Place-based climate change workshops

Home is where the heart is. It's a true for climate change and sustainability as it is for warm-hearted truisms on hand-made samplers or wall hangings from forgotten generations. I'm working with the Welsh Assembly's Climate Change team to develop and run four community-based climate workshops in the next few months that use place as the focal point for change. Events are running at:

Newport - November 12

Llangollen - November 18

Aberystwyth - November 26

Bangor - December 7,8 or 10, to be confirmed.

Email me using the form on this site or contact Usha.Ladwa-Thomas@wales.gsi.gov.uk

The main focus will be using 'home and heart' as the glue to hold together coherent and ambitious plans for change that bring together different strands of interest and professional practice. The events are a great opportunity to network, build plans and learn from others.

Authority for change

Spent an interesting day in Cardiff - my second this week in the capital of one of the world's fastest moving countries on climate change. Day one was great, catching up with Steve Garrett from Cardiff's Riverside Market, Helen Northmore from Energy Saving Trust Wales and the folks at Cynnal Cymru before a reception to say farewell to the delightful Adrian Piper on his retirement as the Bank of England's Agent for Wales.

Day two, today, was even better - six hours of action planning with around 50 leaders from Local Authorities in Wales; speaking with Arup's Peter Head, top politico Jane Davidson and Tim Peppin from the Welsh Local Govt Association before moving into an afternoon that saw excellent distillation of ideas into action, facilitated by colleague Steve Bather. Now is the time to turn 'smart' goals into 'Do' verbs and make change happen - and if we can make this happen on the scale talked about this afternoon, a seismic shift would be possible. Steve, the WAG team and I will make the declarations public so that we can all play a role in giving our politicians the space to lead.

Key targets:

1. Replace oil our economy by 2050
2. Reduce CO2 emissions by 40% by 2020
3. Get into 'carbon descent' within the next 1000 days.

Tick tock

Yesterday saw the first of three Welsh Assembly Government Community Climate Change events with a good starter in Llangollen's International Pavilion. Chaired by Steve Harris from Science Shops, with contributions from me on Million Minds, Doversity and biomimicry, Ken Peattie on his research into social change and digital communications and Rachel Nunn from Carbon Neutral Stirlingshire Project on the excellent progress that she and colleague made from a front-room project to a fully funded 20 year journey to 89% CO2 rediction.

The key to progress for us was the launch of the Do Connect - the project to map out the complex, connected actions that need to happen in the next three years to lay down the routemap for carbon reduction and sustainability. Emma Metcalf and Emma-Louise Hardman ran the workshop session which resulted in 100 action suggestions which will be built on at the next two events in 10 days' time.

Tick tock. 500 days to make the plan. 6 events in the next three weeks to get it populated. Join us.