St Cuthbert’s Goes Wild

In spring 2014 Darlington Bee Cause, an alliance of local groups headed by Darlington Friends of the Earth and backed by Darlington Borough Council secured a grant from the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew. This project is one of 80 project across the country to increase knowledge and understanding of why wild flower are important. Since the 1950ʼs 97 % of Britainʼs wild flower meadows have been lost due to changes in agricultural practices. Projects like this will help bees, butterflies and pollinators that thrive on the nectar and pollen of wild flowers to be part of our heritage and landscape.

St Cuthbertʼs Churchyard is the largest green space in our town centre. In the years to come it will become an important habitat for a variety of different species. We hope that you will enjoy watching the insects that will come here to forage for nectar and pollen.

After the wild flowers of summer and early autumn have finished the plants will be cut back and the foliage removed. This is the way traditional wild flower meadows have always been managed. Over time, the St Cuthbert's wild flower meadow will provide a richer and more diverse habitat for bees,  butterflies and other insects as the meadow regenerates using the seeds dropped in the previous autumn.

Darlington Friends of the Earth Co-ordinator is Award Finalist

Members of Darlington Friends of the Earth are celebrating their group’s co-ordinator, Kendra Ullyart, making the short list at the Best of Darlington Awards for her environmental campaigning.

Kendra Ullyart, right, with group Treasurer Cat McConnachie

Kendra was recognised for her achievements in making Darlington a greener and more pleasant place to live. Recent successes from Darlington Friends of the Earth have included events to highlight the plight of the bumble bee, film screenings, supporting a local farm to become more energy efficient and creating a Darlington Orchard. The group have big plans for 2014. They are to receive a Big Lottery grant to transform the grounds of St Cuthburt’s church.

Kendra said,”It is wonderful to be recognised for all the hard work that our group has put in this year. We will continue to campaign on topics as diverse as Fracking to wild flowers, road safety renewable energy. If you want to make a difference locally or globally come and join our award winning team.“

Make a difference day at the Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College

Members of Darlington Friends of the Earth we invited to talk to students at the Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College about how they could make a positive change to their local community while listening to which environmental issues concerned them most.

Meeting the students at the QE

Kendra Ullyart said, "We were delighted by the number of students who shared our concern for the environment. They demonstrated a good understanding of many issues. We heard how they opposed fracking, were concerned about loss of habitat for bees and felt that public transport and road safety were not taken seriously enough."

Matthew Snedker speaking about our latest campaign 'Meat Free May' said, "This campaign interested lots of those who we spoke to. They understood the link between intensive meat production and the damage to our environment. Many of them were up for a challenge!" [You can down load a challenge sheet for yourself from this blog]

Signing up for Young Friends of the Earth

We already have 3 students in our group and with the number who signed up at this event we are confident that we will soon have our very own Young Friends of the Earth group in action.

Please bear with us while this blog undergoes some reconstruction.

Darlington Friends of the Earth campaigns to protect the local, national and international environment.

Join this group to find out about events, activities and campaigns.

We meet in Friends Meeting House in Skinnergate, on the second Monday of each month at 7.30pm.

We always welcome new members to come along to see what we are doing.

Visit our facebook page to see what we are talking about and join in the conversation.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/107647951325/?ref=ts&fref=ts

Market Stall

We had a good day on Saturday at the Market Spectacular. Thanks to all members that helped both before and on the day. We got 62 sustainable livestock postcards signed which was great concidering our position on the market. Jims books helped to swell our funds by £43.70, thanks again Jim. We also signed up a new member. We have got a stall at the next farmers market on Friday 17th September, any members that can help out please email Mary.

Stall at the Market Spectacular

On Saturday 14th of August we have got a stall at the market spectacular in Darlington, come along and have a look at the next stage of the Food Chain Campaign - look out for the cows, pigs and chickens! New members are always welcome to join.

Darlington Community Carnival

Darlington Friends of the Earth have got a stall at this years community carnival on Saturday 26th June in Stanhope Park. There is a chance for new members to join the group on the day.

Litter Pick

On Saturday 12th June we took part in a litter pick on land just outside Bondgate Methodist church in the town centre. The morning went well and 10 people joined in, 5 adults and 5 children. We collected 5 bags of rubbish over the course of an hour and after our hard work we were kindly invited into the church for a well deserved cuppa! We hope to join in with other organised litter picks in the future.

Greenfair

The Green fair on Sunday in South park was a great success for our group, We got over 100 postcards signed for the next stage of the Food Chain campaign and there was also a lot of interest in the allotment. We also got some new members on board.

Darlington Green Fair

Darlington Friends of the Earth are taking part in this years Green Fair in South Park, Darlington. This is held on Sunday 18th of April between 12pm -4pm.

The Age of Stupid Screening

We are going to be holding the Darlington premier of the film 'The Age of Stupid' on the 1st of December. The screening will be for specially invited guests. There will be an opportunity to have discussion afterwards.
More Details will follow once everything is confirmed.

Thank you

We received this email from Richard Hines from Friends of the Earth.

Dear Food Chain Campaigner,
On behalf of all the food team I’d like to say a huge thank you to everyone who got involved with last month’s Food Chain Fortnight. We’ve now exceeded our target number of signatures for Early Day Motion 845 – we’re up to 257 – so you can all give yourselves a big pat on the back for a successful 6 months of campaigning.

On the subject of Early Day Motion 845, it will close on Wednesday 18th November – so if you’ve still got any signed postcards please send them to the Luton address on the back of the card as soon as possible. We’ll make sure that any sent on to MPs after the 18th will have an appropriate cover letter with them, but it would be best to get them out before then.

But back to the Food Chain Fortnight. We’ve set up a gallery of Food Chain Fortnight photos, featuring piñata, postcards and much more. Take a look at http://www.foe.co.uk/community/news/food_chain_fortnight_21705.html. And please remember to send us any more photos your own group has taken.

We’re also after local press coverage from the fortnight, and feedback forms. We need to hear what worked and what didn’t to help make sure that the plans for 2010 work for you. The feedback form is available here:
http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/action_guides/food_fortnight_evaluation.doc

So what’s next for the Food Chain Campaign? This year has been a brilliant start, and we’ve gone from almost zero knowledge of the issue in Westminster to having a herd of supportive MPs behind us. But we’ve still got a long way to go before our solutions become law. We’re going to have to build support for actual legislation to fix the food chain – from both MPs and the political candidates waiting in the wings. We also want to do much more to get key community figures – particularly farmers – on board. And we’re putting lots of thought into how we could show people how they fit into the food chain themselves, and what that means for them and their families.

It’s going to be a very exciting 2010 for the Food Chain Campaign!

I’ll be in touch again soon with more campaign updates.

Best wishes

Richard

Richard Hines
Food Team - Friends of the Earth

October Meeting

Items we talked about at our recent meeting.
Age of Stupid It is hoped the film will be shown in Middlesbrough, Redcar, Hartlepool, Stockton & Darlington. We are looking to put on a screening of this film in the last week of November.

Renewables Dawn is writing a report and when completed will send out to all. Dawn will pass on the original questions asked by the group to Steve to see if he can give us the answers.

Market Success Thanks to all who helped, we got a total of 151 Fix the Food Chain post cards, 50 signatures for the market on how they recycle, 20 Get Serious cards and book sales total £10.00. Mary, Kendra, Lou and James presented all the Food Chain cards to Alan Milburn. A photographer from the Northern Echo was there and it appeared in this week’s paper and can be seen on the Northern Echo blog.

Market Stall This Saturday 17th from 9.30 – 4.00 for the Get Serious campaign. Help is required to run the stall please can you contact Kendra to let her know if you can make it.

Allotment The day of the launch was very well attended and the mayor Jim Ruck planted a plum tree which had been donated by Robin Blair. After the successful launch of the site at Lingfield Point we had our first steering group meeting at the Dolphin centre which 7 of us attended. The charge for the site was set at £5 subscription and £1 per bag. We are continuing to look for local companies to come on board in support of the scheme.

Get Serious A letter that is being sent to Ada Burns, the letter explains why we are running the Get Serious campaign and how we make help the council reduce their CO2 emissions. Alan has also written 4 questions which we will ask at the next full council meeting.

Any Other Business We plan to have a revisit to the Wades recycling plant in the New Year to see how they are doing now it is up and running. We now have a copy of Sustainable Energy Without Hot Air by David JC MacKay, if you wish to borrow the book please contact Mary.

Report of our meeting with Darlington MP Alan Milburn

On Thursday 8th October, members of Darlington Friends of the Earth led by group co-ordinator Kendra Ullyart met with the town’s MP Alan Milburn to get his support for the Fix the Food-chain campaign. Like many people we have spoken to during this campaign, Mr Milburn was struck by the statistic from the UN Food and Agriculture Association that “the meat and dairy industry produces more climate-changing emissions than every plane, train and car on the planet - 18% of the global total.” A photographer from the Northern Echo was present to capture the moment when postcards signed by Darlington residents were given to Mr Milburn, who expressed an interest in planet-friendly farming and ways of making the shift to a low-carbon economy. Friends of the Earth literature on the Get Serious on C02 campaign was also presented to Mr Milburn, who agreed to convey our message on planet-friendly farming to the Hilary Benn, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Food festival Stall

On the stall at the Food Festival last weekend we managed to collect over 150 postcards for our Food Chain campaign and 16 postcards for the Get Serious campaign. A great achievement despite the weather and location in the indoor market. Thanks to all who helped out and of course those that signed our cards.

Darlington Food Festival

The group have got a stall at the market this weekend Friday 2nd and Saturday 3rd October. The group is using the Food Chain campaign as the main focus for the stall. The Stall is located in the Indoor Market. There is also a comments sheet for Darlington Markets green credentials and asking people for any suggestions to improve their goals.

Allotment Group

An event at Lingfield Point was held on 19th September for people interested in the new Gro- Zone. The Mayor of Darlington planted a Plum tree to commemorate the start of this exciting project. People were able to sign up and were given the opportunity to join a steering group, which held its first meeting yesterday. The Allotments group have also secured some funding for the project which is fantastic. The project will encourage local community interaction and give people the opportunity to grow their own food.

At the next meeting we have a guest speaker, Alastair Mackenzie from Sadberge Parish Council. He has led a campaign to get people to monitor their energy use – they achieve this by using a power monitor (supplied by Alastair) – his talk will explain the project and outline its success in terms of lower energy use/costs for those who took part.

June and July meetings

At the meeting in June we were joined by Rob from Middlesbrough FoE. We discussed renewable energy, in particular wind energy from wind turbines. A subgroup has been formed to get information about windfarms and wind energy.
The Allotment subgroup fed back to the main group about developments and a possible site for areas to grow vegetables in Darlington could be made available at the site of the former Patton and Baldwins site which could use the large grow bag idea. Some questionnaires have gone out to allotment holders and interested potential allotment holders.
The group had a stall at the community carnival in Stanhope park. The 'Get Serious' campaign was to be introduced and 100 postcards were signed for the 'Food Chain' Campaign. We also have some new recruits from the stall and we were joined by them at the July meeting.
In September we hope to hold a screening of the film 'Age of Stupid' and environmental film which has a very real and thought provoking story to tell about the way our planet is changing.
Jim has continued to raise our funds through the sale of secondhand books. These are on sale on our stalls.

Market Stall

On Saturday 23rd May we had a market stall in Darlington. We were working on the new national campaign - Food chain.
The meat and dairy industry produces more climate changing emissions than all the planes, cars and lorries on the planet. There is a hidden chain that links animals in British factory farms to rainforest destruction in south America. We are asking the government to change this for more planet friendly farming. We asked people to show their support and sign postcards that we would send to our local MP. Together we will help to fix the food chain.