Author: Julia Patrick

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Do you need support energy-proofing your home? Join our monthly Housewarming meetings

Following the launch of our Housewarming Guides, we will be running a series of monthly ‘Housewarmings’ – structured meetings with local residents. Everyone who lives in North Oxford is warmly invited – if you have not yet joined the existing networking group, you are welcome to do so now. The monthly meetings will start on Tuesday 11 October and continue until July 2023 and will be held at the Woodstock Road Baptist Church, 198 Woodstock Road, OX2 7NQ (corner of Beech Croft Road). All the meetings are on the second Tuesday of the month, every month except for December and April. They start at 7.30 pm and finish at 9.00 pm. 

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Energy Saving Homes is underway! 18 – 29 June

We hope to see many of you during Energy Saving Homes – whether you want to visit an Energy Saving home in Oxford and hear from the householder, or find out about a range of options for energy efficiency and renewable generation at our Energy Saving Fair on 26 June. See all the details below or visit the Energy Saving Homes website.

Find out which homes are open on which days on the website energysavinghomes.org or visit  Daily Info. And click here to download a list of homes you can visit in north Oxford.

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Energy Saving Homes Event 18-29 June – we need your help!

Charlie Luxton talks about sustainable homes

Our Communities for Zero Carbon home energy project, ‘Energy Saving Homes’, is now funded and underway – and we need your help!

 Have you made your home more energy efficient in any way and would you like to inspire others to do the same?  

We’re looking for people like you, who have installed anything from letterbox brushes, insulation and glazing, to renewables, to take part.  

Choose what times and which days to open – and you can even do it virtually if you prefer (eg through zoom). Demonstrating what you’ve done and explaining all the pros and cons to your neighbours can have a really big impact. 


Find out more at Communities for Zero Carbon Oxford and contact Lois Muddiman at  lois.muddiman@energysavinghomes.co.uk if you’re interested in taking part.

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“I care about our future” – lessons from our Housewarming launch and next steps

What is Housewarming?

LCON’s Housewarming Programme aims to enable homeowners to feel confident and well informed about their options and choices for eco-renovation.

Our aim is to provide base knowledge and a supportive framework to help local residents navigate through their options and become more educated ‘buyers’, preparing for the likely replacement of most UK gas central heating systems with heat pumps. Find out more about the programme here.

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Freelance Community Organiser needed! New deadline 25 March

The project: Eco-Renovation Oxford

Oxford Communities for Zero Carbon are planning Eco-Renovation Oxford, a project to encourage residents to improve the insulation of their homes, through both large and small measures. We will hold a Green Open Homes Week at the end of June and an Eco-Renovation Fair at the Town Hall on 26 June. There’ll be a series of talks, films and advice booklets for householders, tenants and landlords.

Register your interest by 25 March

Subject to funding, we expect to appoint a part-time paid organiser (about two days a week) from April to July 2022 to support these two linked events. We are particularly interested in expressions of interest from younger people, people of colour, and people from other groups that are less represented in climate and environmental work. What’s important to us is that you are talented and organised, have some experience of community work, and would like to work on a project to bring the benefits of warm homes to a wider public. If you’d be interested in being considered, send a paragraph about you and your day rates to Rebecca Nestor, chair@lcon.org.uk. If you’d like to know more first, ask for an informal chat with Rebecca.

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“Forget fast fashion – buy second hand”

Students from the Cherwell, Oxford High School and St Clare’s arrive at the Natural History Museum for their photo shoot

On the same day as the COP26 rally, north Oxford school students sent their own message: climate action can be fun!

Armed with 20 bags of second hand clothes from Oxfam, the 18 students from Cherwell, Oxford High School and St Clare’s designed and upcycled new outfits before heading to Oxford’s Natural History Museum for their fashion photo shoot. They have now produced some amazing posters to spread awareness of sustainable fashion among their peers and beyond – here are some of them:

Thank you to LCON member and sustainability educator Kim Polgreen, Jeni Williams, the teachers and staff at the schools, staff at Oxfam and the Natural History Museum, for making this happen – and most of all, thank you to the students for their passion, positivity and enthusiasm!

Here is what the Oxford Mail had to say about the project.

If you want to find out more about the impact of fast fashion and what we can do about it, have a look at our collection of information and resources here.

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Coming up: Sustainable Fashion schools photo shoot among the dinosaurs

This autumn we are delighted to be working with Kim Polgreen, LCON member and sustainable fashion enthusiast, and teachers and students from three north Oxford schools, on a project to highlight the thrills available from creating your own fashion by shopping second hand: a second hand fashion photo shoot to raise awareness of sustainable fashion.
 
Kim is an Oxford-based freelance sustainability educator, running events for young people to enthuse them about a sustainable future. She is Youth Educator in Residence at Wytham Woods, Oxford University’s research woodland, and runs an annual summer school for teenagers at the University’s Environmental Change Institute.

The schools involved are The Cherwell School, Oxford High School and St Clare’s College and we are really grateful to the teachers who are so generously giving their time and enthusiasm to make this project happen. We are also so grateful to Janet at the Oxfam shop in Summertown who is letting us have access to piles of donated clothes, and to staff at Oxfam head office who are supporting us with resources and encouragement. And we are thrilled that the Oxford University’s Museum of Natural History has agreed to let us do our fashion shoot amongst their dinosaurs – highlighting extinction!

The shoot takes place on 6 November, the Global Day of Action for Climate Justice, also coinciding with COP26. Once the photos are taken the students will reconvene to create posters on sustainable fashion using their photos, and feed back what they have learned to their schools. LCON will help publicise the posters and messages more widely.

We hope the project will be exciting and fun, and engage a wide range of people in a growing movement to bend the trend from fast to sustainable fashion.

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The results are in! Find out how residents responded to our bus survey

The survey

During August and early September, LCON undertook a survey of local residents to assess the adequacy of local bus services in our area.  The aim was to provide information that we could share with Oxfordshire County Council, who are making an application (a Bus Service Improvement Plan) at the end of October for government funding for additional bus services. We also wanted to find out more generally whether or not current bus services are meeting the needs of residents, and how they affect the use of cars.

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