff.
If this is true, what can we do about it? And what, in particular, can writers, artists and other creative workers offer in response? If we have been telling the wrong stories, how would we recognise the right ones – and how could we begin to give them a voice?
This course is open to anyone who wants to engage with these questions and is willing to bring their own creativity into play. Through a mixture of workshops, teaching sessions, creative exercises and space to explore the big issues, it aims to give writers, musicians, performers and artists of all kinds a stronger sense of their place in a time of upheaval, change and unexpected possibilities.
Bring a notebook, a clear head, a sense of excitement and a willingness to be honest. Please leave false hopes and all-encompassing solutions at home.
Art and Energy inspires a drawing class in Crediton, Devon
by Naomi Wright
It is the beginning of term and we stand about discussing our theme for our classes ahead. I suggest art and energy, it interests me for all sorts of reasons. I say I am helping with similar themed workshops with some college students outdoors as part of Regensw’s art and energy programme. I wonder whether it will interest the class. We think about the wide range of meanings for energy. Energy is everything, I say, remembering a recent workshop. In a physical sense, binding the molecules of our being, energy fixed from the sun, in the movement of a river, the heat from a fire, in our food, in the every-day. We have our own energy, in the spirit of the land, in leylines, in happiness, in despair.
So the term at Crediton arts centre has taken this as a theme…. A couple of us are working with an old luccombe oak that has had to be cut down in the local park. We think of the power within, the height and weight of it, the history in it, the energy held beneath in the ground. The dying energy, used by fungus, the last of the leaves to be photosynthisising.
The tree………..
Eileen’s tree
Others in the class discuss their drawings through the eye of an energy lens. Lines are energetic, directioned, growing. The still life is far from still as vegetation takes on a new meaning, pots spin, and all the senses are enlivened.
Rebecca’s pots
We’re all curious in how this will progress… Pat especially, as she has ideas for some new installations.
Naomi Wright is an artist who collaboratively researches the benefits of being outdoors in the elements. In sunshine, wind, or rain she maps and constructs places, things and conversations that make the most of our ecological interplay.
Nautilus Turbine by Hannah Imlach
Nautilus Turbine (tulip wood, birch plywood, acrylic tube and cork, 2016) is a sculptural response to the community-run energy infrastructure of the Isle of Eigg, Scotland. The piece focuses on the island’s hydroelectric scheme which provides the majority of power, and the social, environmental and economic factors that have made the islanders’ self-sufficiency possible.
Nautilus Turbine takes the form of a personal turbine, activated by a swimmer. Its multiple kinetic elements are inspired by the logarithmic patterns of shell spirals and industrial turbines. At its essence, the piece explores the exertion and responsibility taken on by the people of Eigg in generating their own power and the autonomy, freedom and environmental understanding this has afforded them.
The Isle of Eigg community are celebrated for their success in campaigning and fundraising to purchase the land on which they live, previously held (like much of Scotland) by private landowners. This community ownership has allowed the Islanders to develop many aspects of their infrastructure, most notably their pioneering renewable energy scheme. By capitalizing on their landscapes resources and making the island a site for piloting innovative technologies, the community were able to install a combination of photovoltaic panels, wind turbines and hydroelectric turbines, replacing the noisy and polluting generators formally used. Most importantly to the success of their model, the islanders are all aware of their allotted energy allowance and individuals have been trained to monitor, maintain and repair the technology.
Nautilus Turbine takes the form of a personal turbine, activated by a swimmer. Its multiple kinetic elements are inspired by the logarithmic patterns of shell spirals and industrial turbines. At its essence, the piece explores the exertion and responsibility taken on by the people of Eigg in generating their own power and the autonomy, freedom and environmental understanding this has afforded them.
The piece was created during a three-phase residency: with The Bothy Project at Sweeney’s Bothy on the Isle of Eigg, to collect initial research, at Glasgow Sculpture Studios, to develop and create the sculpture, and then returning Eigg to document the work at Laig weir, which supplies the island’s largest hyrdoelectric generator. The project was greatly aided by advice and logistical help from Eddie Scott, Lucy Conway and Neil Robertson from the Isle of Eigg and the photographic documentation was created with the assistance of Lila Matsumoto, Thomas Butler and Alice Mary Cooper, who performed with the sculpture at the Laig weir site.
The project was supported by the Royal Scottish Academy through their 2015 Residencies for Scotland award.
Off Grid Festival – Exeter – 11-14 August
OFF GRID FESTIVAL IS BACK FOR 2016 We’re super-excited to announce that, subject to a successful Crowdfunder campaign, Off-Grid Festival will be returning in 2016 with an all new event. The festival will take place from August 11th to 14th at the new Biophilia Project on Goffin Land near Exeter, Devon with a limited capacity.
MUSIC – The best of the local and grassroots. Come watch the pick of the acts each night in our beautiful timber-frame barn
Featuring…
- Five Finger Discount
- Hazaar!
- Voodoo Swamp
- Andy Letcher
- Insomniac Jack
- The TTs
- Dora Darling
- Fly Yeti Fly
- Avalon Roots (TBC)
- Nick Rosen – The Story of Off Grid in the UK
- Jay Tompt – REconomy and Local Entrepreneur Forums
- Johnny Gordon-Fairleigh – Stir to Action / The Future of Work
- Adelia Tisdall – Positive Money
- Julian Pratt – Land Value Tax
Jonathan Dawson – Schumacher College- Brett Scott – Alternative Finance (TBC)
- Anna Laycock – The Finance Innovation Lab
- Mary Daniels – Alternatives and NCS
- Jamie Catto – What about Intimacy?
- David Parkes – Community Juice
- Marcus Letts – Euboea.io
- Anton Chernikov – The Exponentials
- Gill Wyatt – Exeter Community Energy (ECOE)
- Trudy Turrell – Resisting Development as a Community
- Michael Thomas – Transition Network – Is Transition a revolutionary movement?
- Tony Conway – Vale Das Lobas: Innovation and Ancient Traditions
- Ecological Constellations with Audaye Elesedy
- Legal Surgeries (Low-Impact Planning and Renewables) with Sonya Bedford
- Social Enterprise Funding Surgeries with Alex Lawrie
- DIY Solar Panels & Battery Packs with Demand Energy Equality
- WeTheUncivilised – New documentary showing in our Off Grid Cinema. More films TBC
- Off Grid Kids Area and Forest School
- Serenity Field – Therapies and Well Being
- Crafts and Alt. Tech Area
- Wildwoods Bushcraft Zone with Sylvan Adventures
- Sauna
- Local and Organic Food at the Field Canteen
- Local and Organic Beers, Ciders and Wine
Love the look of all this? Then buy your ticket now.
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Paper Circuits Popup Project with 4th Grade
This gallery contains 11 photos.
Originally posted on Expect the Miraculous:
? I’ve been wanting to explore paper circuits for quite awhile, but I haven’ taken the plunge to do it. We got many supplies for paper circuitry through a Donors Choose project. We’ve tinkered with the LEDs, conductive tape, and coin cell batteries some in our makerspace, but a…
