• Local veggie garden and allotment
• Grower supplying restaurant
• Community veggie project
• Orchard

Permaculture, forest gardens and foraging might just have to wait for our second season! The project may also include a harvest event in Haltwhistle and we're looking into the possibility of growing edible plants in a couple of public spaces in the town. We are contacting gardeners to see if visits can be arranged and hope to firm up the schedule at our next V.E.G. project meeting, 7.30pm on Weds 17th Feb, at Jill Eastlake's house, Beeches, Park Road, Haltwhistle. All welcome.

• Our responsibility for people from developing countries who hadn't contributed to climate change but were most vulnerable to its consequences
• The extent to which a climate change induced refugee crisis might dwarf anything caused by current national conflicts
• The (in)ability of our capitalist economic system, predicated on growth, to reduce energy consumption

These were treated as stand-alone comments and not debated by the speaker or the audience.

Only twice did professor Kilsby venture outside his remit and offer a non-technical opinion. In the first instance he was asked what he thought about more radical technological fixes, such as releasing aerosols into the atmosphere to mitigate the effects of increased CO2 concentrations. The questioner stressed that individual actions, like switching to low energy light bulbs just didn't deal with the scale of the problem, and programs to replace fossil fuels derived electricity with renewable sources couldn't meet the urgency of the situation. Aerosol release, whilst not a permanent solution, mimics the natural effect of dust particles emitted by volcanic eruptions and would buy us time. Thankfully the professor had grave reservations about the morality of such an intervention taken unilaterally as, whilst some regions might score in terms of weather, others would definitely be adversely impacted. International consensus should be a prerequisite for such an action and this, he felt, was very unlikely to be achieved. Furthermore the detail and extent of repercussions of such interventions are not perfectly understood. Secondly, in response to a question about the effectiveness of the recent Paris summit, Kilsby agreed that, although there was international agreement to significantly reduce CO2 emissions, there was no timetable for committed change and, going by past performance, it seems unlikely that the necessary action will follow. We should all keep up the pressure on those with the power to make a difference to get on with the job. The need for significant action is urgent.
Sue Seymour

• Research - visit/talk with other projects and people doing similar things
• Have a clear vision and set of objectives, but be prepared to adjust and develop these as the project evolves
• Good communication
• The importance of partnerships - with businesses, local councils (and crucially their employees) schools, other voluntary and community groups, organisations such as the AONB, National Park, Northumberland Bat Group, etc.
• Community engagement is the starting point - involve as many members of the community as possible, early on
• Create a social space - Greening Wingrove managed to get some teenagers who had previously vandalised the site involved by building a clay pizza oven in the first stage of their project
• Organise celebratory events - apple days, picnics, annual hay collecting day, wassailing event etc.
• Expect creating the space to take time, don't try to do it all at once, and split development into manageable stages

In the afternoon there was a choice of workshops. I joined a discussion about maintenance of parks and green spaces in this era of reduced or withdrawn council funding. This was presented as an opportunity for more natural ways of managing the land, and also for communities choosing how they manage their own - Greening Wingrove and Central Gosforth Park are both examples of this. New financial models are needed. A Community Trust managed park at Ulveston offers one: here a housing development on part of the site funds the rest. There's potential for involvement by existing local businesses, or for Community Interest Companies to get income from for example selling fruit vegetables, timber or willow.

The most enjoyably subversive part of the day was a presentation by Dr Duika Burges-Watson, of Durham University, about Big Food and alternative food systems. She began with a lovely image of the beginning of the Dig for Victory campaign in London (in front of Marble Arch?) reminding us that currently only 22% of the food we consume in Britain is grown here, sped on to guerilla gardeners - dismissed, not quite exciting enough - and on to San Francisco's Guerilla Grafters - yes, cutting edge and very exciting indeed! They graft fruit bearing branches onto non-fruit bearing ornamental trees, creating food in public rights of way 'undoing civilisation one branch at a time'. http://www.guerrillagrafters.org

Edible trees are not included in contemporary urban and roadside plantings, contrary to the standard practice for centuries, in case they encourage rats!

So, some wonderful places have already been made, there's great potential for making more, and joining up the gaps between.

http://www.foodisfreeproject.org
http://www.fastcoexist.com/1682269/seattles-urban-food-forest-is-open-for-foraging
http://www.communitieslivingsustainably.org.uk/
http://greeningwingrove.org.uk/
http://www.jesmondcommunityorchard.kk5.org/
https://mobile.twitter.com/wylamorchard
http://www.bykerbridge.org.uk/farm/
http://www.ca-north.org.uk/