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TTB and Colfox Eco Club at Bridport's Charter Fair

Transition Town Bridport and Colfox eco-club cooperated in providing a display and stall at Bridport’s Charter Fair on 3rd July.  The Young Transitioners group took on Article 6 for the Rights Respecting theme of this year’s event.  This states that ‘All children have the right to life. Governments should ensure that children survive and develop healthily.’

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Fabulous Bridport Food Festival, but did you see TTB working behind the scenes?

Some of the sights the punters didn’t see

The Bridport Food Group are to be congratulated on putting on a wonderful festival – probably the best yet, and heard described as the ‘greenest’ yet.  The subject of recycling came up at the organisers’ meetings and the Festival committee agreed to pay a commercial company to provide recycling bins which were delivered and placed throughout the site for the Friday evening’s beer festival, through to the end of Saturday’s events and which would be taken away afterwards.  In order to save some festival costs, TTB offered the services of volunteers to try to make sure that the waste from the Food Festival was properly recycled.

Whereas some people were fastidious and careful about where they put their waste and did their best to recycle, others were seemingly uninterested in, or incapable of, recycling at all, nullifying the good efforts of the few.
 
Sorting the bins and bags was not a job for the fainthearted.  TTB volunteers worked throughout the festival, separating out the recyclables from the landfill rubbish, and re-sorting the recycling bins where waste had been wrongly dumped.  In addition, these volunteers also patrolled the site picking up rubbish which had never made it to the bins in the first place.

Photos by Chris Rickard

TTB saved loads of waste from landfill - so it was a job worth doing, but this was a job which shouldn’t have needed to be done.  Everything was in place for easy recycling.  We as a community need to pull together to educate and encourage each other to think of our waste in a different way.
 
Come on Bridportians – we can do better.   Want to join our Zero Waste Group?  Contact us - we will put you in touch.

TTB also provided volunteers to help with washing up in the tea tent, to save the use of disposable cups and plates - this worked a treat - and of course in between we were manning our stand, where we signed up a record number of interested people, but sorry, no photos - we were too busy!

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Brand new TTB Leaflet on its way!

Not before time, either!  TTB has been in existence for 18 months without a proper leaflet.  Tiring after endless photocopying of our make-do leaflets every time we went to an event, as soon as our Awareness and Education Group was formed we organised the production of our logo (love it!) and then got down to some hard work designing a brand new information leaflet which we hope will encourage our community to join us on our journey towards a more energy-efficient Bridport.


The artwork having been tweaked to within an inch of its life, today we proudly delivered our printer-ready copy to Creeds.  We met Andrew and Marilyn Harrison who obviously like to support local initiatives such as TTB, and despite a rise in paper prices since their original quote, they were prepared to trim down their profits in order to keep the costs to what we had been offered in funding.  We are most grateful and just can't wait to take delivery.

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First Bridport Ride is great success

Around 130 cyclists took to the road on a lovely sunny Sunday morning (13th June) for the first Bridport Ride, set up to celebrate National Bike Week.  Organised by Jude Hopkins and the boys from Revolutions Cycle shop they set off from their shop in West Road and travelled through the town on their way to West Bay. 

Adults, youngsters and families took part in the event which was aimed at showing a cycling presence in Bridport.  It was of course supported by members of TTB too! 

It was so well supported, with a bit of luck Jude will be persuaded to organise another fun ride later in the year.

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Colfox School attains Rights Respecting accreditation by UNICEF

A “Rights Respecting Community” for Bridport

The United Nations is watching Bridport to see if it could be one of the country’s first “Rights Respecting Communities”.  What does it mean?  It means that Rights go hand in hand with Responsibilities. You have rights, but in turn you have to respect the rights of others.

On Friday 11 June the Sir John Colfox School was awarded the Level 1 of UNICEF (the United Nations Childrens Fund) Rights Respecting Schools Award.

This is a major step forward in making Bridport into a community where people all respect each other, young and old.

Town Councillors Martin and Maggie Ray were among those who were quizzed by the UNICEF inspectors as part of a whole-day assessment (including governors, teachers, children).  They wanted to know how Bridport was progressing in rolling out a rights respecting programme to the town and community, and we were proud to be able to point out the work of Transition Town Bridport as part of the town's aims to build up a community ethos, linking in with schools and other important projects such as the Community Orchard.




As you may know, two years ago, pupils approached Martin Ray, the then mayor, to ask him if he could help extend Rights Respecting to Bridport and the wider community.   Since then, Bridport Town Council held a meeting to publicise the meaning of Rights Respecting, and parents packed the Arts Centre in January to support an amazing performance by children from all our schools.

On July 3rd the Charter Fair will celebrate Rights Respecting as their theme, with more music from the children.
 
Remember, Unicef is watching our progress - with your help, we can put our great little Bridport on the World Map.

If you want to know more, contact Martin and Maggie Ray 01308 459095

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TTB has successful funding bid

TTB is delighted to announce that it has just been awarded £430 from the Bridport Area Community Fund to produce an information leaflet.  We are pleased and very grateful to receive this and look forward to seeing our new leaflet all over Bridport just as soon as we can get it to press.

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Telling tales of transition

On Tuesday 11th May two members of TTB were invited to talk to the Moving On mental health social group in Bridport.

 

In a group of around 20 people, we talked about the Transition movement, gave details and leaflets of TTB and associated groups' open events and different ways in which people can be involved. We discussed the importance of recognising, respecting and sharing a variety of skills. There was particular interest expressed in events such as the Garden Club at the Community Orchard and TTB's monthly Green Teas.

 

Using locally gathered objects (pebbles, hazel nuts, fir cones, wild flowers) the group then told personal stories in twos as a way of sharing ideas about our connectedness to each other and the natural world. It was an interesting and lively morning - very much in the spirit of transition.

       

Christine Bell and Margaret Toft

     

Jude Hopkins 9.5.10

Jude Hopkins & Marion Palmer
 

Local artist, Terry Whitworth, wins TTB logo competition

Designed by Bridport artist Terry Whitworth, TTB's logo was launched today (30th April) at Bridport Arts Centre where he is currently exhibiting some of his work.  Terry responded to our call for artists to come forward and his design has been chosen by the Awareness and Education group of TTB.

We were immediately taken with his style and are delighted with his creation which is already showing itself to be versatile and distinctive.

As a token of our appreciation Terry was presented with a hamper of local food supplied by local producers/businesses. 

Our thanks to Terry for sharing his talent and his time with us.  It will be used well.

Terry (right) with his hamper
Photo by Chris Holland

Contributions to hamper from: Bothen Hill Produce, Denhay Farms, Dorset Preserving Company, Fivepenny Farm, Fruits of the Earth, Jaxson's, Leakers, Modbury Farm, Moore's biscuits, Palmer's Brewery, Rawles butchers, Tamarisk Farm.

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