In partnership with the good people at Womad Taranaki and Taranaki Festival of the Arts, we are extra pleased to be able not only to be supporting the fabulous Scottish band Lau, but also to be providing a workshop opportunity with the Lau boys.

Regarded as the most inventive folk act of a generation, four time BBC UK Folk best band winners Lau, bring their wildly inventive approach to music, lacing accordian with effects and both searing and delicate fiddle playing, mixed with sweet guitar providing the perfect melodic foil to lead singer Kris Drever’s honeyed baritone voice.

At Ratanui Villas (5 minutes from the Womad site), at 12 noon Friday please join us for the Lau workshop, which will include:
a discussion of their approach to arranging traditional Gaelic music, and a deconstruction of some of their tunes explaining their development. The three members of Lau come from very different areas of the British Isles, and they will explain how the music they grew up with feeds into the sound of Lau.

Please contact gareth.farry@britishcouncil.org.nz to register.

Over the past 9 months, in association with Auckland City Council, we have been running our urban edible gardens project.

The idea was to create awareness around the ability to grow food amongst city concrete, and general recognition of sustainability and permaculture practices in Auckland.
We have visited community gardens, talked to like minded city dwellers and even pushed ahead to develop two new garden prototypes.

Later in March and Early April we have two final UK delegates to come and share their knowledge about urban farming and gradening practices, so we hope you can come along to welcome them here.

First, we welcome Jane Riddiford, an ex-Kiwi, now living in London. Jane’s Global Generation project takes children on a journey of discovery through the Universe Story as an over arching narrative for sustainability and community building. She calls it the Big Bang Project.

Jane will be talking at the weekly shared lunch session at the Kitchen in Ponsonby on Tuesday 19th March 2013 from 12-2pm.

Second we are delighted to welcome for the first time in New Zealand, Richard Reynolds, the founder of Guerrilla Gardening UK.  Richard began guerrilla gardening almost ten years ago in his Elephant and Castle neighbourhood in London. He has since created gardens throughout his area in London as well as in Beirut, Prague, Moscow and parts of Africa, as well as writing a book on the movement.  The approach to guerrilla gardening is to garden without permission. Richard insists that this is pragmatically appropriate albeit gently provocative.

The movement was started in New York in the 70s by a group called Green Guerillas, although Richard has traced it back in the UK to 1649 and an activist named Gerard Winstanley. Richard will discuss the history of the movement, his examples of guerrilla gardens around the World, his learnings being involved in the movement and other projects such as Pimp Your Pavement, applications to a Pacific context, and future thoughts on where the movement is heading.

Please come and join us for this presentation at BizDojo Co-Space on K Rd Auckland Wednesday April 3rd from 6-8pm.

Images Of Richard from Guerilla Gardening UK, and Jane Riddifords’ skip garden.

British Council in The East Asia region has also been involved in a number of urban gardening and green initiatives. In Australia, they have the loong running Big Green Idea programme, sustainability ideas in China, vertical gardens in Vietnam, as well as the British Council global climate change programme.

Examples of UK activity can be accessed via the below links:

capitalgrowth.org

www.21stcenturychallenges.org/focus/peter-bishop

reset-develoment.org/

dustygedge.com/greenroofs.html

www.hungrycitybook.co.uk/blog/?page_id=5

farmingthecity.net

www.waywardplants.org

www.mobilegardeners.org/

foodfromthesky.org.uk/

Below are some photos from the vege bounty at the Kitchen’s edible garden over summer (before the drought!):

Auckland City: Let’s get planting! Be in to win a UK Trip!

In association with Auckland Council and the UK’s Phakama project, we are continuing to build our Edible Gardens project for PIYN 2012.

The idea is to create showcase examples of urban edible gardens amongst city concrete, using principles based on permaculture – ideas about observation & interaction in the community, the efficient use & capture of energy, low-waste closed loop food systems, and knowledge & systems awareness.

In August, Kevin Mark Trail was in New Zealand to mentor some young singers on a songwriting workshop at Kog Studios Auckland.

In spring 2012 in Auckland City we are launching an Edible Garden project in association with Auckland Council. The idea is to create vegetable gardens in urban environments within the city, to both sustainably make use of organic waste and to showcase the possibilities for implementing urban closed loop permaculture systems in environments where there may not be access to grass or gardens.

Kog Studio, Kevin Mark Trail and The British Council present :
“UK to NZ; Songwriters Intensive”.
Dates: Saturday 21 and Sunday 22 July