Thank you to everyone who helped make this year’s Great Big Green Week our best yet! We loved meeting new people, trying new skill shares and checking in with the ever-growing energy in our community as we explore new sustainable ways of living.
Great Big Green What?
In case you missed it, The Great Big Green Week started in 2021 and has grown to be the UK’s biggest celebration of community action to tackle climate change and protect nature, with more than 600,000 people involved last year.
In Oxfordshire, the Community Action Groups, supported by the County Council’s Climate Action Oxfordshire initiative, have done a great job of bringing us together, offering small grants to help groups like us get out there and try new stuff. This year, their grant funded our pilots of more skill sharing, with Lu’s tool sharpening workshop, Piotr’s bike repairs and Tony & Peter’s electrical repair skills demo.
We are also grateful to WISH, the network hosted by Cherwell Collective and funded by the National Lottery Community fund, who enabled us to put together stands at THRIVE Oxfordshire and Oxford City Farm, meeting our community and spreading the word about SHARE and our partners!
How Big, how Green?
It was great to get out and about, meeting new people and partners, and of course talking about our library of things, repair cafés and tech rescue and community sharing projects like Getting Oxfordshire Online.
THRIVE Oxford’s Community Climate Hub kicked the week off with some beautiful designs (and a few political statements!) with our badge making kit and lots of great conversations at a lively event which attracted more than 300 people.
Maryline and Anna finished up the week at Oxford City Farm for their WISH celebration event, again attended by around 300. Maryline has developed the perfect technique for our crêpe maker which was very well-received and Anna helped lots of people bring their badge creations to life whilst the chickens and goats looked on!
Sharing skills and learning
We’re really grateful to all the volunteers who helped us try out new skill sharing ideas as our focus for this week.
- Lu from Oxford Furniture Makers put on a workshop explaining the perfect sharpening technique for woodwork tools, giving five guests the chance to ask questions and have a go.
- Piotr from EoF Hackspace Co-operative with Makespace Oxford helped people learn how to fix their bikes, with four bikes fixed up and guests as well as bike owners learning and asking questions.
- Tony and Peter from our Repair Café team tried out our first electrical repair basics demo as part of Sunday’s repair café, with four guests bringing things in to learn on.
We had great feedback from our guests, and useful lessons learned for us on the difference between a straight “learning” session on a focused topic such as Lu’s and events which blend fixing and learning on a wider area, as we did with bikes and electricals.
These sessions were a good reminder that learning skills is an important part of all our repair cafés. There’s no better incentive to learn than having something you want to fix or maintain, but we always welcome people who just want to watch, ask questions of expert volunteers and be inspired by the community.
Keeping learning every day
We finished Great Big Green Week fired-up by everyone we met and better-prepared to offer skill sharing and outreach events. Thank you to everyone who helped make this week happen including funders, volunteers, partners and guests.
Thinking of what’s next, if you’ve got any questions on sustainable skills, interested in sharing your knowledge, have ideas for an event or more, do get in touch and we look forward to seeing how we can work together!