If you are interested in any aspect of sustainable or community housing, or in straw-bale building techniques, please come along. The talk will be followed by Questions & Answers/discussion and refreshments will be available. Price £2.00/£1.50.

Please download and display/distribute a flyer/poster here

To find out more about LILAC click here

Attendees discuss the topics raised by the film

More than 35 people travelled from Buckfastleigh, Buckfast, Ashburton, Buckland in the Moor and South Brent. They crammed into the room at Buckfastleigh Town Hall last Friday to watch the film, enjoy some refreshments and then discuss the topics raised by the film.

The discussions raised a number of subjects, including:

• Creating a local currency to cover the whole of Dartmoor.
• Trying to persuade local Co-operative stores to stock those items that are not sold by other local establishments, rather than competing with them.
• Getting the local Chamber(s) of Trade to work as a co-operative (local shops providing vouchers that can be used in other local shops).
• The pros and cons of local credit unions and microfinance.
• Setting up a local food sharing scheme.
• Local Exchange Trading Systems (LETS).
• The University of the Third Age.
• Lending your seldomly-used items to others (Streetbank).
• Planting fruit trees on unused land (sounds familiar!).

At the end of the evening a number of those people who were interested in possibly forming projects based on one of these topics swapped contact details. Keep your eyes peeled as we may be starting more projects soon!

We would like to thank all of those that came along to the event, and especially those that helped out on the evening!

The BTT and Buckfastleigh Community Forum stall

We’d like to thank all of those that helped out on our stall, and to all of those that came along to buy a biodegradable balloon animal, recycle (or should that be upcycle?) the materials that we supplied into masks and hats and create logos for our Design-a-Logo competition.

Batman joins in the fun at the BTT stall

We were also glad to see so many people come along and find out more information on Whitecleave Quarry from the members of the Buckfastleigh Community Forum (who shared our stall).

For more details please have a look at this page.

People admiring the trees at the launch event

For those of you that haven’t been followed the project, all of the decorations for the tree have been “upcycled” from materials that would either be thrown away or can be recycled. Upcycling is the practice of taking something that is disposable and transforming it into something of better quality, greater use or higher value.

The other trees at the Festival have been decorated by other local community groups, including Sustainable South Brent (who decorated their tree with every-day products made from oil in order to show how reliant we are on oil).

Our tree

The BTT tree wouldn’t look as good as it does without a great effort by a lot of people, and BTT would like to thank some of them specifically:

• Belinda, who came up with the ideas for the tin can lid angel and plastic bag person decorations which have been such a hit.
• Dominique, who let us use her newly renovated barn to make a lot of the decorations, made a lot of them herself, help put up the decorations and came along to the launch.
• Anne, for making some of the decorations and helping to put the decorations up.
• All of those people who helped to make some of the decorations at the Christmas Cafe and Craft Fayre.
• All of the BTT members and others who helped to make decorations.
• Mr Banwell, Mrs Ramsey and all of the children in Oak Class at Buckfastleigh Primary School for making some of the plastic bag person decorations for the tree.

If you’d like to see BTT’s christmas tree then all of the trees will be up in the courtyard at Dartington Hall until Tuesday 21st December. If you cannot get there then the Dartington website has pictures of all of the trees.

As well as handing out a number of free low energy light bulbs and various leaflets, we signed up five new members!

Thanks to Belinda, BTT members and lots of others, we also made a lot of decorations for the BTT christmas tree at the upcoming Dartington Christmas Tree Festival.

Christmas decorating at the Craft Fayre

It was really great to meet up with so many local people whose knowledge, skills and interests are along the lines of the things that BTT are trying to do.

Many thanks to all the BTT members who came along and helped out on the day. Most of all, many thanks to Richard Hurley (and the other members of Wildspace and Buckfastleigh Community Arts Café project) for organising the event.

Look here to find out more.

We’ll have some fun things for you to try (more details can be found here), so we look forward to seeing you there to support BTT and the Buckfastleigh and District Society.

Andy Stokes, Buck the Trend’s secretary, said:

It was great to see such a wide range of people coming along to support us and generate some good ideas for how we can make Buckfastleigh a more sustainable place to live and become a stronger community as a result. It was also encouraging to receive support from the Town Council, with the Town Mayor Councillor Peter Clarke and Councillor Ann Armstrong (of the Buckfastleigh and District Society) both attending the meeting.

The meeting was also attended by members of related groups in neighbouring towns. Andy Stokes said:

We really appreciate the fact that representatives from Sustainable South Brent and Transition Newton Abbot came to the meeting and gave us the benefit of their experience. We look forward to working more closely with them and the other groups that showed their support, including Ashburton Futures and Bovey Climate Action.

Tony Merrick from the Energy Saving Trust said:

The meeting was a great start to the project and it seems that the group contains some very knowledgeable, keen individuals. After this first meeting I am very much looking forward to progressing with Buck the Trend in their action plan. Thank you to the other community groups for coming and sharing their previous experiences and good practice with us.

Buck the Trend are now working to finalise their plans for the Green Communities programme over the next year.

Tony Merrick (EST), Councillor Peter Clarke (Town Mayor), Robert Byrnes (BTT Chairman) and Andy Stokes (BTT Secretary) at the meeting