_Green Screen at Department 21

Green Screen \ Thursday 21^st January \ 6pm \ Department 21

Film \ The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil

Dialogue \ How can we move forward with lower energy?

Questions and ideas raised by the dialogue will be collated online, both here and on Sustain RCA www.rca.ac.uk/Default.aspx?CategoryID=36755.

_Market Estate Project

Just So Studio has been invited to participate in the Market Estate Project, Islington, during February \ March 2010.  New homes from old homes.  We will be setting up shop with new household products made from the fabric of the old building – soon to be demolished.  Profits will be donated to local charities working with the homeless.

www.marketestateproject.com

_New Homes in Haringey - Site 26

A recent decision by Haringey Council to approve the idea building on parkland in Tottenham Hale has sparked reaction in local residents.  Can the council, planning department, developers and residents be united around a shared vision for the area?  What is really needed in this area? Can underlying local issues of transience, unemployment and temporary accommodation be addressed during the design process and proposal for this site?

www.fdlp.org.uk

_Department 21

Just So Studio has set up home in Department 21 at the RCA for 4 weeks.  Department 21 is an experimental interdisciplinary workspace at the Royal College of Art.

www.department21.net

www.rca.ac.uk

_New Homes in Haringey - Sites 1-26

The Haringey 5-year land-supply plan outlines plans for the provision of over 4000 housing units in 25 sites across the borough.  An additional scheme, outlining a further 1600 housing units is proposed for a further site at Greater Ashley Road, Tottenham Hale.  Map: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?client=safari&oe=UTF-8&ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=115629875761573117981.00047b155f7af234d6280&ll=51.595522,-0.100937&spn=0.06089,0.130634&z=13

There is a large amount of local opposition to the current plans for a number of these sites [most notably Wards Corner, Seven Sisters, and Greater Ashley Road].  What do these reactions tell us?  How can we create space for dialogue, consultation and community within the development process?

What kind of development is needed?

How can we open up this question?

_PROJECT 3 - Allotment 138

The new term sees the launch of Allotment 138, at Wolves Lane Allotments.  My [very cold] allotment is to become inhabited by artists and designers from the RCA as well as vegetables this spring.  Watch this space and the Flickr Photostream for images as the space develops.

_PROJECT 2 - Mobile Garden Workshop

‘...the stall should be no greater than 2.74m long, 1.06m wide and 3.05m high.’

[Source: Haringey Free Space Regulations]

Ideas harvested from Project 1 were consolidated and reconfigured to form the brief for Project 2, a Mobile Garden Workshop, to be launched at Haringey Free Speech Area during Spring 2010.

…we need more people doing this!

Why don’t you teach them gardening?

Plant fruit trees in all landscaping schemes.

Use this ‘Haringey Free Speech Area’ more.

Get young people making things that are permanent.

Go down to Hornsey Town Hall – they gave us funding for our allotment shed project.

_PROJECT 1 - Ideas Harvest Festival

_PROJECT 1 - Haringey Ideas Harvest

1 mile, 3 hours, 4 cooking apples, 5 bunches of wildflowers, 12 black radishes [very spicy], 18 bunches of spinach.

A one-day project, getting to know the people who live in the area around my allotment in Wood Green, North London.  A wheelbarrow full of vegetables provided the starting point for conversations: I exchanged something I had [vegetables from my allotment] for something I wanted [local ideas to improve Haringey].

_Writing a new storyline

...I propose that we should not think of sustainability as a concept as is done in common usage, or as a discourse ... or even as a narrative ... but as a storyline.  I prefer this term because it emphasises the plot or trajectory of action rather than the style of the narrative.

...my hypothesis is that successful storylines of sustainability - meaning those that lead to satisfying action - are constituted of political, environmental and technological talk that is home-grown from particular cultural and environmental conditions.

... when citizens of a particular place compare their situation to abstract models of sustainable development or lists of best practices what they encounter are local obstacles to be overcome by universal principles.  But when they begin with local patterns of public talk and historical storylines, what they encounter are opportunities.  It is this latter possibility that leads most directly to satisfying action.

Stephen A. Moore, Models, lists, and the evolution of sustainable architecture, in The Green Braid