John Newson from Balsall Heath is our Planet emailed these to the SusMo email address today – carvings on the side of St. Mary’s Church in Moseley. He said:

“The Green Man carvings are at the height of the lower roof, easily visible from the ground as you walk around the church. They will be Victorian like the rest of the church, but maybe based on medieval ones on the old church. They were maybe sending a message about the importance of the self renewing power of nature.”

Amazing to find new things on something we know so well. Does anyone have any more information on what the carvings might mean?

Update: fellow Labourite Tony Kennedy pointed me in the direction of this article, via the SusMo Facebook page. It has some good information on the links between the pagan symbolism of the Green Man and the church (in general).

Categories: Past Times
Tags: balsall heath is our planet, sustainable moseley

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Things I’m doing this week that *may* be blogged on later…

Monday, September 13th

Interviewing Amar Hussain, “Time Broker” of the Ward End & Pelham Timebank

I love the concept of timebanking (as I may have mentioned several thousand times), and I have been itching to find out how they have been getting on with establishing a timebank in the “priority neighbourhood” of Ward End & Pelham. I originally heard about it back in March, from neighbourhood manager Christy Acton, and my hope is that more will spring up across Birmingham in the next few years if Ward End & Pelham are successful. If I don’t epically mess up the recording, I’ll put it on the Resident University website as part of my briefing on timebanking.

Moseley Society Management Committee meeting

Normal agenda items will be on hold again this month, as the committee continues to lay out its plans for the future, including the website (which needs work). The Society wishes to reaffirm, amend, and in places, redefine what its role is in Moseley, and also wants to work on attracting new members.

Tuesday, September 14th

Birmingham Energy Savers: options and opportunities for the third sector – 13:30-16:30 @ Jericho Foundation, Balsall Heath

This is a networking event for people involved in “the energy efficiency/carbon reduction structure” of Birmingham. I’m hoping that this could provide some useful information for both Chamberlain Forum and Sustainable Moseley (SusMo). I’m pretty sure it’s the sort of thing where you can just turn up, if people are interested in attending.

Wednesday, September 15th

SusMo meeting – 19:00-21:00 @ Masjid-e-Hamza Mosque, Church Road, Moseley, B13 9AE

The scheduled monthly meeting of SusMo – as usual, we will be discussing progress on the Green Streets project, and any other pertinent developments in carbon emission reduction in the area. Notably, we have an update on the St. Mary’s Church photovoltaic array. Everyone is welcome, so please do come.

Thursday, September 16th

Moseley groups networking meeting – 19:00-21:00 @ Moseley CDT

Have you ever wondered how many community groups there are in Moseley? Have you heard of a Moseley group, but have no idea what it does? Then this is the meeting for you, as a good number of those groups (20ish, as far as I know) have agreed to set up a stall at this event, so that you can chat with them and ask any questions you might have.

Categories: Community Power
Tags: birmingham, christy acton, climate change, moseley, moseley cdt, moseley society, neighbourhood management, pelham, priority neighbourhoods, resident university, sustainable moseley, ward end

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I am delighted (and slightly tearful) to announce that the St. Mary’s appeal has been granted!

The project still needs to be approved by the Diocesan Advisory Committee, but this result dramatically increases the likelihood that it will be. As important is the fact that the merits of the project, and the wishes of the people of Moseley, have been taken seriously – I will go into this in more detail soon.

Planning Decision

Since the decision, there has also been some media and blog coverage. Positive noises from About My Area and Lighter Footprints (although that is hardly surprising, given that it is Esther Boyd’s blog), and balanced reports in the Birmingham Post and Birmingham Mail. Looking at The Stirrer, the three reactions posted range from indifferent to outraged. I dispute the “anything goes” remark – and I’d encourage people to read the report of the Planning Inspectorate (above), as well as the appeal document, the combination of which makes for a compelling case.

Categories: Community Power, Planning and Regeneration, Sustainable Lives
Tags: community groups, moseley, planning, sustainable moseley

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by Kathy Hopkin, Secretary of Sustainable Moseley (SusMo)

The Green Streets project being run by British Gas and local sustainability group SusMo is now well underway, and a number of properties in Moseley have already benefited from loft insulation and brand new boilers, with more measures yet to come. Progress is also being made with the four community buildings in the project – St Mary’s Church, Hamza Mosque, Moseley C of E School and the MaDAHAL Pavilion – and hopes are that solar PV panels will begin to appear on some or all of these buildings very soon.

But the project is not just about the buildings directly involved with the project. SusMo is working with a number of partners in order to help the wider community of Moseley address their energy use and hopefully make some savings. This means both energy savings and therefore a reduction in carbon emissions for the whole of Moseley, and financial savings for those who are making changes to their lifestyles.

Reducing energy use and thus cutting emissions is not all about the big things like solar panels and wind energy. Significant savings can be made for free by making a few simple behavioural and lifestyle changes. Do you have all the lights on in the house even though you’re only in one room? Do you use your tumble dryer by default, even when it’s blustery outside? Do you wander round the house in a t-shirt, then whack the heating on when you get a bit chilly?

Addressing our habitual behaviour and making a few smarter choices can really help with energy consumption in the home, but it can be difficult to keep up. Habitual behaviour is just that, and so it’s easy to be vigilant for a week or so, before all your good intentions slowly ebb away. This is why SusMo is promoting the use of the energy tracker iMeasure as part of the Green Streets project.

iMeasure is a smart little website that allows you to enter your gas and electricity readings each week, and then tells you how much carbon dioxide this equates to. Not only that, but it also gives you the average of other users, so if you’re the competitive type, you can see how well you’ve done compared to others. This weekly monitoring is great at keeping your household energy use at the forefront of your mind, thus preventing you from slipping back into any wasteful habits that you may have had. And over time, this could mean significant savings on your home energy bills!

iMeasure was created by researchers at the Environmental Change Institute based at Oxford University, so the site is a wealth of information on loads of stuff, such as transport, climate change campaigns, in-depth carbon footprint calculators, and climate science research. And it’s all for free!

SusMo has a group on iMeasure, so why not sign up and join your local community in reducing energy use, saving money and tackling climate change?

And if you want to find out more about SusMo and get involved, open committee meetings are held every month in Moseley – the next meeting will be on Wednesday 15th September at 7.00pm, at Hamza Mosque, Church Road.

Categories: Sustainable Lives
Tags: birmingham, community groups, iMeasure, microgeneration, moseley, renewables, sustainable moseley

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