Kindling's Chris spent a fortnight this summer on a Permaculture Design Course run by the German Permaculture Academy at the award winning Ecovillage of Sieben Linden. Permaculture is an approach to designing human settlements and agricultural systems that mimic the relationships found in natural ecologies.
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After carrying out MERCi's Sustaining Change audit and receiving support and advice from its team, Kindling has extensively revised its environmental policy into an updated and progressive sustainability policy.
The new policy is broader and more in depth than Kindling's previous policy, but more importantly dovetails with an action plan which sets future actions and targets.
As part of Growing Manchester, Kindling carried out a on Monday 26th April for a select group of community growing projects included Abundance Manchester and Manchester Drugs Service's Waterloo Project. Growing Manchester invited a small number of applicants to attend the pilot to provide feedback and suggestions to help refine and improve the workshop for its official launch on Wednesday 26th May.
The second Fuelling Manchester social took place on Thursday 13th May 2010 for those involved in community energy projects in the Manchester area. Individuals from Manchester Carbon Co-op, URBED, MERCi, Peak District Energy Co-op, Sustainable Change, Greater Manchester Tree Station and the Energy Savings Trust all attended the social at Odd Bar in the Northern Quarter.
Kindling's Helen Woodcock gave a ten-minute talk at the May 2010 Making Local Food Work Conference entitled: Making Local Food Work for Manchester, introducing the work of The Kindling Trust and explaining the purpose of projects like FeedingManchester.
Helen also joined a discussion panel answering questions from the audience, alongside Rob Squires of Groundwork's Target: Wellbeing and the ever passionate: Kath Dalmeny of Sustain.
Saturday 27th March 2010 saw the Moss Side launch event of the Carbon Co-op, a new low-carbon social enterprise based in South Manchester. Founded by local residents, the Carbon Co-op aims to bring together friends, neighbours and communities in a bulk buying co-operative, purchasing low carbon technologies, from energy monitors to solar panels, at discount.
The new social enterprise aims to bring green jobs and help Manchester meet its ambitious carbon reduction targets.
Growing Manchester is a new programme to support community growing projects in the city to become more sustainable in the long term and covers a wide range of issues such as maintaining soil fertility, your legal responsibilities, micro-trading and involving more people. The Programme offers a unique package of support including:
Kindling has secured Heritage Lottery support of around £40,000 to support its food heritage project: Forgotten Fields.
The project focuses on the heritage of food production and availability in Manchester from 1750’s to present day. It concentrates on six communities from across Greater Manchester that have expressed a need to explore a particular food heritage.
Kindling has secured financial support to explore opportunities to increase 'low-carbon' food in Manchester via school meals, complimenting the city's Climate Change Action Plan, Manchester; A Certain Future.
Kindling has been working with South Manchester Carbon Co-op in preparation to pilot this unique initiative on two streets in Rusholme, South Manchester. Our role has been to develop the carbon co-op manual - giving top energy-saving tips; money-saving offers on things like insulation, car sharing schemes, energy saving appliances; and examples of the amazing things that other communities have done to reduce their carbon emissions and energy bills.