Ways to take part include:
performance (music, spoken word, walkabout)
making decorations
hosting a craft stall
running a skills sharing workshop
sharing your homegrown produce
being a candidate for Montpelier Mayor or Queen Bean in the mock elections
helping to run silly games and craft activities
help to organise a ‘heritage lunch’ for older residents of Montpelier

On the day, we need volunteers to help with stewarding, putting up decorations, assisting with cake/bean/tea stalls and clearing up afterwards.

If you’re able to join this happy team, please get in touch!  You can see the ‘get involved’ flyer here
Sally Jenkins
Event Coordinator
montpelierbeanfeast@yahoo.co.uk
07866 748193

About the event
This community street festival is a resurrection of an annual event from the eighteenth century, which historical accounts say originally featured mock elections of a Mayor and Sheriff, ‘delighted spectators’ and ‘various high jinks’. It is now a celebration of local heritage, local harvest and local genius and features music, mock elections, crafts workshops and procession, local produce exchange, ‘homemade’ stalls and lots of neighbours getting to know each other.
The event takes place in St Andrews Road and Montpelier Park. It is free to attend, although donations towards costs are much appreciated.  All organisers are unpaid volunteers from the local area.

Can you help out with this year's Bean Feast? We need lots of people to make it a success!

Discussion and homemade cake:

Interested in food?  Interested in the future of food? Interested in talking about the future of food? Rationing? Self-Sufficiency? Meals in a pill?

• Date: Tuesday 27th July 2010
• Where: Boiling Wells, St Werburghs, (past the City Farm, around the self-build and through the tunnel)
• Time: 7pm
• No need to book – just turn up!

Kilter Theatre are hosting a free tea party to discuss the future of food. We will be documenting your stories and using them in our forthcoming play ROOTS REPLANTED, performed at Boiling Wells, St Werburghs 2nd -5th September.

We would really love to get your input so that the play is specific to Bristol and St Werburghs and relevant to the community. So any local information, history, memories, anecdotes and thoughts about the future are all welcome.

This will be a fun and informal event and is as much about getting people together as contributing to the making of the play.

If you can’t make it to the tea party but would like to know more about ROOTS REPLANTED and other opportunities to get involved please call Eve : 0781 294 0063.

Thingloop, a Bristol start-up promoting sharing and collaborative consumption

How to set up a food-buying group, 7th July (registration form)

Herb walks, May-October

Invasive weed pulling, 17th July

Community-supported agriculture project at Frenchay

The next outdoor session will be Sat 29th May 10am to 3pm in Picton Square.  Come and tell us what you like and don’t like about urban greening so far, and what you want to see in the future!

The next planning meeting for those who want to help coordinate activities and find funding is on Weds 26th May at 8pm.  Please email shiona_macp@hotmail.com for location details.

The Mapping Day on Sunday went very well, with about 30 people in attendance and everyone enjoying the walk and cakes.  Many people felt uncomfortable identifying gardens as ‘untended’.

ACTION:  Pete to compile an overall map of Montpelier from the individual ones we walked with, to be published here, excluding the untended gardens as we felt this was more subjective and potentially insulting.

ACTION: Sally, Ingrid and Claudia to design a community gardening space in the grafitti wall / bench corner of Montpelier Park for the Lottery funding bid.  Andy Spargo (park landscape architect) is happy to draw this up formally for us, but needs to have it by end April.

Six potential ‘hotspots’ were identified:

1. Station (platform, embankment and approach)

2. Rainbow Bridge (Fairfield and Hurlingham sides)

3. Picton Square (between Bells and Gallifords)

4. Coburg Corner (meeting Ashley Hill)

5. Rosa Parks Lane (at Albany Green)

6. Magpie (Picton St / Ashley Road)

The issues for each hotspot were briefly discussed, and it was agreed to focus on those where there were clear ‘adopters’ taking responsibility for the area to ensure we don’t spread ourselves too thinly in the early days.  The first three hotspots were chosen by the group.  If someone wants to take responsibility for any of the other hotspots (or indeed, any other area – we were short on attendees from around Albany Green), we will be happy to support them too.

We then split off into hotspot groups according to our interests, and discussed how to get things moving.

Station: (Sally, Lucy, Steve) Holding two action afternoons to initiate planting w/c 26  April or w/c 3 May.  Lucy to contact Period Fireplaces regarding triangular strip.  Shiona to contact Miles Harris to establish land ownership and block grass cutting.  Sally to contact Eastside roots re Network Rail.

Square: (Shiona, Ingrid, Karen, Simon, Esther) Holding a May Day consultation and planting event, with a waterbutt installation workshop, planter building session and inviting design ideas for the space.  Esther identifying cost savings to businesses if recycle waste.  Meeting Fri 26 to speak with business owners re bin issues.

Rainbow: (Chris, David, Claudia, Danny, Mima)  to make contact with Mary Bright and discuss her plans and the best way to work together.  Sally/Claudia to approach Fairfield School to initiate work in playground.  Shiona to contact Miles Harris to establish land ownership and block grass cutting.

ACTION: Shiona to send round an email regarding a group name.

Steve’s leaf image was liked by everyone and picked for use on posters and signs.  ACTION Steve to forward blank leaf image to group for use in posters etc.

ACTION: Shiona, Danny and Karen to look for funding, with Quartet, Network Rail and greenspaces as a starting point.

As well as our most valuable resource – people power (!) – we are also in need of materials to transform these spaces. If you have anything to offer, or know of a great place to get things (either for free or at good value) then please let us know by posting a comment below or emailing shiona_macp@hotmail.com.  The most obvious items we will need are:

• Compost
• Well rotted manure
• Top Soil
• Wood and other materials to make raised beds
• Screws/nails etc
• Water butts (or equivalent)
• Seeds
• Plants
• Trees for replanting
• Organic plant food (eg comfrey tea, seaweed extracts)

Any ideas on sources of funding for these items would also be extremely welcome!

Many thanks, the Growing Team

The aim is to identify:

• existing green space (however small)
• potential hard space for planters or digging out
• potential green roof space
• untended gardens to approach to offer assistance and/or gardenshare

Action points from the meeting are here; our next meeting will be Thursday 25 March at 8pm in the Old Fairfield School to discuss the results of the Mapping Day.  We will aim to focus our energies on a few ‘quick win’ areas of Montpelier to demonstrate what’s possible over the next few months, with the goal of creating a Trail across the whole area over the next few years.

The meeting opened with Miguel Mendonca’s talk following intros and welcomes from two Dans. Miguel presented some key points from his work which has contributed to the incoming feed-in tariffs. Miguel has worked for many years on ways of developing the green economy and has presented his findings to many places around the world and can now add Montpelier to the list that includes Brussels and Capitol Hill in Washington DC!

Basically the feed in tariff will encourage the take up of Solar PV (photo-voltaic) panels which produce electricity that when not used in the home, feeds into the national grid for which the owner will be paid a premium rate. As such, with a healthy take up it provides an excellent way for individuals and community groups to influence government economic policy to be more sustainably oriented. A feed-in tariff for solar thermal (hot water) will come in next year.

Click here for a link to a spreadsheet provided by Montpelier’s solar company, 1World Solar run by Jon Walker which calculates the return you can make on solar PV. (If you can book up a system before April you are possibly still eligible to a £2000+ grant.)

Project group sand notices were next and following a short summary of Monday’s Tescos meeting, brief presentations were then made by individuals keen to get projects going on Food (Sally), Open Spaces (Shiona) and Energy (Dan). The meeting then broke up into smaller groups to start work on the projects.

Details of all these can be seen if you scroll down or click on each group below for a direct link.

Energy

Food

Open Spaces

The March 6^th painting of the Resource Centre room has been postponed. Thanks to all who have said they would help do this. We will keep you informed.

Please check out the following by clicking on the title:

Food Discussion Intro Presentation Slides

Open Meeting 10feb Food Discussion

As there (predictably) turned out to be quite an overlap with the concerns and suggestions from the Green Spaces group, we think it would be a good idea to join forces for a while, at least until more specific projects emerge.  So both groups aim to meet together in the week commencing 22nd Feb – I will update this post with the exact time and place when confirmed!  Meanwhile, please do get in touch with a comment below, or a call to 07866 748193, if you’d like to be involved and we don’t already have your contact details.

Thanks and looking forward to more developments!  Sally

The speaker Miguel Mendonca at our meeting next Wednesday has played an significant role in a new government scheme that cash rewards will be available for small scale low carbon electricity production via a feed-in tariff to be introduced on April 1st. This means if you installed a solar photo-voltaic system you can use the elctricity as it is produced and get paid for what is excess.

The meeting is consequently evolving into an exciting event as we anticipate a variety of local residents, businesses, faith and community buildings accross the neighbourhood attending and considering become part of this exciting development and taking up the grant offers currently available for installation or considering how we as a community can benefit.

The agenda and format for the open meeting is as follows:

• 7.30 Welcome chat / Park Group AGM in other room
• 7.45 Introduction to the evening
• 7.55 Miguel Mendonca
• 8.15 Project introductory pitches (energy, food, open spaces, steets) plus 1 minute notices on other matters
• 8.40 Tescos update
• 8.45 Project discussions work
• 9.45 Feedback end

It would be great if people could bring a cake or food to share and their own mug. We will be setting up from 5.00 and help arranging seating etc will be most appreciated.

We look forward to seeing you.

ENTRANCE IS OPPOSITE 26 FAIRFIELD ROAD