Events coming up this week

Loads of stuff happening in and around Ladywell and Brockley over the next couple of weeks, including the guided walk in the cemeteries tomorrow, the public meeting on the Fuel Poverty Bill on Thursday, the opening night of Brockley Max Festival this Friday and various events at Ladywell's newest (and only?) art gallery: Tank Art Gallery. Read on for further details!

Tuesday 26th May:
Guided walk with Nick Bertrand in Brockley & Ladywell Cemeteries
Meet at the Ladywell Road gate at 6.50pm.

Nick Bertrand compiled an ecological survey and management plan of the two cemeteries in 1995. The Friends group is seeking to build on this for their own management plan and are pleased that Nick has agreed to lead this walk. He will talk about the flora, fauna and ecological management of the Cemeteries.

A donation from participants is requested, to go to the Creekside Trust, of a minimum of £3 for members, and £5 for non-members of FoBLC. The walk is expected to last for 2 hours.

As this is an “after hours” activity, the cemetery gate will be locked at 7pm, so latecomers can not be admitted. This replaces the scheduled May meeting for Friends of Brockley & Ladywell Cemeteries.

Thursday 28th May:
PUBLIC MEETING: How to End the National Scandal of Cold Homes
Date, time: Thursday 28th May 2009, 7pm to 9pm
Venue: St Andrew's United Reformed Church, corner of Brockley Road and Wickham Road, Lewisham, London SE4 2SA

Invited: Joan Ruddock MP - Labour Member of Parliament for Lewisham Deptford and Climate Change Minister
Chair: Ron Bailey - End Fuel Poverty Coalition
Speakers:
Mervyn Kohler - Age Concern and Help the Aged Special Advisor
Ruth Bond - National Federation of Women’s Institutes Chair of Public Affairs
Dave Timms - Friends of the Earth Senior Parliamentary Campaigner
Gemma Townsend - Conservative Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Lewisham Deptford
Cllr Chris Maines - Liberal Democrat Group Leader at Lewisham Council
Cllr Darren Johnson AM - Green Parliamentary Candidate for Lewisham Deptford

Please come to this meeting to show Joan Ruddock you want her to back the Fuel Poverty Bill!
This is a public meeting - it is free and no booking is required.

Background
If made law, the Fuel Poverty Bill, currently going through Parliament, would enact measures to end the scandal of cold homes, cut costs to the health service and generate tens of thousands of jobs. The Bill has strong cross party support including from former Labour Ministers. But not yet from local Lewisham Deptford MP, Joan Ruddock.

▪ In Lewisham alone nearly 3,000 older people have to choose between eating and heating.
▪ In Lewisham there will probably be 800 ‘excess winter deaths’ in the next decade.
▪ Fuel poverty costs the health service £1.9 billion every year: averaged out that’s nearly £9 million wasted in Lewisham.
▪ The public meeting is organised by the End Fuel Poverty Coalition (members’ logos are opposite).
▪ For more information on the Fuel Poverty Bill go to www.endfuelpoverty.org.uk or call 020 7359 8000.

Brockley Max Festival
Brockley Max Festival kicks off this Friday (29th May) with the now traditional opening night gig outside Brockley Barge on Coulgate Street. You can see the full programme of events on their website. The closing event will be on Hilly Fields on Sunday 7th June. Not to be missed!

Tank Gallery at the Ladywell Tavern
I've been a bit remiss in not plugging the fact that Ladywell now has an art gallery round the back of Ladywell Tavern, although Brockley Central did a write up a week or two back. They have a number of events coming up in the next couple of weeks:

29 May: A Stitch In Time & The One I Love 1600 onwards free
Tank Gallery presents the solo exhibition A Stitch In Time by South London based artist Aoife van Linden Tol. Working primarily with explosives Aoife van Linden Tol detonates small bombs to make imprints on paper, wood and metals. This collection of work uses the force and evidence of the explosions to explore perspectives of time. Aoife van Linden Tol invites you to bring a photograph of the one you love or someone you love on the 29th May. She will explode a tiny heart or tiny kisses onto the photograph using gun powder. These will be displayed in the gallery in the evening. They will be kept for a few days for cataloguing and then returned to you. All you need to do is bring a photo with you to Tank Gallery and fill in a form. You can bring the photo on the day but it is advised to bring the photo in before 4pm on the 29th if possible.

Wed 3rd June: Film Box – Film Screenings 1900 free

'Bigfoot of Suburbia' (2006). Written and Directed by Fred Rowson. Starring Richard Proctor

'King of Deptford Creek' (2009). Written and Directed by Fred Rowson. Starring: Simon Pearsall, Director of Photography: Jaime Feliu Torres

Tank Gallery presents two films by local Filmmaker Fred Rowson. We will first introduce a taster of Bigfoot of Suburbia whose main character, Peter Kingsley, is a jobless loner, lost in the heat of a South London summer. However, when a brief local news story catches his attention, his life his given a purpose: even if it costs him his reputation and his home, he knows that he must track down the mysterious beast that is hiding in his local park, Hilly Fields...

We will then screen a full preview of King of Deptford Creek, due to make the round on the festival circuit this summer. This is the story of a South London-based Private Investigator, Eliot, whose journey to find the missing Philip obsesses him to the point that he drops out of society. He becomes so caught up in the search that he too disappears - thanks in equal parts to a failing marriage and a missing diary. The story is set around a Thames tributary, The Ravensbourne, and its tidal reach, known as Deptford Creek, an eerie environment that slowly swallows Eliot's identity.

The audience are then invited to join us in an informal discussion with a small panel including Fred Rowson and Richard Proctor. The audience will get the chance to see a full screening of Bigfoot of Suburbia either after the discussion or on a later date.

5,6,7 June: Against The Wall (No. I) Live painting all day free

Against The Wall is a live painting performance, which will feature regularly in the Tank Gallery programme. Artists will be invited to create work directly onto the walls of the gallery space over the period of a few days where the public will be allowed to enter the gallery space and watch the work being created. Once complete the work will remain on show for the exhibition period. The wall will then be documented and white washed ready for the next show.

For the first of this series we have invited a local South London graffiti crew to transform the gallery during the last weekend of the Brockley Max festival. The public are welcome to watch on the 5th 6th ad 7th of June. This group of four artists who prefer not to be named have been prolific in the South East of London for the past 10 years. Their works can be seen in various locations around the city. They have created works in the urban environment independently and in collaboration with the council as well as being involved in running youth orientated projects. Feel free to come and watch them in action where they will be happy to answer any questions you might have. We hope to run a youth project in Tank Gallery with this group later in the year. Any artist can apply to take part in future Against The Wall exhibitions. Simply contact us or pop into the gallery for an application form and show us what you want to do. tankgallery@gmail.com

Monday 1st June: Lewisham Green Drinks
7pm onwards, Mr Lawrence Wine Bar, Brockley Road, 7pm onwards. For anyone with an interest in green issues (not party political, lower case green).

Transition Town Lewisham?

The Transition Towns movement is growing rapidly. Having started out in Kinsale, Ireland and Totnes, just a few years ago, there are now more than 100 initiatives around the globe, with many more in the process of setting themselves up.

So what's it all about?
In a nutshell, the Transition Movement is about communities deciding they can't hang around for local/national/international government to act on climate change and peak oil, but they need to start building up local resilience to prepare for an era of ever-rising fuel prices, fuel shortages and the impacts of climate change. The activities they get involved in are varied, but might range from insulating homes, setting up community allotments, establishing a local renewable energy company to establishing their own local currency to encourage people to shop locally.

First of all, Transition Towns go through an awareness-raising programme, where they organise lots of events, film-showings etc to get local people involved and understanding what it's all about. Brixton has been doing just that over the past year or so and this week is about to have its 'unleashing', which basically means they start to implement their 'energy descent plan', a plan to reduce the communities dependence on fossil fuels. They have a big event this Thursday in Lambeth Town Hall, with Transition Towns guru Rob Hopkins.

So why am I telling you all this?
Because lots of people are talking about this (even the Archers has a Transition Ambridge Movement!), a number of people locally are pondering setting up a Transition Town Lewisham and have been asking me if I know anyone else who is interested. The key thing about Transition Towns is that it needs to be a community-led initiative, not a Council-led thing, so it can't come from us councillors, but I'm sure we would be delighted to support any initiative that local people got off the ground.

The next Lewisham Green Drinks, on Monday 6th October, are going to have a Transition Town theme. The idea is that anyone with an interest in Transition Towns, and setting up an initiative in Lewisham, comes along and meets other like-minded people, and hopefully they take things from there! So do come along next Monday, 7pm onwards, Mr Lawrence Wine Bar, 389 Brockley Road, SE4 2PH. (And if you're a regular green drinker, do come along too!)

Lewisham Green Drinks

Just a quick plug for Lewisham Green Drinks, which takes place on the 1st Monday of every month at Mr Lawrence Wine Bar, 389 Brockley Road. It's for anyone with an interest in green/environmental issues to meet up and chat/network informally with like-minded individuals. You can join the e-mail list to get a monthly reminder here, and there's also a group for Facebook afficianados.

We get a wide range of people coming along, from allotment holders and real ale drinkers, cyclists, fairtrade campaigners to those just thinking about greening up their life. And Mr Lawrence's does a good range of local ales and fairtrade and organic wines.

Coming up this week . . .

Monday 4th February: Lewisham Green Drinks, 7pm onwards, Mr Lawrence Wine Bar. For anyone with an interest in green issues.

Tuesday 5th February: Ladywell Society, 7.45pm onwards, Nature Area Education building in Ladywell Fields (the old waiting room). Various agenda items are expected to be: report on the visit to the Playtower, Police Station site revised plans, Heathrow Expansion consultation, Catford Dog Track development. All welcome.

First Lewisham Green Drinks - success!

We had the first Lewisham Green Drinks on Monday and it was a success, I think, with more than 20 people and various organisations represented, including Friends of the Earth, Christian Aid, cyclists, allotment holders, a few council officers, Goldsmiths College students and of course one or two Green Party people! Not inconsiderable quantities of organic and fairtrade wine and beer were consumed. Next Lewisham Green Drinks will be on Monday 1st October, 7pm onwards, Mr Lawrence Wine Bar, 389 Brockley Road, Crofton Park, SE4 2PH. Anyone with an interest in green issues welcome, bring your friends.

Same principle as London Green Drinks. To get monthly reminders, join our e-mail list or our Facebook group.

Lewisham Green Drinks - coming soon to a pub near you!

After a bit of discussion with other local greenies (not just political greenies but Friends of the Earth and others) we have decided to set up a Lewisham Green Drinks, rather like the London Green Drinks, if you've heard of them, but more local. The idea is that anyone interested in discussing green issues/networking with other green-minded people can meet up in a pub once a month. So far we've settled upon the third Monday of every month, with the first meet-up being on Monday 17th September, and we've got a yahoo group and a Facebook page. Send an e-mail if you'd like to be added to the yahoo group. What we haven't done yet, which is possibly the most important bit, is chosen a venue.

Ideally, we'd like to go for somewhere with some green credentials, ie selling some organic/locally-produced beer, fairtrade tea & coffee and perhaps some good food. Any suggestions? I think I need to spend more time researching suitable venues ;).