Help for Warmth and other February events; Join tree & hedgerow planting sessions; Talk: place, protest & belonging; Want to shape Sustainable Shaftesbury?; Great Big Green Week and other activities tba; Dorset & national brief updates |
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Next meeting at Shaftesbury Town Hall: Sustainable Living in a cost of living crisis. We're all eligible for free advice on keeping warm, and some of us can get grants or funding for heating or insulation. Peter Bywater, managing director at Ridgewater Energy, is joining us to provide information, answer questions and offer advice. And are you wondering how we'll charge electric vehicles in Shaftesbury? Katie Petre-Mears of local company Daisy Electric will introduce herself and her family business. Open to all, please help to spread the word (posters available on request to planetshaftesbury@gmail.com). Thursday 16th February at 7.30pm |
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Want to Fix-it? Support Shaftesbury's Repair Cafe - 5th February and monthly Our local Repair Cafe is part of the Vintage and Eco market on the first Sunday of the month. It's for everyone who rejects our 'throw-away' culture and will become the place to find people who can help with assorted repairs and upcycling. So far, the emphasis is on sewing, textiles and jewellery. If you have skills in carpentry, metalwork, mechanical or small electrical repairs then perhaps you'd like to join the team of Fixers on occasional Sundays and for special events such as during Shaftesbury Fringe and for Great Big Green Week? Or do you know someone else who'd be interested? Please contact: jennymorisetti@hotmail.com 07801 240103 |
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Chase & Chalke Landscape Partnership: Events, Trainings and more Cranborne Chase is an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) and an International Dark Skies Reserve. The Landscape Partnership is a group of organisations that aim to protect and enhance the landscape and local communities' connections to it. An extensive programme of events has been launched this year along with free specialist Nurturing Nature training sessions designed to enable precious local wildlife to be better recorded and protected. Find out more about these and volunteering opportunities from their website (link below) or by going along to one of their Nurturing Nature coffee and cake mornings - the next local session is at Seasons of Shaftesbury on Thursday 9th February. |
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Trees & hedgerows: planting the right trees in the right place Two farm-based tree planting activities this month with full details on the website: Family tree planting morning in Melbury Abbas, Sunday 12th February, 10-12.30. Help to plant 500 trees in various locations around Woodfrys Farm. Hot drinks and snacks provided as a thank you. Dress warm with waterproof clothing and wear wellies or boots. Join a community planting day: Work to create a new woodland just outside Shaftesbury is continuing on Saturday February 25th at Lower Coombe Farm. Families welcome.
Year 3 of Shaftesbury town's five-year supplementary tree planting plan. Thank you to the local volunteers and members of Shaftesbury Tree Group who are well on the way through this season's planting schedule. Too much of a wood thing? The Plantlife charity has produced a report weighing up the pros and cons of public funding for forestry creation and emphasising the 'Right tree, right place' message. See below for link to Caution & Consideration when Planting Trees. |
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Talk by Nicola Chester about place, protest and belonging This special talk for 2023 stands in place of Shaftesbury's Reading the Land book festival which is taking a gap year. Nicola has been writing about nature - as an act of joy, connection and a resistance to its loss - for almost twenty years. She is the RSPB's longest running female columnist, a Guardian Country Diarist and writes for Countryfile Magazine, as well as working as a School Librarian in a rural Secondary School. She lives with her family in a tenanted farm workers cottage in the North Wessex Downs. Her book, On Gallows Down, won the Richard Jefferies Prize and was Highly Commended for the Wainwright Prize last year. Her talk is being held at the Assembly Room, Grosvenor Hotel, 11th March, 6pm. Tickets (£10 each) are available on the book festival website (link below). |
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Sustainable Shaftesbury - engage with the plan at our March meeting The working group that brings some Shaftesbury Town Council (STC) people together with members of the wider community is developing a Sustainable Shaftesbury Action Plan that it hopes will be agreed to by full council in April. The plan separates actions that are achievable by the council, by businesses, and by individual townspeople. Members of the group are working in sub-teams concentrating on eight different aspects of the plan. Planet Shaftesbury's meeting on 16th March will introduce a wider group of interested people to the separate themes and proposals in the emergent plan and offer working group members an opportunity to get feedback. Lucy Young, one of those participating in the working group, has volunteered to act as a point of contact for our wider network - email her at LYoung@wwf.org.uk |
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The button above is also your short cut to other treats on the website. See thoughtful recent blog post by Julia Desch - inspired by the high banks of wildflowers and hedgerows around the Donheads; reflect on Great Big Green Week 2023 as you revisit the project page for the Tree Festival; and keep an eye on the Forum (where you can add your two-penn'orth) |
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Using Great Big Green Week (GBGW) to increase our impact (June 10-18th) At our meeting in January, Chris Harwood, better known as the organiser of community tree planting projects around Shaftesbury's hinterland, made a pitch for us to aim BIG for GBGW 2023. Now an annual national celebration, GBGW was launched in September 2021 when over 5,000 events highlighted community action to tackle climate change and protect green spaces. We have previously linked local activities to GBGW: the town's Tree Festival (2021), participation in a Dorset-wide Open Greener Homes event (2021 & 22), a display at the Library: Cost of Living - what can I do and save the planet too? (2022), a film show: Kiss the Ground (2022), and more. Chris' energy and enthusiasm encouraged each of us to start thinking realistically about what we might add to a varied programme of activities, get wide engagement with the events, and create a lasting impact that will be ... well, GREAT. Chris has established a project website (link below) that he'll use to coordinate proposed events for the week. He has also volunteered to liaise with GBGW nationally and to act as a point of contact for those wanting to organise or support activities for Shaftesbury's own GBGW programme. He's already building connections across the local area. WANTED: Chris has asked for one or two people to help him with an advertising strategy: for getting diverse people and organisations to run events (eg. coffee mornings, guided walks, film show, etc) and then for spreading the word and increasing participation during the week. Contact him at Chris@GreatBigGreenWeekShaftesbury.org |
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Looking ahead, what could be coming up in 2023? In January several topics were raised as possible themes for a topical presentation or discussion. If you'd like to get involved in shaping these or other future events or making any of this happen - in GBGW or some other time - please email your offers to planetshaftesbury@gmail.com Land use, farming, food and diets - could be more than one session and we may need a panel discussion format to encompass different perspectives. This year's Oxford Real Farming Conference (link below) saw some heated discussions between organic farmers (conforming to organic standards) and those farming regeneratively (is this term well defined or open to abuse?). We know our diets must change but how is this going to be achieved? What challenges facing our local farmers do the wider community need to better appreciate? Community Energy - Many communities (eg.Tisbury and Frome) benefit from energy initiatives that sprung out of a different environment from that that exists now. What options are open to Shaftesbury? How can we prepare the way for taking advantage of changes in the community energy operating environment? Move your money - at last year's school event one of the popular talks was about moving our savings and pension funds in order to reduce any personal investment in fossil fuels. Could we arrange something similar for a larger group of townspeople? Meanwhile, if you're interested in pursuing this before we could arrange such a session, sign up to take advantage of the new Switch-it Green website (link below) when it becomes available. Extinction Rebellion is calling for a mass gathering (The Big One) outside parliament from 21st April. There will be some local people sharing transport to head up to London. To be put in touch please email planetshaftesbury@gmail.com. |
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News from across the county Dorset Climate Action Network (Dorset CAN) is having a membership drive. Members can be businesses, organisations or individuals and membership is free. If you are not already an individual member please consider joining by using the link below. The way bus services are managed within Dorset is changing. Bus operators will continue to go through a tender process for a particular bus route for a contracted price. The difference is that Dorset Council will receive the income from passengers and the value of the contract will reflect this change. Previously the operator collected this money. Cllr Noc Lacey-Clarke, Cabinet Lead Member for Environment, Travel and Harbours, has said: “This change in the way the services are managed means that we have more control on what is being offered to Dorset residents. ...We have already seen an increase in passenger usage on at least one of these new services, which is very promising.” |
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Quick action: The climate action organisation Possible writes: Late last year, we forced the new government into opening a consultation on whether to finally lift the ban on onshore wind in England. Now the consultation is live, we need to team up again to get this campaign across the line - and get the final win on wind. This is our chance to get the clean energy we need, but wind power needs your voice. Sign to support the campaign here. |
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