January Meeting - Minutes

Notes of T3 meeting, No.75 restaurant, 24/01/2012

Present:  Jeff, Carolyn, Chris, Christopher, Justin, Alan Bates, Lindy Bates

A quick round up of events since our last meeting in November.

Lights Out Tenterden was an interesting experiment. Although we didn't have that many active participants the results of the questionnaire showed we have a lot to do in terms of raising awareness, so this was a good start and might be worth repeating. Carolyn thought it might be worth monitoring the shops etc in the summer months, to see who,if any, put the lights on during the evenings when it is still light.

Treasures of Tenterden was a definite success. Alan & Lindy were prize winners, and found it very enjoyable. This will be worth repeating, so we need to think of a new route and questions.

T3 entered a team in St Michaels Village Hall Quiz night, and we were very pleased to win!

Bug Hotels - we have had a lot of interest in this project, and are waiting for various groups to come back to us with definite dates to go out and see them. We have a presentation written, and have sent the groups a list of suitable materials for them to gather to use.

Highbury Hall - we have received a water butt and a compost bin, and have been given permission by the committee to install these. We just need to obtain the correct size pipe etc to connect the water butt. We also put in some planters containing bulbs which were also donated to us. These, and the daffodils we planted, are beginning to flower.

Waitrose - we were one of Waitrose's 3 charities in December, and raised £190. We should receive this in February. We will bank this towards the bike generator project.

Spring Fair. 24th March, Highbury Hall. We are still looking for Stall Holders for this event, so if anyone knows any crafters or other appropriate trader who might be interested, let us know. We will be doing cakes, cream teas, etc as before. Jams, chutneys etc (donations welcome). If anyone has suitable Tombola prizes please let us have them, also books for the book swap. We will also have a plant/seed swap,so anyone who has seeds or plants they don't want can swap them for ones they do. Jeff also wants to get some local musicians to maybe play a few acoustic songs and sell their CDs.

May Fair. We have the opportunity of a stall at this event. Ideally we would like to get the Bike Powered Smoothie Maker idea off the ground for this. We need to discuss with Phil the practical side of building this. We need to revamp the display boards, we could have some 'make a bug hotel' demos too.

Blue Box Scheme – as previously discussed, not everyone has a Blue Box. We need to write to ABC to get a full list and find out which areas aren't covered and why.

Green Map - we would like to create a 'Green Map'/Directory of all 'eco'/ 'green' facilities in Tenterden. This would be a very big project.

Crop Swap - we need to check with Lizzie and Ty to see how well this scheme worked last year. Did they get much interest? Are they going to do it again?

Diamond Jubilee- as part of the town's Jubilee celebrations we will run a 'Retro Cafe' at Highbury Hall, with frothy coffee and tunes from the past decades. This will be another event for raising awareness and another opportunity to show our projects.

Leading on from this, our September fair should be a Food Fair, with food producers etc showing their products. This will enable us to launch the 'Tenterden Hamper' idea.

Clean Up Day. We discussed the idea of running another Clean Up Day, this time on a Sunday. We settled on 15th April for this. Jeff will liaise with Jo Vos and ABC, and organise borrowing equipment etc.

Swap Shop - as part of Spring Fair we will have the Book Swap and the Plant Swap. We would like to expand this idea to include other items, several Transition groups do this. Bungay has an event called 'Give & Take' which is a name we could use.

Plastic Bags - we all agreed that getting all the shops in Tenterden to stop using plastic bags would be good, but a big task. In Deal they have a petition to this end, with volunteers outside the shops getting signatures. Alan told us that he recently visited Rwanda where they banned plastic bags 4 years ago and introduced 'mandatory' clean up sessions. He said the country is very clean and tidy because of this.

Leading on from this Justin suggested that we could get cloth/linen/jute type bags, which we could distribute at events, which would entitle the shopper to some discount at participating stores. This could be done in conjunction with Folk Festival/Tentertainment, and the Chamber of Commerce. This is similar to the 'Loch ' bags that Steve gave us in October.

Star Count – Jeff reminded us to go to to the CPRE website and take part in the star count project, which is to monitor light pollution. http://www.cpre.org.uk/what-we-do/countryside/dark-skies/update/item/2666-star-count-2012

Next meeting, date and venue to be confirmed.