Green Durham is the new home of Transition Durham, Durham Local Food and the North East Permaculture Network. We used to have three separate websites but now they have merged to provide a single site to help you find green groups, businesses and projects in County Durham and throughout the North East.
As of March 2021 Green Durham became a registered Community Interest Company with three directors Neil Clowes, Martin Hood and Wilf Richards.
We used to be the Transition Durham Website Team, part of Transition Durham which was set up way back in 2008, one of hundreds of groups across the world attempting to bring local green minded people together to enable green projects to emerge in the area. We had some successes and plenty of struggles.
Transition Durham is now in the process of closing down whilst Green Durham rises from its ashes. It is worthwhile having a moment though where we can celebrate all of the achievements of Transition Durham. Here is a summary of the headlines:
- organised multiple focused events over the years on local food, woodland, renewables and community resilience
- showed climate change related films in various public locations including the library
- built up several mailing lists focused on local food, permaculture, community woodland and fruit
- started a fruit map which led to the formation of the Durham Fruit Group and Fruitful Durham, a social enterprise that used unwanted apples and turned them into juice
- established a partnership with Anthropologists Tom Henfrey and Amy Mycock which resulted in the creation of the Durham Local Food business database and website
- mapped out all the privately owned allotments across three large areas of County Durham in partnership with Durham County Council
- Held regular socials and meetings for local green activists
A key part in the success of any organisation is to follow the motivation and recognise that change is inevitable. Transition groups grew out of the growing awareness of climate change and the potential for oil to peak in production and what this would mean for our communities. It was all about enabling us to be more resilient in the face of dramatic changes to our society and supporting a shift towards a low carbon culture. Leaving oil, coal and gas underground is great in terms of climate change but how can we change almost everything that we do in our lives to no longer be dependent on fossil fuels and still have some quality of life. That was the big question Transition Town groups explored.
We can see this is happening now, it finally feels that the oil tanker of fossil fuel growth is finally slowing down but it hasn’t stopped and it certainly hasn’t turned around. The change is happening but not fast enough. Meanwhile climate change is starting to get faster and having some serious effects on all life on this planet. Corporations and Governments at all levels have not only been dragging their feet but are still frequently heading in the opposite destructive direction. Consequently we have seen a new wave of protest groups emerge over the last few years and rightly so. The next generation are worried and they should be. We still need to have some hope no matter how grim it gets. We hope that our website highlights the positive changes in our region, brings them to your attention and enables you to support these sustainable shifts even more.
Change towards a greener society is inevitable and Green Durham is supporting that change.
In the end days of Transition Durham we could see the need to keep what was working and let go of the rest. This is the art of resilience, to adapt to the impermanence of our world. Transition Durham had created three websites and several mailing lists, all were working in various ways. We agreed towards the end of 2019 to consolidate those websites and create a new single platform. So when lockdown began in March 2020 we had already bought the Green Durham domain name and we were just about to spend a lot of time at home. In another blog we will tell you how we did it and how even our website is green and getting greener.
Green Durham is not just a website though. We want to help support the development of the green sector across the region through writing and events. We have plans. Meanwhile we also have a supporters group, a mailing list, opportunities to contribute to our work and get more involved. Please have a wander around our website and support your local green activities where you can. If there is something you can’t find then let us know, if there is something you know that exists in the area that should be listed on our site then let us know, If you want to get involved in writing about local green ventures then let us know.
Thanks for your support
Wilf, Neil and Martin
Green Durham 2021
