News and Events
Public meeting and AGM, 19 July 2022
We look forward to welcoming you to LCON’s public meeting on the evening of 19 July (19.30 – 21.00). As well as holding our formal Annual General Meeting, we will be launching the full suite of Housewarming guides and setting out our plans for Housewarming from September onwards. The meeting is also a chance to express your views and concerns, to tell us how you think we can be as effective as possible, and to explore how you can get involved. Whatever your skills and interests, please come along and take part.
We are holding the meeting via Zoom: click here to register for the link.
Programme for the evening
19.30 Start and registration
19.40 Annual General Meeting – the formal AGM business. Everyone is welcome; members can vote. Please see information and links to documents below.
20.10 Housewarming: Short presentation and discussion
20.30 How to get involved in LCON’s work: small-group activity with trustees
21.00 Close
Annual General Meeting
This is the formal notice of LCON’s Annual General Meeting. Everyone is very welcome to attend the whole evening, but voting at the AGM is limited to LCON members. You can check this by following the ‘Update my preferences’ link at the bottom of any of our mailings. If you don’t get mailings from us, sign up here!
The AGM agenda and papers can be found below. The agenda includes links to the documents, including the annual report and accounts (combined in one document), and a proxy form for anyone who cannot attend. We can send a paper copy of the annual report and accounts to anyone who would like one (email us to request this).
LCON trustees report and annual accounts 2021
Proxy form for members who cannot attend
If any members cannot attend the AGM, they can appoint a proxy to vote on their behalf. This could be any member, including the chair. It helps us a lot if you do this, so if you can’t attend, please download and fill in the proxy form, and return it to Rebecca Nestor by 18 July.
We still have vacancies for new trustees, so if you are interested, please get in touch to find out more. The AGM is not the only opportunity to join the board, as we can co-opt trustees at any time during the year. We are particularly hoping to broaden the diversity of the board and we especially encourage people of colour, younger people and men to consider the role. You don’t need specialist knowledge, though this is always welcome: we want people who live in our community and care about climate change. To find out what is involved and have an informal chat, please contact our chair Rebecca Nestor, or feel free to raise this in the small-group activity on the evening of the AGM.
Housewarming – how to improve your home
Our Housewarming Programme aims to help homeowners prepare their homes to meet net zero targets, phase out fossil fuels and cut down energy use. It brings homeowners together, in a supportive environment, to help navigate the overwhelming amount of information; build greater understanding of the options available; and look to identify the right steps for each home.
Continue readingEnergy Saving Homes Event 18-29 June – we need your help!
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.
“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.
Continue readingFreelance 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.
Join our HouseWarming!
Time to get heat-pump ready
As we confront news of soaring energy prices and the phasing out of gas boilers, many of us are turning our attention to how to make our homes warmer and more efficient.
In response we are launching our HouseWarming programme. This aims to prepare our homes to meet net zero targets, phase out fossil fuels and cut down energy use.
Continue reading“Forget fast fashion – buy second hand”
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.
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.
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.
Continue reading