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Iffley News
Iffley Mead School
The School is seeking Specialist School StatusIffley Burial Ground
This is the centenary of the Iffley Burial Ground which is run by neither the Council nor the Church but by a Board of Trustees. To find out more about the Burial Ground and why they are launching an appeal click here
To read the latest (August 2009)report click hereRemy and Lucas Place Development
Read what the developers showed at their exhibitionIffley Music Society
Find out more about the society, how to join and details of concerts hereA Lower Carbon Iffley
On 5 May an enthusiastic group met to ponder the next steps towards a Lower-Carbon Iffley. We began with a film that traced the development of Cuba’s low-carbon economy. When the Soviet Union collapsed at the end of the 1980s, Cuba’s oil imports fell by two-thirds, with initial disastrous results—transport stopped, food disappeared from shops, people went hungry. With a massive effort over the next few years Cuban society adjusted to the change. They localized much of their economy, and changed their agriculture from one dependent on fertilizers and pesticides to an organic permaculture. Urban farms sprang up. Land was more intensively and productively managed. Nowadays Cubans feed themselves, and they eat more fresh fruit and vegetables in greater variety than they did before—all this on one-seventh the amount of energy consumption per head compared with America. (Interestingly, we use more energy on food production than on transport or heating.)There are of course obvious differences between Cuba and our society (not least in climate), but the film concentrated our minds on how change can begin to happen. We identified four key ways forward for a local community like Iffley.
1 Fresh vegetables and fruit. Already the village shop sells produce from local allotments and gardens. Occasionally after church people bring surplus vegetables for others to take or buy. Can we move this forward to a further stage, encouraging more people to do this? Perhaps we could begin to see a way of supplying home-grown food to each other on a regular and planned basis.
2 Energy. On 10-13 September a number of houses in Oxford are open to demonstrate ways of adapting to lower-carbon living. We will give this some publicity. But there are also a number of houses in Iffley with small but interesting responses to this issue—solar panels, photo-voltaic cells, etc. We will see if a local list can be made up, so that people can do a simple walk round the village and learn how neighbours are responding.
3. The Car Club. OCHA are considering making a parking space available in the new Lucas/Remy building to Commonwheels—a car club that operates very successfully in East Oxford. Interest was expressed in this at the last Low-Carbon Iffley meeting. We will see what further information can be given to achieve wider publicity for this. Meanwhile please let us know if you want to know more about changing from car ownership to car-clubbing.
4 The Weir. See the report in the last magazine. Much will depend on the priorities of the Environment Agency, but we will continue to keep an eye on the possibility of using this as an energy source.
Small steps, but they could, in time, lead to significant changes. If you are interested contact us by phone, or leave your contact details and suggestions in the Low Carbon Iffley Message Envelope in the shop and we will include you on the circulation list.
David Barton and Corinne Grimley Evans
latest newsletter here