Press Release

6th May 2012
For immediate release

Visioning Maidenhead in Art
Art workshop at the Farmer’s Market, Sunday 13th May 2012

A feast of art materials will be laid out on tables at the Farmer’s Market next Sunday when Transition Town Maidenhead ask people to think creatively about their vision for the local community. Various Transition Town members and volunteers and artist will be on hand for
information, encouragement, help and guidance. The idea of the art table at the Farmer’s Market is to engage with people and tell them about new possibilities in ways of living our lives. It is also about stimulating people’s imagination to draw or paint how they want Maidenhead to be in the future for themselves, their children, and visitors.

“We intend to explore how changes linked with Peak Oil* and climate change can be harnessed to create a better, healthier, more connected and prosperous community.”, said Steering Group Member, Sandra Orlando-Payne.

“With many empty shops, and more closing, there is an undercurrent of sadness and depression in the town centre. It is also a wonderful place of activity where people of all backgrounds and diverse cultures visit for shopping, eating and drinking or working. Our aim, with the Art Competition project is to empower the community by bringing people closer together through the medium of art and injecting some joy and creativity into our town centre.”

The market takes place in the Grove Road car park from 10am – 1pm next Sunday, 13th May. Free parking is available in the Town Hall car park opposite. Anyone wondering where to find the Farmers’ Market will have help from a Town Crier in the High Street who will be giving regular
announcements and directions.

Ends
Contacts:
Art project organiser:
Soheila Keyani: 0788 69 238 38 soheila (@) shirzan.com
Transition Town Maidenhead:
Sandra Orlano Payne: 07919 686527 babu_orlando (@) hotmail.com
Ben Hart: 07876280208 benhart33 (@) gmail.com
Website: www.transitionmaidenhead .org.uk

Read on for Project Updates..

* LEAF Project Completed
* Energy Group – next steps
* Arts Project Update
* 350 ‘Connect the Dots’ – Call out for Letters to Editors – 5th May

________________________________________________________________

Hello Folks!

I hope this newsletter finds you all well. It’s been a busy few months
and we’ve had some great results from all the hard work. Updates are
below…..
________________________________________________________________

LEAF Project Completed

With a huge amount of effort we completed the LEAF project on time and
on budget. All reports have been written up and sent across to the LEAF
team at the Energy Saving Trust for final analysis. Thanks to everyone
who put in a lot of hard work- and to all those who came to the event
on the 28th March. A complete write up and copies of all the work
conpleted can be found on the website:

http://transitionmaidenhead.org/?page_id=65[4]

We are looking forward to hearing about all the other LEAF funded
projects when the reports are released later in the year. We’ll keep
you updated when this happens.

Energy Group – Next Steps

Although relatively small, the LEAF project has given us a bit of a
boost to start looking at further ways we can engage with the local
community on energy saving and renewable energy. We have already met
with the RBWM Head of Sustainability and are currently exploring plans
to provide free energy audits to local buinesses and community groups,
as well as exploring funding opportunities for both the group and the
local community in the form of community share schemes.
Anyone interesting in joining the Energy Group and getting involved in
these plans – or anyone with a local business or community group they
feel may be interested please get in touch by email:
benhart33 (@) gmail.com (Or just reply to this email)

Arts Project Update

Sohelia is still beavering away at the Arts Project – and the plan is
to start holding arts workshops for kids over the next few weeks. We
hope to provide workshops to a number of schools in the area, as well
as at the Farmers Market on the 13th May and the Maidenhead Carnival on
the 2nd June. Again- if anyone would like to help out at any of these
events please contact soheila@shirzan.com

350 Connect The Dots

350.org is hosting a day of action on the 5th May called ‘[5]Connect
the Dots’. We’ve been contacted by Dave Hampton from Marlow who has set
up an event to co-incide with the 5th May. He’s asking everyone to
contact the editor of their local newpaper to tell them what they think
of the subject of climate change. More information can be found on his
event webpage here:

http://act.climatedots.org/event/impacts_en/2937

It’s a great idea- if anyone would like to spend some time writting in
to the Advertisor you can do so
here: http://www.maidenhead-advertiser.co.uk/Home/Your-Views/Submit-
a-Letter-05082011.htm 
(maybe also send it to the Bucks Free Press to support Dave).

________________________________________________________________

Thanks for reading. If anyone is interested in getting invoved or
supporting some of our exisitng projects then please do get in touch-
we need you!

All the best,

Ben
==============================================

Read on for loads of exciting stuff currently happening!

Headlines

• New Website
• New Newsletter!
• Last minute LEAF funding event – 28th March with FREE CAKE!

Hello Folks!

I hope this newsletter finds you all well. Lot’s of stuff happening right now (hence the less-sporadic-than-usual newsletters!) so I’ll pile right in as always:

New Website

Our website was hacked recently so has been down for a while. This gave us an opportunity to give it a bit of a spruce-up and it now looks all nice any shiny! It’s pretty sparse right now as we have lots of things to concentrate on, but I’m learning WordPress fast and hope to make it a much more interactive and experience of all things TTM. You can check it out here:

www.transitionmaidenhead.org.uk

• An enhanced calendar which you can link to existing google and other online calendars- never miss an event!
• A link to our new Facebook page - if you are signed up please click ‘like’ and invite all your friends to it. This can be used to put pictures of events up and generally discuss about all things TTM related.
• Ok that’s it for now but a good start I think!

Unfortunately due to the hacking we lost a lot of information from the old site. I’ve managed to find bits from old archives but there’s a lot that’s been lost. I’m hoping that with a little help from the old guard we can put together a history of past events and activities in TTM. It’d be great if people could put photos of old events and activities up on the Facebook, or email them to me and I’ll put them into a gallery. I’m also hoping to set up a blog so people can contribute to the site. Further information to follow.

New Newsletter

You may have noticed the newsletter is also lookng all flash and new. Thanks to this new Mailchimp program I can send out campaigns and also see if anyone reads my ramblings! It is also better from your point of view as you can unsubscribe at the bottom (althogh I hope you don’t!) and link to our Facebook pages straight from the email. I will also post a copy of each newsletter on the website so if anyone wants to comment they can do so. For example here.

Last minute LEAF event – 28th March

Finally- we are holding a LEAF project event on Wednesday 28th March instead of our usual Green Drinks. This will be held in URC Church, Maidenhead from 7pm  and will be an opportunity to explain how the project has gone and our plans for the next stages. There will be two further events in April at each site but we need to have one in March as part of the grant conditions- hence the last minute.

To this end we would REALLY appreciate it if people could make the 28th event. As an extra thank you we will provide FREE TEA AND CAKE from Maria’s amazing HAPPY CAKES, which I’m sure you’ll all agree is definitely worth it!

More information on the LEAF event can be found here.

That’s all for now! Plenty more coming though so we hope to see you all at an event soon- 2012 is the year we kick some life back into Maidenhead so do come and join us!!

All the best……

Ben
TTM

Unfortunately our old site was hacked. I’ve set up this shiny new one- complete with new calendar and Facebook links. It’ll get filled in over time after we’ve dealt with the LEAF project over the next few weeks.

Anyone who wants to help do get in touch!

Ben