Bookham

See our Google Calendar for forthcoming events, you can also see minutes of our meetings.

Our open meetings are usually held every third Wednesday, 7.30pm–9.30pm, St Nicolas church Pastoral Centre, Great Bookham. Our occasional socials, from 7.30pm, are held at Ye Olde Windsor Castle pub, 25 Little Bookham Street, Little Bookham, Leatherhead, Surrey KT23 3AA (Tel. 01372 452226).

History

Transition Bookham was started by members of the Green Mole Forum (you can subscribe to receive email updates) and used information gathered by Bookham Vision in their Survey.

Launch Event on 13th March 2010

We screened The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil which was followed by a brief exploration of the film’s message and relevance.

Local Transition group members shared their experiences and we had a Q&A session with an 'expert' panel. We outlined possible interest groups within Transition Bookham and finally had some scribble sheets for people to jot down thoughts and ideas as they left. The event was well attended and we got plenty of feedback.

Meetings

Attendees are at different levels of awareness but, clearly, all have a shared purpose. Local publicity of existing resources is desperately needed - for example, what facilities exist for passing on unwanted items (Freecycle, Freegle, LETS, St Nicolas church, etc.), or recycling things that the council don’t already take.

We are fortunate to have lots of existing groups and organisations in Bookham, and it was felt that collaborations could be initiated to pool resources and people.

Eight members signed up for the ‘steering committee’, facilitating things in the early stages, and hopefully doing themselves out of a job once the process gets taken on by the local community.

Minutes of our meetings can be found here.

Activities

• Publicity - A group designed a leaflet, and wrote articles for local media, and we ran a competition to design a logo. The joint winners, two local pupils, each received a £15 voucher kindly donated by The Vineries garden centre.
• Stall on Village Day, 19th June 2010 - With games, publicity, display of energy monitors, thermal leak detector, etc. on a stall decorated with food plants in unusual containers (in the event’s circus theme).
• Stall on Open Gardens Day, 20th June 2010 - Publicising biodiversity and launching our garden share.
• Biodiversity Garden - St Nicolas Church have allowed us to turn the overgrown grounds round their Pastoral Centre into an attractive biodiversity garden. With insect attracting plants, a bug hotel and a herb spiral, bird boxes and mason bee nests to follow.
• Garden Share Scheme - To put people without gardens in touch with those wanting someone to share theirs, and the produce. There are still long waiting lists (people waiting years!) for the local allotments. Contact Esther or visit us on Landshare.

As well as our Food Group (which includes bulk buying from Suma cooperative) we’re starting our Energy Group (see below) and a Local Environment Group was discussed, dealing with local pollution problems (such as dog’s mess being left in plastic bags) and encouraging biodiversity.

In June 2010 three ladies from Leatherhead joined our meeting, on a fact finding mission, with an eye to possibly starting Transition Leatherhead.

Garden Share – If you've a garden with spare space, or you're looking for one to grow produce in, contact Esther.

D³ - Don’t Dump Donate! – Looking into ways to reduce landfill.

Energy Group – Looking at ways to cut household energy use (we already have access to energy monitors and a thermal leak detector via the Green Mole Forum, and to Transition Ashtead’s low energy lightbulb ‘library’), the sharing of knowledge and skills, reducing the cost of installing solar water heating panels through a solar club (possibly in collaboration with Juice From Your Roof in Wimbledon) and, long term, the possibility of community-based energy generation. Contact Richard.