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MCA’s Repair Cafe went on tour again in late August, with a very busy day at Warslow Village Hall. Many faces new to the Repair Cafe and lots of happy customers. Here’s volunteer Bill with a freshly-mended toaster.And it was full steam ahead at September’s packed Foxlowe Repair Cafe as customers brought clothes, bikes and household items (including this kettle) for repair. Next month’s October 19th Repair Cafe at Haregate Community Centre co-incides with International Repair Day and there will be be tea and cakes on offer!
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MCA held its 2024 AGM at the end of August and after all the formal bits there was lots to discuss. We have such a range of existing projects on the go but also talked about our ideas for the future. These include the possibility of building on the success of the Repair Cafe to establish a Library of Things (though we are keenly aware of the substantial organisational capacity this would require). A visit to Transition Buxton’s Library of Things to learn from their experience is planned for late October.
We are also exploring the idea of holding the first ever Youth Eco Forum (in 2025) in the Moorlands, possibly in conjunction with Staffordshire Moorlands District Council. Again this would build on the success of our Wild Week events, but requires a lot of work. Moira and Sally have already done a remarkable job in putting together a robust structure and draft plan and benefit greatly from sharing the experience of friendly groups across the county border. As always, we have talked to local people (including surveys) to get their views on the ideas, as well as collect ideas of their own!
On the way in and out of the Quaker Meeting House, we were able to admire progress on the ecobrick planter being built in their garden - since completed!
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Yet another fantastic day at the Leek Show, this time our third visit with an MCA stall. It was a great opportunity to promote Nature in Your Neighbourhood, the Moorlands Connect campaign and of course invite visitors to play the Land Use Game, which triggers conversations about the best ways (or not?) to use land. The idea was based on the Royal Society's Land Use Challenge, an online interactive game that provides scientific feedback on your choices. Better still, you can assess them on different targets, such as food production, carbon capture, water quality and biodiversity. Their extra dimension is the concept of multifunctional land uses, such as agroforestry, as well as single ones, such as grazing or forestry.
It's always valuable to talk to farmers, so some of our group made a beeline for the Young Farmers stall and we also distributed many of the Farm of the Future: Journey to Net Zero guides that had been provided for us by the Royal Agricultural Society of England. In addition, we took up the invitation from the organisers to deliver two short talks in the theatre marquee - one by Mike Jones on the Repair Cafés and one by Alison McCrea on Nature in your Neighbourhood. We can't claim to have attracted huge audiences, after all it's the first year they've done it, but we did benefit from coming after the flower arranging talk and having the stage graced with a wonderful floral display. Our grateful thanks to all the volunteers who helped on the day.
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We're happy to report that the website has been successfully upgraded to Joomla 5, with significant support from local tech wizard Sam Benson. (We apologise for the temporary glitch while he was away on his honeymoon.) At present Nigel and Alison are familiarising themselves with the new controls, encouraged of course by Baldrik, who claims to have a good eye for website design.
We've also been liaising with Mark Johnson, our Comms coordinator, on the criteria for a minor restructure. We can make these available for discussion at our AGM on Saturday, 31 August. And of course all members who would like to take part in adding content or helping to manage the site would be most welcome. If you fancy having a go, why not contact us via
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How and where should renewable energy best be generated in the Staffordshire Moorlands? This is a question that has exercised some of the district’s residents in the last few years but is one that will come into even sharper focus with the advent of a new government determined to meet its legal requirements under the 2008 Climate Act and to decarbonise electricity generation by 2030.
The government has already lifted the de facto ban on wind turbines and has proposed changes to the National Planning Policy Framework that would give more weight to the benefits of renewable energy applications when they come before a Planning Committee. Each council will also be required for the first time to identify sites they deem suitable for renewable energy.
At Moorlands Climate Action, we clearly welcome this decisive shift away from the uncertainty of the last few years, believing that everyone deserves access to clean, affordable and home-grown energy. We also believe that a council that (under a different administration) freely committed to Net Zero by 2030 and set targets for renewable energy, is honour bound to try and achieve them.
Read more: Spotlight Summer 2024 - Renewable Energy on our Turf?
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MCA’s fourth Hug Green Arts Festival was the biggest and – we think – the best we have yet held. Well over 500 people came though the Foxlowe Arts Centre’s doors in Leek to enjoy a full day of music, poetry, arts and crafts. The sun shone and visitors of all ages flocked from across the district and beyond. The Foxlowe ran out of food for the first time in anyone’s memory.
This year, the central theme was the importance of trees. Participants ran tree-themed activities throughout the day, including the opportunity to construct a tree mandala and drop-in workshops making eco-prints with leaves. The latter were so popular that people did not want to leave.
There was an astonishing variety of things to do with wood on offer. Storylogs saw visitors making small ash logs to create pyrographed artworks; Cheshire Bodgers showed how to – bodge! Anthony Hammond demonstrated willow weaving; Heather Smith whittled; while our own Peter Oakley put on display the gentle beauty of the pole lathe. For those with energy left there was a guided tree ID walk, as well as the launch of the Leek Tree Trail (thanks to Chris Thompson).
- Spotlight Spring 2024 - Hope Springs Eternal…
- Spotlight Winter 2024 - Conversation with Karen
- Our Beautiful Wild: Young Voices For Nature
- Spotlight Autumn 2023 - Making Moorlands Houses Warmer
- The Stoke-on-Trent Sustainability Summit
- Staffordshire Climate Expo and Sustainability Conference
- Well, We Only Went and Won It!
- Spotlight Summer 2023 - Fiddling the Figures while the Earth’s in Flames?
- Mark Cocker Talk – One Midsummer’s Day
- Take a Punt on Us!
- A Bloom of Bees at HuG
- Carbon Literacy Training Opportunity