Is it people who can plan ahead? Is it the sunny, well drained site? Is is the ongoing grant? Is it a sympathetic neighbourhood? Is it the local café who's willing to buy your surplus veg? Each project is unique; each has its strengths and challenges; each has to overcome different barriers; each has different aspirations and goals.
Latest news
As part of the FeedingManchester events we have collectively been working on a definition of sustainable food. This is to ensure that any future action to green Manchester addresses our unsustainable food system, as well as being the foundation for the growing sustainable food movement in Greater Manchester.
Kindling & the Carbon Co-op have organised a social evening for people involved in community energy projects in the Manchester area for Friday 19th February 2010.
"We thought it would be beneficial to organise a get together for all those of us involved in community renewable projects, be that: water turbine co-operatives; bio-mass and woodland management enterprises; waste-to-energy projects, solar energy collectives or those involved in community-focused action on insulation and energy efficiency".
Kindling in partnership with Abundance Manchester and OTAGS are running two day-long workshops in March 2010 to introduce gardeners to the art of apple grafting (cutting & combining a shoot of one tree to the rootstock of another and binding them together until they grow into each other).
Sustaining Change is a MERCi project to green Greater Manchester's voluntary sector. Kindling has been helping to develop the audit and training elements of the four year programme, and in January 2010 we piloted some of the training with MERCi staff, trying out creative and interactive activities to introduce the many elements of sustainability.
Kindling has started 2010 in its new office in Work for Change, Hulme, South Manchester, after working for the last two years from member's homes. Although we don't presently have funding to pay for the office, we felt it was crucial to involve more volunteers, become more inclusive and allow the project to grow.
We’ve attended a few orchard management courses over the last year (the latest one on the 11th December 2009, and run by Cheshire BTCV) to learn the basics of looking after apple trees & have a go at some winter pruning.
For further information visit the Orchard Management Course gallery where we provide information on the basic principles of pruning and give you a taste of the issues and techniques involved.
On Monday 27th April 2009 three of the country’s leading experts on sustainable food and agriculture spoke to a hundred and fifty people attending the Global Crisis : Organic Response debate, held in Manchester City Centre.
The event included a BBC style Question Time hosted by Patrick Holden CBE – Director of The Soil Association and presentations by Susanne Padel – Research Associate of Aberystwyth University and Lawrence Woodward OBE of Organic Research Centre Elm Farm.
Kindling's Chris Walsh gave a presentation to several hundred Manchester School of Architecture students on the issue of sustainable food in Manchester in mid-November 2009. As part of the students’ first year project they are exploring urban food production and consumption and the talk raised the many and interlinked problems with our present unsustainable food system and offered some potential solutions.
Click here to see the Sustainable Urban Food Production presentation.
This Christmas Fundraiser, involved a three course meal for forty of Unicorn Grocery's staff and a disco for many of Manchester's environmental groups and businesses, including Ethical Consumer Magazine.
The night raised £900 for San José de Apartadó in Columbia.