Recent Sustainable City Grant recipients
Cambridge Carbon Footprint
This community-based charity aims to educate local people about their personal contribution to climate change, through their everyday carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from such activities as using electricity, heating a home, driving a car and travelling by plane.
Volunteers attend community events, run their own events and projects and give talks on climate change to encourage individuals to make a commitment to reduce their CO2 emissions every year.
Cambridge Carbon Footprint is run by local people who are committed to helping their community make a difference and have really taken to heart the message of think global, act local. Their Open Eco Houses project has over the last two summers been a very popular showcase for demonstrating energy efficiency and renewable energy improvements in a range of ordinary homes, from Victorian terrace to modern new-build.
Cambridge City Greenways
This project began in 1998 and is principally funded by Cambridge City Council. Its aims are to:
- enhance wildlife habitats within Cambridge through practical management work
- raise the profile of the wildlife in the city and its value to the local community by organising talks, walks, pond dipping and other events
- encourage local residents to get involved, through volunteering in the conservation group to manage wildlife sites and participating in wildlife surveys (most recently a bat survey in 2010).
Greenways are corridors of wildlife habitat leading into the city that are designated on the local plan. Work focuses on four identified greenways, as well as county and city wildlife sites in Cambridge. The City Greenways Project officer also works closely with local landowners, advising them on how best to manage their sites for wildlife, and assists our community reserves officer with the management of the city's local nature reserves.
Transition Cambridge
Transition Cambridge is a group of volunteers dedicated to creating a vibrant, prosperous and sustainable future for Cambridge, in the face of the twin challenges of peak oil and climate change.
Their aim is to build local resilience through practical community projects. They also run regular events and offer opportunities to learn new skills such as permaculture, chutney making, vegetable-growing and knitting.
Recent projects include community supported agriculture (Onion CropShare) and Growing Spaces, a plan to create 30 new public and community spaces which produce food by 2013.
For more information and to subscribe to their weekly bulletin email list, write to transitioncambridge@googlemail.com.
Oblique Arts
This artist-led, non-profit group works with communities on multi media art projects, one of which was Plastic Fantastic.
City residents took part in workshops
to create a modular building using only reclaimed and reusable materials that most homes simply throw away – plastic bottles
and wood. The finished structure, which could be used as a greenhouse, was displayed at community events including Strawberry
Fair and the Big Weekend.
Camboaters
World
Rivers Day Festival was organised by Camboaters and held on 25th September 2011 on the River Cam and Jesus Green. World Rivers
Day is an annual global celebration of the world’s waterways endorsed by the United Nations, held on the last Sunday of September.
The Festival’s 5,000 visitors enjoyed the chance to meet boat owners, have a go at negotiating the lock, learn about the
history of the river, try out rowing and other activities celebrating the river and the communities associated with it – both
human and wildlife.
CCORRN
Cambridge Community RePaint Partnership was launched on 11th November 2011 by the Mayor of Cambridge Cllr Ian Nimmo-Smith, Anne Ridgeon, Chair of Ridgeons Ltd and Don – the Dulux dog.
This project is just one of several managed by CCORRN (Cambridgeshire Community
Reuse and Recycling Network). Leftover paint donated at household waste recycling centres is collected, checked it is still
usable then made up into full pots of paint to be sold for £2 a litre to householders and community groups. All sorts of
paints and woodstains are available, from emulsion and gloss to masonry paint and varnishes, but there are no guarantees on
colours or amounts (apart from white and magnolia!) – it depends on what comes in.
RePaint has two outlets where you
can buy paint – Cambridge Re-Use (off Cherry Hinton
Road), and Cambridge Woodworks in Haslingfield.
For more details visit www.ccorrn.org.uk
