Notes from Transition Burngreave, 12/01/09

Present: Alison, Lucy, Sean, Ruth, Suzie Betty, Stephen, Saleema, Susannah
Apologies: Cariad, Daniel

LEAF
Info has been circulated on the Burngreave mailing list about LEAF's Community
Allotment Project  - there's an open day this Sat.  Those people not on email requested more info by phone. 

Food in Schools 
Alison spoke to Richard Clare about initially about whether it would be possible to source enough locally grown veg and fruit to sell at a local school gate at the end of the school day, she reported back and a few other points emerged from the discussion:
•	It's useful to focus on food growing because it's possible to make a reasonable impact even working at a small scale.
•	At the moment local food growing isn't very economically viable, but if the economic situation changes that might also change.
•	It would probably be best to talk to local farmers as allotment growers are unlikely to produce sufficient quantity.  Beanies would be a good starting point.
•	It's important to consult people (consumers) about the kinds of food they'd actually be interested in buying.  Alison is interested in following this up.
•	It may also be appropriate to consult local suppliers eg. the 2 Burngreave regular veg vans. 
•	There's some disused space up near Roe Woods – and old amenity horticulture / training space - which could possibly be brought back into production.
•	Betty described a newly created veg patch near her, which produced an abundance of beans last year!
•	However, we noted that Sheffield bye-laws prevent allotment growers from 'selling' produce.
•	It might also be valuable to contact Health Matters (possibly funded by the local Primary Care Trust).
•	Richard will be running food growing courses in the near future – Alison to circulate details.

Food retailers and food web mapping
•	Last meeting we discussed consulting local food retailers about what would make them consider stocking more local food.
•	The Council for the Protection of Rural England plan to do something very similar - they're calling it Food Web Mapping.  Our local contact is Liz Fellows.
•	We need to figure out if the CPRE Food Web Mapping project will meet our needs.  Saleema went away with a list of questions to contact Liz with.

Grow Sheffield
Susannah reported that Grow Sheffield have contacted the 'coordinating/hub' Transition Sheffield group, and there is a plan to meet up and discuss how best to coordinate overlapping activities.

Sheffield Transition Hub group
Susannah reported back from the hub group about their work on aims and principles.
It was felt that the aims and principles were good but could be phrased more simply. Alison has taken them away to improve!  The point was also made that these should be simply a starting point for consultation over a period of months, rather than being set in stone immediately

Sustainable Haringey 
We looked at the info from Sustainable Haringey as they've been established for some time.  Their model of affiliation was seen as useful.

Visioning
We spent some time beginning a process of brainstorming how Burngreave might function in 2030 in a more sustainable way and with less dependence on fossil fuels.

Future activities for Transition Burngreave
A few ideas are emerging/firming up:
•	Steve to lead on an hour or so about growing veg etc. in Feb/March
•	Sean volunteered something about public speaking (we may need these skills in order to talk about Transition Burngreave)
•	Suzie will talk to Steve Gayle (BCAF) about facilitating a visioning event in March under the auspices of the Federation for Community Development Learning.
•	The date of the next BCAF meeting is March 6th.  We should probably plan to say something at the meeting…   We should also check about the next messenger date [Feb]

Networking
There was a request to ask that everyone's contact details on the list could be circulated – for those who are not on email. Susannah to pass this request on and report back.

Date of next meeting:
Wednesday 3rd February at New Roots.  Saleema to collect the key!