Words by Smiley Team
Now COP26 is over, where can we find hope for tackling climate change? While individual action can feel isolating, and global policy is out of our hands, community projects could yield more promising results. This article is part of Together Forever, a Smiley series of success stories about communities uniting to mitigate and adapt to climate change
Just south of Oxford, Abingdon-on-Thames is a historic market town at high risk of flooding. With sea level rises and more erratic weather due to global warming, climate change will increasingly affect its inhabitants, just as it will everywhere.
To prepare residents to face this challenge and strengthen the wider community, a collective of local community groups has joined forces and have been given an opportunity to deliver a ‘one planet Abingdon’ with support of the council. The disused museum cafe, which closed due to the pandemic, has been offered for this purpose.
Chair of the eco-initiative, One Planet Abingdon CEC, Michelle Charlesworth, helped create Abingdon’s Climate Emergency Centre. She explains: “Our vision is to foster a more resilient community where we can learn the trades of old: fixing, making, growing and caring for one another. That’s the way real communities behave. The pandemic has shown us that when the chips are down, we can come together in support of those most vulnerable.”
In the belly of Abingdon Museum, the cafe has been hosting events Monday to Saturday for people of all ages. From January they plan to make Sundays a day dedicated to the needs of young people.
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“We've been getting such an amazing response from young people that we decided in the new year to make Sunday a special day for young people where we can platform them,” Michelle explains.
“We’ll have volunteers at the counters offering them the teas and coffees and listening and learning from the young people. We imagine there will be an interest to hold film screenings, panel discussions, teenage clothing swaps, art workshops, board games, nibbles and conversation,” she says.
Already, three young people have shown interest to volunteer at the centre on Sundays for the environmental and community category of their Duke of Edinburgh’s Awards.
For the rest of the week, the centre’s event calendar is packed with make-and-mend workshops, tea afternoons, and swapping sessions for toys, clothes and more.
[Read other positive news stories about initiatives to support people and the planet]
“Instead of buying new, we’re encouraging people to swap items as part of our zero-waste initiative,” Michelle says. “For example, at a recent toy swap, we had 70 visitors who swapped 77 toys over a couple of hours, which equated to about 40 kilos saved from going to landfill. This is hugely encouraging and shows that the people of Abingdon are ready for change.”
With use of the museum shop for at least one year, they hope to build their events calendar around the One Planet Living Framework created by environmental charity Bioregional. The framework’s 10 principles set out how communities can reshape their neighbourhoods around human and natural wellbeing.
Find more information about their work at bioregional.com.
Together Forever is a Smiley series exploring the ways communities overcome divisions and unite in the face of climate change, humanity’s biggest challenge.
