Events and Stalls - June 2019

The stall at Peace in the Park at the Pondarosa went well, lots of people attended. Great to have more volunteers from the group at events.

Next one is the Sharrow Festival on the 6th of July and the Low Edges festival . Abby available to help at Low Edges and Helen to help with Richard and Tamara at the Sharrow festival.

A previous Sheffield Friends of the Earth stall at Heeley.

Picture Source: Shaun Rumbelow

Stall, Talks and Events - April 2019

Richard gave positive feedback from the High Storrs School Eco Expo.  Our stall with Shaun’s Eco City model raised lots of interest, as did Richard’s talk on solutions to Global Warming.

High Storrs School's Eco Expo. The Sheffield Friends of the Earth stall and eco-city model.

We can promote the BBC One “Climate Change - The Facts” documentary on 18th April

FoE Groundswell events for Climate Change campaign are in Manchester 1st June 10-5 (Richard, Tamara and June attending), Also an event in Darlington on 18th May. You can book these on Eventbrite.

Also coming up:  Clean Air Day 2019 is on June 20th. We will discuss again at May meeting with Graham’s input.

Anti-fracking stalls are being planned for May and June – next one is Barlborough Hall Country Fair stall on 4th May (Richard organising with SAF and local anti-fracking colleagues).  Peace in the Park is the same weekend as Mam Tor event so we agreed to prioritise supporting the latter event. Other potential stalls including Heeley City Fair and activities for Clean Air Day will be discussed at our May meeting.

Hope for the Future emailed to say they are now working with local councillors as well as MPs and we agreed to invite them to a local group meeting to share strategies to increase impact of our work with local politicians.

Other News - March 2019

High Storrs Eco Expo - Saturday, 23 March 2019 from 11:00-18:00; Shaun’s model will be on the stall and Richard’s talk is at 12:00.

Hope for the Future is a church group addressing climate change with MPs through identifying common ground and then working to change attitudes; they are running a training session.

“Groundswell” is a series of one day regional FoE training events; Richard attending the one in Manchester; signing up is on line via FoE website.

Clear Air Day will be 20th June.

Donation in memory of Kenneth Slack – We received a donation of £300 from the family of Kenneth Hadfield Slack collected for Friends of the Earth in his memory. His daughter kindly sent us the Order of Service from his funeral on 7th March.   It is evident from the tributes from his children and grandchildren how much he loved the outdoors and shared that passion with those around him. We are very grateful for the donation which will be used to support all our local campaigns to protect the environment that he loved.

Next Meeting and AGM will take place on Monday 15 April at 7.30pm.

Stalls, Meetings and Talks - February 2019

Stall booked and Richard is giving a talk at the High Storrs School Eco Expo on Saturday, 23 March 2019 from 11:00-18:00. This looks like an exciting event with lots of interesting talks and stalls. See if you can get along. Help with the stall would be welcome. See https://www.facebook.com/events/340754510107406/ and http://highstorrs.co.uk/news-and-events/event/2019-03-23/eco-expo-high-storrs for more information.

Next Meeting - Mon 18 March at 7.30pm at the Red Deer

Other News - January 2019

Brexit
Beatrice signed a Brexit letter in the Yorkshire Post explaining that a non deal was bad for the environment.
https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/opinion/yp-letters-yorkshire-environment-will-suffer-from-no-deal-brexit-here-s-why-1-9545710

Stalls/Events
Groundswell – events planned for Spring 2019 in Birmingham (8 June), Bristol (15 June), Cambridge (29 June), Darlington (18 May), London (27 April) and Manchester (1 June). Plan is for a full day of “basecamp” activities including talks. Individuals can sign up through FoE link for any of the events.
See https://friendsoftheearth.uk/latest-listings/groundswell-climate-action-events

Booking forms available for Sharrow Festival Stall - Sat 6th July; we have agreed to delay making bookings until we can plan which festivals we target when we have more dates and know who is likely to be available.

Events listings for our group – potential to use Opus/Now then magazine.

Other Group News - November 2018

Stalls 
Richard and Liddy manned a stall at the Peace & Craft fair and sold some plastic-free products from “Unwrapped” in Crookes, collected signatures for anti-fracking and plastics campaigns; got people to sign up to online FoE climate change petition.

Group Development
Simon Bowens introduced some ideas for developing the local groups and asked for feedback from the group. Plans including developing our international links with other activist groups and increasing the support for local activists, particularly for “grass roots” campaigns that can link up with other campaigns round the country. There needs to be potential for those who take on line action with national FoE to get more involved in action locally.  Also for increasing diversity of those involved including families, all age groups.

Potential support from national FoE:  Examples of linked networks in the anti-fracking campaign which could be spread to other campaigns. Support can also include more training events or campaign topic focused events e.g. legal and planning systems expertise. Regional gatherings will be “mini Basecamps” in future and aim to bring more people in to do more active campaigning.

Action Network is a platform and tool for online actions that ensures we can get contact details and build a database of supporters directly.  Southampton have successfully used to get people who signed a petition to come to a “Clean Air Cafe”.

As many people, particularly young people, relate to a ”cause”  or specific issue rather than the organisation (FoE) it is worth considering focused actions/meetings about a specific campaign.

Drew suggested a hub/private portal for FoE discussions. Expertise around recruitment and retention of active members mainly lies with local groups and could be shared. Need balance between events - both local and centrally organised – and on line/social media engagement.

Positive Money talk
Gerry Penny would like to provide the group with a talk about Positive Money. This was not discussed as we overran. To discuss at a future meeting.

Next Meeting and Christmas Social
Our Christmas social will take place on Mon 17 December. The meeting will start at 7.00pm - 7.30pm with the meal to start at 7.30pm. Liddy will circulate menu and collect bookings.

If sending a payment by post, send to E Goyder, 23 Nairn St, Sheffield S10 1UL. If easier to pay by bank transfer rather than cash or cheque, just let me know and I will send you my account details.  e.goyder@sheffield.ac.uk

Stalls - July 2018

Feedback from the Sharrow Festival (7 July) and the Stannington Carnival (14 July): Stalls attracted plenty of interest in fracking and plastics. However there are limitations of the petition with multiple different tick boxes related to changes in requirements post GDPR. We can feedback to national FoE that the current format is not user friendly.

Save the Date - 3 November: The Peace & Craft Fair in the Town Hall will be on Saturday 3 November (open to the public from 11 to 4:30) We will book a 6 foot table for the day (£24).

Events and Stalls - May 2018

Events 
BaseCamp is from 1-3 June. https://friendsoftheearth.uk/latest/basecamp-13-june-2018
If you are not free for the weekend, you can go for a day.

Stalls
We are planning to have both anti-fracking and Plastics campaigning materials on the stalls.

1. The Sharrow Festival is on 7th July this year. Set up is from 10am and we ask for any vehicles to be off site by 12pm, midday, when the public comes along, the stage on the top field is programmed until 6pm and the bottom field until 8pm. They will not allow vehicle access to the site once the festival has started. Richard and Alan are co-ordinating

Sign up here https://doodle.com/poll/hg9m8y9p9whw73uc

2. Stannington Carnival is on the 14th July.  We need people from about 10:30 to set up (for official start at 11:30) and until 5pm (no vehicles allowed on site between 11 and 5). Please select one or more time slots and try to make sure we have at least 2 people in each slot.

Sign up here https://doodle.com/poll/q7zr6d2zbpy2tggs

Other News - April 2018

Green City Strategy
The strategy adopted by Council now online. See the link here. On first reading, seems fairly conservative and there may be missed opportunities. It is also difficult to read on-line so we will try and get some paper copies from Council.

Basecamp
This is on 1-3 June this year and members can book through national FoE website – Focus this year is around  hat is needed to avert temperatures rising to the “1.5 degrees” threshold.

Stalls 
The Sharrow Festival takes place on 7 July – volunteers are needed to set up and man the stall from 10:30am to 6pm. Please sign up up to one or more time slots here.

We are also running a stall at the Stannington Carnival on Saturday 14 July. Again, if you can help out from 10.30 to 5pm then please sign up to one or more time slots here

Request for speaker
The Life-Style Movement are holding their annual Conference at the Bamford Quaker Community from Friday 21st September to Sunday 23rd and have asked for someone from Sheffield FoE to speak at the Conference on the theme 'Making our Consumption more Sustainable' – Charlotte has agreed to speak..

Events Update - November 2017

Zero Carbon Yorkshire
Richard reported on an event with a presentation from Centre for Alternative Technologies (CAT) on “Zero Carbon Britain” where we can power the country using existing technology. See http://zerocarbonbritain.com/en/ for more details.

Peace and Craft Fair
Several people from the group ran a stall at the Peace and Craft Fair with information leaflets about fracking and air pollution.

Next Meeting
Our next meeting will be on Monday 18 December 2017 at 7.30 pm and Christmas meal at 8pm. If you would like to join us then please contact Liddy on e.goyder@sheffield.ac.uk

Stalls - August 2017

The Peace and Craft Fair takes place this year on Saturday 4 November. We agreed to book a FoE stall (with focus potentially on air pollution campaigning) – ideally next to the Sheffield Against Fracking stall so we can cover both campaigns and share resources.

ACTIONS: 

• Peace Fair 4 November need people to man the stall 10am to 5pm. Need people to volunteer for morning/afternoon.

Stalls & Films Update - July 2017

Frack Free Penistone had asked about sharing a stall in Penistone but we had not planned one and so could not offer this.

We are hoping to run a stall (if the cinema will allow one) for the new Al Gore film being screen at the new cinema on the Moor. If you want to book a ticket then see the link below. If you want to help out on a possible stall then get in touch.
https://sheffield.lightcinemas.co.uk/an-inconvenient-sequel

Stalls - June 2017

Stalls
Banner Cross had an event but no one was available to do a stall. There are also events coming up where we could support other groups and take FoE materials/leaflets etc: Sharrow Festival on Sat 1 July and the Beighton Festival on Sat 8 July. There is also the Sheffield Vegan Beer Festival coming up Sat 29 July and a Low Edges festival on Sat 13 Aug.

Information
Requests for information – Beatrice has been helping a journalism student interested in fracking and someone who wanted environment-related posters for a funeral

Stalls - May 2017

We currently have limited capacity to support stalls. For Peace in the Park this year we can offer to support the Sheffield Climate Alliance stall if possible rather than have a FoE stall.

The gazebo and cow costume needs to be collected before Francois goes away in June if they are needed before he comes back in July.

Stalls Update - March 2017

Beighton 
There is a stall on Saturday 8th July. Richard and Shaun were planning to do it but it is down to Shaun now. Is anyone else free to help? It only has to be for an hour or two.

Stalls - February 2017

We don't have any stalls booked for this summer.

The Climate Activism Zone is planned for Peace in the Park but we need to identify both dates and activities for our 2017 stalls.

ACTIONS:

1. Liddy to book for 8th July Beighton.Gala – Shaun and Richard are both available at the moment – more volunteers are needed to man the stall. Can you help? 
2. Discuss further stalls at the next meeting.

Future Events - December 2016

There are likely to be opportunities to organise “Festival of Debate” events again next year; ideas include films and also other events e.g. a meal in collaboration with the Real Junk Food Project as part of the Food Campaign or an Air Pollution event.

There are a couple of opportunities to use other local events to hand out leaflets and promote the Food Campaign: the Sheffield Food festival 27-29 May and a celebrity chef (Gino d’Acampo) at City Hall on 2 May.

Stalls - November 2016

We probably don’t have capacity to run our own stall at Global Justice event on Saturday afternoon or at Christmas Fairs before end of the year.

Sheffield Climate Alliance planning event for anniversary of Paris Agreement at the Moor Market “Make Santa Happy” – we may be able to support that event.

Stalls Update - July 2016

We have had to cancel our summer stalls for a second time so we are not going to book another one until people get back off holiday. We think we'll be back on track for the Peace and Craft Fair in the winter and then we'll try to host a number of summer stalls in 2017 when we are all refreshed.

Other News - June 2016

June Meeting
Our monthly meeting for June was shorter than normal meeting with fewer people attending. This might have something to do with holidays and an England football match.

Facebook Update
Our Facebook page now has 125 people liking it. There has been a gradual increase over time with peaks coinciding with the Barclays’ fracking demonstration and our food adverts.

Stalls
We had to cancel the stall at Sharrow as we did not have anyone to run it. We’ve decided to go to Stannington on 9th July, but we need to know as soon as possible if we have enough people to run the stall.

Film Festival
We would like to organise another film festival later this year, so Shaun agreed to contact the Festival of Debate to see if with can join forces with them in October. People suggested films about food and air pollution. If you know of some good films then please let John know.

Waste strategy
There is an opportunity to comment on the South Yorkshire Waste Strategy for 2016-2021.  See link here.The closing date for comments is 31 July 2016.

Talks and Outings
Shaun tried to contact the Master Cutler with a view to talking about electric cars. It looks like there were problems with the email invitation we sent so this hasn’t happened.

We also suggested organising a trip to ITM power to look at their clean electricity to hydrogen systems. Beatrice is going to organise this.

Shaun mentioned that it would be a good social outing to clean a beach with the Marine Conservation Society between September 16-19 near Hull. We could clean the beach for a few hours and have a trip out to the seaside. See link here. Does anyone fancy this?