August 2024
Our latest updates!
On the run up to the Green Meadows Festival, we have been busy getting plans in order, designing and creating exciting activities, and getting the word out. We have also been running a wide range of workshops running throughout the month.
Keep reading to find out what we’ve been up to!
Green Meadows Community get ready for the festival
The group of residents who have been working together to make change happen locally have been designing some exciting activities and colourful information boards for the Green Meadows Festival.
Gina, one of the community members who is an artist and very creative, helped everyone create a masterpiece. She drew out all these amazing plants and animals and everyone else painted it in, with amazing results! What they were making included a hedgehog doorway for humans and a load of hedgehogs that will be hidden at the event - keep an eye out to spot them on the day!
The food was made by Sarah and Hannah (Growing Group) using seasonal produce from their allotment, including green beans, apples and herbs. It was delicious!
As a volunteer you can join us at the Climate Hub on the 5th of September to make signs and upcycled decorations for the Festival. Or, give 2 hours of your time on the day of the event to be a steward, helping us welcome people, run activities, litter pick and make sure it's all running smoothly.
Contact Heather if you are interested at engage@greenmeadows.uk.
Here are some photos from their get together on the 29th August.
Festival Updates:
With the Green Meadows Festival right around the corner, the final plans are falling into place, and we’re excited to share developments!
We wanted to do something different for the fourth instalment, so this year we’re excited to announce our talks with local guest speakers who are taking climate action and impacting the community in different ways.
Check out the running order below:
Nick Parsons - What is retrofitting and why does it matter?
Steve Smith (Nottinghamshire’s lead Community Organiser) - Building a better community together
Andy Barrett (Writer, theatre maker and Researcher at UoN): Writing Places: Adventures of an Environmental Writer
Li Parkes (Youth Climate Assembly): Young Voices in Climate Change
Take part in the first Meadows Climate Assembly
There will also be live music, DJs, young performers, the Power of Drums performances & more.
We also have some exciting activities and guests, such as natural plant dyeing with Plant Dye Studio, low energy cooking with Tiger Enterprise CIC & more!
With the event less than two weeks away, make sure to register for your free food voucher here (one for each member of your group!) so that you can enjoy the delicious food on offer.
Improving your Victorian Home Event
The Insulation Guides, available to Meadows residents, covered in the workshop.
A large amount of homes in the Meadows are Victorian, which means they share the same architectural features and often the same problems, being draughty, expensive to heat and damp. The Green Meadows team have been working to find solutions to this, with tools such as the Insulation Guides and Future-fit plans tailored to the Old Meadows Conservation Area.
However, retrofit and home improvements can often seem daunting, so we held an in-person workshop to walk residents through how their homes are built and the necessary steps to insulating Victorian homes – including information on where heat is lost, natural building materials, how to read and understand the Insulation Guides, and more!
The workshop included a tour of our Community Retrofit House, which has been stripped out so we can show what the existing structure of a Victorian home looks like and will be used to train up the community with retrofit workshops. The workshops will put the rules and guidelines of the Insulation Guides and Future-fit plans into practice, protecting the heritage of the building while improving its energy efficiency. The retrofit of the Community Retrofit House will improve a local building, built from community efforts and local upskilling.
The retrofit improvements going on at Pyatt Street
DIY Workshop: Pointing Brickwork
As a recent addition to our DIY Workshops, Pointing Brickwork for Beginners has been extremely popular and our latest session saw attendees observing live demonstrations before practicing how to apply mortar to brickwork. This is an effective technique for maintaining brickwork on your property and providing an extra barrier against moisture getting into your home.
Check out the action photos below!
Attendees taking part in Brickpointing
We have a handful of upcoming workshops that focus on a variety of related skills, including DIY Basic Plumbing Skills (Fri October 4th), DIY Insulating your Internal Walls (Fri, September 20th), and DIY Insulating your Floor & Loft (Fri, October 18th) . Why not come along and give it a go? It’s a great opportunity to learn how to effectively use hand and power tools, as well as DIY techniques, before making changes to your own home.
To keep in touch with us, you can sign up to our monthly newsletter here for the latest news and events.