This is an informal group that meets bi-weekly in Llanfyllin to discuss the climate emergency and its horrifying consequences. As a community it has been agreed we will need to come together and coordinated action that will Build Resilience Against Climate Emergency – BRACE Llanfyllin is now our acronym. Key decision taken this week is that working groups will convene on the alternate week to work on proposals and strategies.
Topic Groups
Moving on to action is key and it was agreed to start working in topic groups which can hopefully evolve into fully fledged projects. Food and compost, repair workshops, education, publicity, transport were all mentioned with food and compost being the key area for initial discussion. What is apparent is that this is going to hit every area of our lives, enormous pressures will be crated as government struggles to keep a failing economy afloat and people become increasingly frustrated with the lack of services and provision as more services are rolled back. We are most vulnerable on food and transport however and some kind of collective response is called for.
Growing food is time consuming and specialist, it also requires access to land and resources. There was huge amount of learning from Cwm Harry, Newtown’s project Get-Growing which led to the formation of Cultivate.
Thoughts are along the lines the we should visit to share experiences and maybe draw on this as a way forward for Llanfyllin. Sector39 did try to initiate such a project originally at the Workhouse in 2009/ 10 but the momentum was taken up by Cwm Harry so we relocated there. It should be noted however that the Cae Bodfach orchard was begun as part of the Get-Growing project and that now there might be enough interest to initiate an equivalent project here in Tanat Valley.
We talked about attending the Cwm Harry seed swap event, however it is tomorrow, Saturday.. so a bit short notice to organise a group trip. Perhaps it might be more beneficial to go on an official fact finding visit rather than during an actual event. I am looking into the possibility of writing a lottery bid for such a project.