Big shout to Alys, Ollie and Joe for organising this event and to the fantastic gathering of local fixers and volunteers who made it so successful on the day ! You're welcome to join our new and growing Crystal Palace Fixers facebook group !  

We will be running lots more events to support your borrowing, including more Restart Parties, mending meet-ups and much more!   

And of course behind the scenes we’ve all been busying away with designs, spreadsheets, emails, sourcing things, software, hardware, communication systems and much more to get everything in place.

Fancy help making it happen?  
​We have some very exciting and interesting volunteering opportunities coming up, - as Hosts, Thing Fixers, Ambassadors and Skill Sharers. Come along to our Volunteer Night on Tuesday 27th March to Upper Norwood Library Hub  6.30 - 8.30pm to find out more and meet the team ! 
 
By the way, we still have a small amount of pledged money that didn’t come in - you can also help us with that by checking that your pledge went through and checking your inbox for an email from “Go Cardless”. Drop us an email if you want to check anything about this.

You can also help by sharing this link on Facebook, Twitter and through your contacts to let everyone know we’re coming soon ! 

So as I think you can tell we are very excited that you will be able to come in and borrow items from late April ! Signing up for our newsletter will also mean that you can get advance notification of how to borrow!  

Very best wishes from everyone at Crystal Palace Library of Things and hope to see you very soon ! 

Contact us at:  crystalpalace@libraryofthings.co.uk

Big Thank You To Dylan Lowe For Photos
​Additional photos:  Joe Duggan
​Illustration: Tim Sharville

​Brought to you by 

By Joe Duggan

"So Many Projects !"   "Great Community Spirit!"  "So Many Different Groups I Didn't Know About" "Please Do This Again, A Great Idea" "Lots of Amazing People Doing Amazing Things" 

As you can see from the slideshow and feedback above we had a great night at our very first "Park Night" 
- a special event to celebrate and promote some of the great work going on with community and voluntary groups in Crystal Palace Park and beyond. It was a pleasure to co-host the event with Katie Rose and I'm really looking forward to Park Night 2 later in the Spring and our planned tour of projects in the park. 

In case you missed it here's a list  of all the great groups that came along.
​
Click on the green titles to go straight to their websites !  

Friends of Crystal Palace Dinosaurs
Learn everything about there is to know about the iconic CP dinosaurs and their latest Paleo Planting project

Capel Manor College
Find out about a wide range of courses and volunteer opportunities involving animal husbandry, horticulture and much more 

Palace Trees
A Transition Town project that allows you to buy trees as a gift that will be planted in the park. There are plans for lots of planting in 2018 !

Friends of Crystal Palace Park
Hosting information sessions in the Info Centre every Sunday and acting as contact point for the other projects in the park, including the "Secret Garden".

Crystal Palace Park "Shadow Board"
The body that is working to take over the management of Crystal Palace Park from Bromley Council

​Rising Stars Support
Developing young people's confidence through martial arts, kick-boxing and anger management 

The Patchwork Farm
The network of community gardens in Crystal Palace and the surplus produce stall at Crystal Palace Food Market. Part of Crystal Palace Transition Town. 

Crystal Palace Library of Things
A space opening in April 2018 where you can borrow things you need at an affordable rate. A partnership between the Transition Town, Upper Norwood Library Hub and The Library of Things . 
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We were also pleased to welcome our friends from The Ache Garden in CP Park, Crystal Palace Sports Partnership, The Secret Garden Beekeepers, cpneighbours , The CPCA, Invisible Palace, Friends of West Norwood Station, Upper Norwood Library Hub, The Great North Wood Project, and the Transition Town's own Crystal Palace Food Market and CPTT Choir ! 

Amazingly, we only featured some of the projects based or working in Crystal Palace Park. From new projects like Friends of Crystal Palace Skatepark, to established projects like Friends of Crystal Palace Subway, and The Crystal Palace Festival, there are even more ways to engage with and volunteer in this amazing park.

Watch out for Park Night 2 and our Park Tour coming later in the year to find out more. Sign up for our newsletter or join us on facebook or twitter to keep updated ! 

Very special thanks to all the groups and members of the public who came along to make it a special night.

Remember we also have our regular Green Drinks - next one  is on Wed 21st March, 8.30pm in The Paxton Centre. 

Best wishes
Joe Duggan
Co-Chair Crystal Palace Transition Town

Special thanks to:

Bromley Council's Crystal Palace Park Community Fund
Elaine Harrison for her guidance and Lucy Hopkins for her support
​Katie Rose for co-facilitating the event
Beth Mander and Stephen Sinn from the Paxton Centre for such a lovely setting
Photos : Katie Rose and Joe Duggan
And to David Vallade for his wonderful poster below .... see you next time ! 

By Joe Duggan
​Here at Christmas Palace Transition Town, we like to keep it local. We are proud of the exciting range of independent shops and businesses we have, and as we know things are getting more challenging, any initiative that encourages people to shop locally is good by us.

In the past, as well as supporting local businesses whenever we can, we've published a "local and fair" shopping directory and took part in "Small Business Saturday". Other transition towns have also tried different approaches, including the well-known Totnes Pound, Bristol Pound and our local Brixton Pound plus Transition Dorking got Mary Portas to come along and launch their "Golden Ticket" idea.

So that's why when we found out about Holly Smith's initiative we wanted to give it a big plug. Holly tells us: 

"So basically my boyfriend and I set ourselves the challenge of buying all our presents locally this year, and then I thought it would be great to encourage others to do the same! So I set up a Facebook event for it. So far I've just been chatting to local businesses and making sure they know about it but in the next few weeks I'm going to start posting pics from local shops of all the stuff they have for sale, promoting products that people might not know about. "  
​
The Crystal Palace Local Christmas Shopping Challenge:

Why not join Holly's Crystal Palace Local Shopping Challenge Facebook event and share your gift ideas with others in the run-up to Christmas? Share the event with friends, and stay tuned to the event page to see more of what's on offer from shops in Crystal Palace!

We were really exited when Joe was asked to write up his story of our annual celebration. Rob Hopkins asked Joe to sum up what is different about the way we do things.

To read more about how we do things, do-ocracy, the dangers of spin and our novel way of keeping the meeting running on time, check out Joe's blog here: How We Celebrate Crystal Palace Transition Town.

It's impossible to sum up everything that's happened in one blog. So I thought I'd do a quick bit of time-travelling instead.

April 2011
Some people gather in a church hall. Someone called Andy is talking. I sit near the edge. Near the door. I recognise a few people from the screening a few months before. Apparently a Transition Town is a community response to the challenge of climate change, something called "peak oil" and economic challenges. Very admirable. I have always wanted to do something about the environment. Always talking about it, never doing anything. Then Andy says that a number of the people in the core group had moved on or got too busy so we are now the steering group.

"Sorry? We're in charge?"

"I don't even know these people. Can we not just watch another video, this sounds too hard."