Come along for an early morning woodland walk to greet the rising sun and celebrate International Dawn Chorus Day 2011.

An expert from the British Trust for Ornithology will be on hand to help identify the birds and their calls.
The entrance to Gethin Woodland is on the A470, at the Pentrebach roundabout. Turn right at the Forestry Commission sign and follow the track up to the car park.

This is a Free Event. No Need to book.

For further information: carys.solman@merthyr.gov.uk or 01685 726251

What is it? Show and Tells are an opportunity for you to learn about Transition-related topics. The first Show and Tell of 2011 will be about learning from other local Transition groups. We will be welcoming a member of a Transition group from outside of Cardiff to chat to us about their experiences. It’s a friendly, informal event where you can enjoy a drink and a chat with fellow Transitioners. Everyone is welcome – you don’t have to have had anything to do with Transition before!

There will be the opportunity to make a small donation (£2) on the door to help us cover the cost of hiring the room.

For those of you on facebook – we now have a page and you can access info about this event here: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/event.php?eid=185329491489419
It’s also on the CTP website too: http://cardifftransition.org.uk/whatson.php

New stuff: There is also a new group called CF Hub – is a real-life social network of groups and individuals involved in the environmental movement in Cardiff. It has a regular green drinks style meet up in the Milgi Yurt every month. Chat with them on Facebook at http://on.fb.me/cfhub or follow them on Twitter at http://twitter.com/cfhub

Feel free to circulate to your networks & hope to see you on the 17th!

Thanks
Cerys, Pat, Steve, Chris, Jess & Eva

– 7 til 9pm, Monday 9th March

- Dempseys Pub, opposite the castle

- £2 entry (to cover room hire)

Alan Gillard and Daniel Stollar from Gillard Associates, a Cardiff based firm of sustainable architects, will be presenting their ideas on community based housing and low carbon design and refurbishment.

Followed by an opportunity for questions and facilitated discussion.

Thursday 26th February, Glamorgan Business Centre, University of Glamorgan

The conference will address key issues in contemporary regeneration policy and practice. The primary function of the conference is to explore the links between physical, social, cultural and economic regeneration and to identify the barriers to achieving more integrated approaches to the regeneration of our most disadvantaged communities. A central concern will be to identify methods for securing long-term economic, social and environmental sustainability.

Key note speakers (including Peter Head, ARUP) will set the scene. However, the emphasis will be on a series of forums which will promote debate on the main conference themes. The themes are:

• Skills and Regeneration
• Transport and Regeneration
• Education and Regeneration
• Health and Regeneration
• Communities and Regeneration
• Poverty and Regeneration
• Housing and Regeneration

The University’s new Centre for Regeneration and Sustainable Communities will be launched during the event.

Journalists and photographers are welcome at the event.

For further details contact Alison Tobin, Research Communications Officer on 01443 483562 or atobin@glam.ac.uk

Feeding cities has a greater impact on us and our planet than anything else we do, yet few of us are aware of the process. Industrialisation has made it seem easy, but with peak oil looming and climate change upon us, that illusion is wearing off. We urgently need a new urban model – one that treats city and country as a single, organic whole.

Carolyn is an architect and prize-winning author. She has run successful design units at Cambridge University, London Metropolitan University and the London School of Economics, where she was inaugural studio director of the Cities Programme. She was Rome Scholar in 1995-6, researching the historical urban order of the Ghetto. She has presented on BBC TV’s One Foot in the Past, has written for Blueprint Magazine and is a regular columnist for Building Design. Her book Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives (2008), won the Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Award for Non-fiction and was recently featured on a special edition of Radio 4’s The Food Programme.

This FREE talk will take place on Tuesday 17 February 2009 at 7.00pm in the Cardiff Centre for Lifelong Learning, Senghennydd Road, Cardiff. Room E0.15. All welcome – no booking required.

All EVENING MEETING DATES at Llandaff Village Hall

• Tuesday 10th February at 7.30 pm Association AGM and also as an item of interest. Harold Williams will show his invention for treating Varroa Destructor with Oxalic acid fumes.
• Tuesday 10th March at 7.30 pm To be arranged
• Tuesday 14th April at 7.30 pm To be arranged

Out apiary meetings once a month during the summer. Venues needed for these please for May, June, July and August.

ROB HOPKINS will bring the ultimate transition talk to Cardiff. Covering the foundations of why climate change and peak oil need urgent action and an outline why and how transition can provide some inspiration in working towards solutions, he’ll also present a few examples of what Transition projects around the UK are up to.

Tickets £4, £3 concessions (details about where to buy tickets will be circulated nearer the time)

Organised by Cardiff Transition Project.

Visit Rob Hopkins’ home page Transition Culture here

The Birdwatch is the world’s biggest bird survey and bird lovers of all ages are being invited to join in the celebrations at Barry Sidings Countryside Park, Trehafod, near Pontypridd, on Saturday, January 24, 2009.

Meet at the Countryside Park’s visitor centre at 10am, where you can make a bird feeder for your feathered friends. The event is free. For more information, contact Stacey Humber, Rhondda Cynon Taf Countryside Project officer, on 01443 490250

In the late 1970s, the RSPB asked its junior membership to count the birds in their garden – over the same weekend. This ‘one-off’ idea was so successful, it has grown into the world’s biggest survey of its kind – the Big Garden Birdwatch.

For the past 30 years, the RSPB has asked people in the UK to look out for the birds in their garden for an hour and record the maximum number of each species seen at one time. This year, the RSPB is asking people to take part in the Big Garden Birdwatch over the weekend of January 24 and 25. For more information, go to www.rspb.org.uk

On MONDAY 12TH JANUARY 2009, between 7 – 9pm,

@ DEMPSEYS PUB, on CASTLE STREET (CORNER WOMANBY STREET) CARDIFF.

Entry: £2 on the door (to cover cost of hiring room)

All welcome.

Speaker is… Molly Scott-Cato – Reader in Green Economics and Economics Speaker for the Green Party who will share her thinking about what transition means for the way we organise our economic life, and specifically in relation to trade and money. Followed by an opportunity for questions and a facilitated exercise/discussion

For further information, please contact info@cardifftransitionproject.org.uk

The popular shopping destination could be the first plastic bag free town in Wales if leading environmentalists in the county borough have their way.

Rhondda Cynon Taf Council is supporting Pontypridd Women’s Institute and Friends of the Earth in their campaign to make Pontypridd plastic-bag free with a special awareness day taking place this Friday.

Shopkeepers and market traders throughout the town are being encouraged to stop giving out plastic bags to shoppers in an effort to reduce the quantity sent to landfill. Pontypridd is the first town in Wales to date to launch such an exciting scheme.

Around 13 billion plastic bags are given free to UK shoppers every year. The bags can take between 400-1,000 years to break down, and like all forms of plastic they do not biodegrade and can contaminate soil, waterways and oceans, entering the food chain when ingested by animals.

Last year the Devonshire town of Modbury became synonymous with environmentalists as the first community in Europe to become plastic shopping bag-free.

Members of Pontypridd Women’s Institute, Friends of the Earth and Rhondda Cynon Taf Council’s Streetcare Team, are determined to make the first plastic bag free day a total success.

Plastic Bag Free Pontypridd will take place in the town centre on Friday December 12th.