06.04.11 Work Departments and Transition Towns

Today has been a bit more of a story of familiarity – the first half of the day spent cleaning dishes and chopping vegetables in Cluney House as part of my work placement while here in the community, something that everyone must do. It was good to escape the confines of the village for a little while, and see another campus of the community. As I do most of the cooking at home I didn't really gain much skills-wise but it was rewarding to see people enjoy their lunch.

As a volunteer with Transition Towns in Edinburgh the afternoons lecture was also quite familiar. It actually reminded me that I had to forward a logo design I had done for the Community Bread Project I was working on to the committee that I'm currently working with.

Visiting the town of Forres community gardens set up by the wonderfully colourful (albeit one colour) Carin gave me a perspective on community gardens that I hadn't seen before. Set up with a grant of £138,000 from the Climate Challenge Fund, the circular gardens almost provide one person with enough food to be self sufficient for a year. But thats not really the main point of the community gardens – it's more about bringing the community together and reconnecting people with their food source, and perhaps even more importantly educating younger generations about the supply of their food. The difficult task, and perhaps something that needs to come in from a council planning level, would be persuading developers to set aside land within a new development for a community garden. However with property and land prices still at an inflated level, reducing density on a site to do this could be problematic.

Our course leader also arrived today to discuss the program so far – it brought up a few tensions within the group staying here, everyone with their own pressures, frustrations and desires of what they want to take from the course. But the open environment that the lecturers and ourselves to some extent have created here made it possible for everyone to voice their opinions freely and without any bad feeling.