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This year’s green arts festival was another joyful event based on last year’s great success. It included outdoor stalls and children’s activities, crafts, music, drumming, an outdoor hive and willow sculptor, and many indoor stalls and presentations from green organisations and artists.
Bridging the gap on the car park was the fabulous Bogtastic van and the weather was largely fine, despite a short cloudburst in the middle of the day – thank God for gazebos!
It was never going to attract the vast numbers of last year, given the fabulous weather then, our recent emergence from strict Covid rules, and a dearth of competing events and activities. However, we admit we should probably have focussed more on better publicity and communications, which are now at the top of our agenda for next year.
Nevertheless, everyone who came found it an enjoyable, interesting and successful event:
“Music tent was great. My highlight was when the first downpour arrived and the drummers kept us and our fellow 'shelterers' going solidly through the drips.”
“Wish I'd had more time at each stall and in each tent to see more detail. Lots of lovely skills on show.”
Perhaps the most useful feedback was from the young people who participated at the Hands up for the Earth stall, where visitors, regardless of age, were asked to draw round their hands and either draw or write a message within it of what mattered to them about the Earth and what they would like to say to others, especially people in power. Our youngest participant, Lily, aged 2, wanted us to "save Animals" For more details of these, see our website article Hands up for the Earth.
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Three years on from SMDC’s declaration of a climate emergency and we still don’t have a plan that stands a chance of getting to the District’s 2030 Net Zero target.
But we continue to harry, to suggest, and to work in every way we can to achieve that goal.
Last month ten MCA members met in person with a team from Staffordshire Moorlands District Council to discuss how we could better work with each other to pursue our goals. Cllr Joe Porter, the Cabinet Member for Climate Change and Biodiversity, was there, of course, but he was flanked by three other Cabinet Members: James Aberley, Ross Ward and Paul Roberts, the SMDC leader. They were backed by officers from the council: David Smith and Gillian Wright, the new climate change officer. It was at least partly pressure from MCA that was responsible for the appointment of someone like Gillian, in the face of opposition from SMDC.
A wide range of topics was discussed at the meeting, as well as specific ways in which cooperation could be increased. As always, clarity, transparency and accountability in the climate (and biodiversity) process were the foremost of our requests. We did not emerge from the meeting with anything approaching a fully formed new climate plan, of course, and the major action needed in crucial areas such as domestic energy and transport remains a distant prospect.
Still, we expect that there will be a slightly faster pace of progress in a few defined areas such as EV charging points and the use of solar energy in public buildings. What does seem certain now is a better response from SMDC to our enquiries and suggestions. The officers now respond to emails and phone calls and a couple of Cabinet Members now engage in open dialogue with MCA through Facebook. MCA is already re-engaged with officers in initiatives such as the Staffordshire Moorlands Green Network and in general information sharing.
The meeting yielded a little more detail on the forthcoming SMDC Plan for Nature, essentially the council’s preparation for when it plays its role towards the local Nature Recovery Network (NRN). The NRN will be a County responsibility under the new Environment Act, which will only really come into life with the publication of guidelines for biodiversity net gain (for new developments) at the end of 2023. Staffordshire Wildlife Trust has been engaged by the Council to prepare the Plan, but it was clear from the meeting (and an earlier meeting that MCA had with SWT) that there is some disagreement over the likely timetable.
MCA also expressed its worries that preparation of the plan was delaying action in other areas such as a new Tree Strategy for SMDC, now some months overdue.
We also expressed our concerns about delivery under the new plan, given the constraint on resources at both SMDC and SWT – and the patchy evidence for delivery under SMDC’s Green Infrastructure Plan. The Board (made up of SMDC and various other groups including the NFU and SWT) has not met for some time and elected members have not had the chance to scrutinise the Plan’s delivery since the start of 2021.
MCA members have already seen evidence of lack of follow-through – for example, no maintenance of the Brough Park Community Orchard (an MCA member had to remove tree guards which were now strangling the saplings). It is these kinds of on-the-ground concerns that we will have to press SMDC on in the coming months – as well as our wider plans for more information-sharing (and perhaps community maps of projects) if strategies such as Green Infrastructure and the Nature Recovery Networks are to work as they should.
At least, we are now talking.
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This Saturday, 25th June 2022 at the Foxlowe Arts Centre between 10am - 4pm there will be a range of activities, stalls and workshops during the HUG Moorlands Green Arts Festival! The overarching theme is ‘green arts’, developing rich cultural connections with nature and the environment.
See the schedule here: HUG Moorlands Green Arts Festival schedule
See the full programme with descriptions: HUG Moorlands Green Arts Festival programme with descriptions
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The Transition Movement is one with very similar aims to those of MCA, so this looks like an interesting and exciting summit.
"Join us to unleash the power of what we can do and be together. If the last two years have left you feeling exhausted, powerless and overwhelmed by the challenges of our time, we have exactly what you need.
We can’t do much in isolation, but together, we can. Together, we can rise to these challenges we face. Together we can find and activate our hope and power. Together we can, and will, build a better future."
For details of the Summit see: transitiontogether.org.uk/events/summit2022
About Transition Together
Transition Together supports the Transition movement across Britain to develop and grow. We do this through helping groups to connect and learn from one another, amplifying inspiring stories, giving out seed funding grants and running workshops and events. We will also support the emergence of a democratically representative structure that can coordinate the movement across England and Wales.
If you are based in Scotland, please connect with our Scottish partners Scottish Communities Climate Action Network who deliver training, support and advice for the Transition movement in Scotland.
We are part of the CTRLShift Coalition and work with other community organisations across Britain to build community resilience and move towards a just transition.
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We didn’t plan it this way and it’s a tragedy that it has taken the horrors in Ukraine to push Energy onto the front pages and people’s TV screens. But Moorlands Climate Action’s very first Energy Fair at the Foxlowe in Leek in April took place against a background of this heightened urgency. The desperate need to move away from gas as our primary source of energy supply is now a matter of security and affordability as well as the overarching imperative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
At the Energy Fair we aimed to bring this discussion into the local arena (for a snapshot of what went on during the day, please read First Ever Energy Fair in the Moorlands). Local authorities know their area best. Despite the British habit of moaning about the council when they get bored of complaining about the weather, local authorities are, in fact, remarkably well-trusted – certainly much more so than energy companies and national government. For contrast, just look what happened to the last Green Homes programme when it was entrusted to an offshored private sector provider.
Yet too many of them stand paralysed at the moment, lacking the framework and the resources to do what is needed. Staffordshire Moorlands is a member of UK 100, “a network of highly ambitious local government leaders, which seeks to devise and implement plans for the transition to clean energy that are ambitious, cost effective and take the public and business with them”
UK 100 did not hold its punches when chief executive Polly Billington described the government’s recent much-delayed Energy strategy as: “At best, a missed opportunity to harness the power of engaged local leaders to achieve cleaner, cheaper and more secure energy. Local authorities are a vital piece of the puzzle. Despite being vital partners in delivering UK energy security and net zero, the strategy virtually ignored them.” Billlington points out that local authorities are mentioned just twice in the whole document.
Nowhere is this need more apparent than in the question of retrofitting the UK’s housing stock. Again, UK 100’s CEO puts it better than we could. “We desperately need more,” says Billington. “With only 2.8% of homes due to be retrofitted in the next three years, it begs the question: why are we waiting until 2050 to make the other 97.2% energy efficient?”
Local authorities are undoubtedly lacking central direction, powers and resources in this area, but some are doing what they can with the limited powers they have. Just over the border in Derbyshire, for example, we see close cooperation with outside bodies such Marches Energy Agency and the Energy Savings Trust, moves towards fostering local energy projects, and we see the first steps being taken to setting up one-stop shops for retrofit.
Given the alliance between SMDC and High Peak councils we are confident that officers are at least aware of these initiatives. We hope that with a new spirit of openness and endeavour at the leadership levels of the council we may see movement this side of the county line.
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The way that many residents in the Moorlands heat their homes and get their water hot is set to change significantly over the next decade - if national government plans are to be believed. New gas boiler sales will be banned from 2025, other energy sources such as heat pumps will be encouraged.That is just part of a dramatic shift in the way that we make and use energy over the next few decades. The National Grid already relies on renewables for over 50% of its output on some days and that proportion is only set to rise.
As part of this shift the government and power companies are expecting community-led organisations and individuals to start generating and storing their own power – whether from hydroelectric schemes, solar panels, wind turbines or even their electric vehicles sitting idle. But this change will be immensely complex, involving a whole range of different players. While the direction of travel is clear, the pace of the change and the precise route that journey will take remains painfully unclear.
On Sunday April 3rd Moorlands Climate Action will stage its first Energy Fair at the Foxlowe Arts Centre in Leek. The event, which is free to all, will bring together a number of people and organisations already involved in the first stages of the Great Energy Transition. “When it comes to information on the future of energy generation and use in the Moorlands, we are far closer to Ground Zero than Net Zero,” said Moorlands Climate Action’s Mark Johnson. “There are just far more questions than answers at the moment. We cannot provide all the answers – no-one can – but we can provide some and get the conversation going on the more difficult issues.”
He argued that some of the issues are already affecting people in the Moorlands – planning applications are now coming in for new solar farms and battery storage facilities, for example, yet residents, councillors and officers have almost no knowledge of how, why, and where these might be needed. “In the future, residents may have to upgrade electrical systems in their homes and streets will have to be dug up. This will save people money in the longer term, yet it will involve uncertainty and disruption.”
A range of experts from Staffordshire, Cheshire, Derbyshire, Yorkshire and beyond will be presenting and present at the Energy Fair. The day will be broken up into three main sessions: Community Energy Production, Personal Energy and Use and Home Insulation and Retrofit. “The question of energy efficiency is a crucial one,” said MCA’s Energy group coordinator, Nigel Williams. “With the coming brutal spike in people’s energy bills, it is going to be essential to get information out to people on simple, practical ways in which they can save energy – and money.”
- New Year 2022 - New Opportunities and New Challenges
- Moorlands Climate Action AGM
- September-October Spotlight 2021
- Totally Globally - Global Day of Action - 6th November 2021
- CAMINO to COP – A 500 Mile Walk for Climate Justice
- Moorlands Global Day of Action
- July-August Spotlight 2021
- Events up to and Including the Great Big Green Weekend
- Pilgrimage Passes through Leek
- RED ALERT at the Great Big Green Week with Moorlands Climate Action
- HuG Festival Review
- SWOT - Moorlands Climate Action