Transition Durham

Hi, my name is Amy Mycock.  I've lived in Durham since 2006, having moved here as an Anthropology undergraduate.  From 2009-2011 I worked with activists within the local food scene in and around Durham city, supporting them as part of my Masters by Research in Anthropology at Durham University.  Since graduating, in January 2012, I have remained active and committed to local food in County Durham. If anyone is considering undertaking similar collaboratory or participatory research on local food in the area, please do not hesistate to contact me. 

My thesis offers an anthropological examination of local food businesses, community initiatives and allotments in County Durham, with a focus on Durham city. It gives a holistic discussion of the county’s 'local food scene', assessing the capacities of community initiatives and local food businesses to build socio-ecological resilience into the food system. A resilient food system is able to respond to, and recover from, and is therefore less vulnerable to external impacts - in this case, climate change, declining non-renewable resource base and economic insecurity.

Transition Durham has joined a scheme coordinated by Local United, a network of low carbon social enterprises, that gives us a fantastic opportunity to team up with several ethical energy suppliers: Good Energy, Green Energy UK, Co-operative Energy and Ecotricity. Each of these is committed to cleaning up the supply of electricity and gas, by sourcing energy from renewable sources and observing high social and environmental standards in their business practice.

If you currently get your electricity or gas from one of the major energy companies, switching to one of these ethical suppliers is a simple step that can dramatically improve the environmental and social impacts of your energy use. In addition, it can help give Transition Durham a valuable income stream For every customer who we persuade to switch to one of these suppliers, we get paid a small commission, which we can use towards our core operating costs and supporting our projects.

Many people automatically assume that ethical energy will be more expensive, but all of the suppliers involved offer competitive long term rates with clear pricing structures. They don’t have lots of confusing tariffs with short term deals, so once you have switched you won’t need to worry about coming to the end of a cheap deal and ending up on a really expensive tariff. You can relax and know that you are already on the best deal available.

Switching is simple, all you need to do is follow the simple steps on the Local United website. Every year you stay signed up with the supplier they will donate money to us, and you don’t pay any extra for that, it isn’t added on to your bill. It is just a payment that the ethical companies make to us because we have asked you to switch.

For more information, or to change your supplier, please visit the Local United Website - http://www.localunited.net/community/switching

Our partners at Hartt Creative have kindly designed a poster to promote this scheme, which you can download here: feel free to print it out and display it if you would like to spread the word.

Fruit Group have been busy picking surplus fruit which would otherwise have rotten on the ground.  We juiced almost 50 litres for Apple Day in Durham Market Place and the Durham City Food Festival.

The money we make will go back towards buying equipment and trees to plant around the city.