Greener Kirkcaldy 10th Anniversary Celebration Ceilidh

St Bryce Kirk Centre, Kirkcaldy

Join us on the eve of Scotland’s national saint St Andrew, to celebrate 10 years of Greener Kirkcaldy. We love an excuse to have a party, so please join us at a traditional, family friendly ceilidh with music provided by local award winning accordionist James Coutts and his band, and some special guests. If you don’t know your Strip the Willow from your Dashing White Sergeant, he’ll guide you through every step. Don’t worry if you’ve never been to a ceilidh before, we just want you to have fun and help us celebrate.

There will be a cash only bar with a selection of beers and wines, as well as soft drinks. We’ll be serving a supper of Haggis Stovies and homemade tablet. You can also try your luck in our prize raffle – we’ll be selling tickets on the night (cash only). Keep an eye out on our website as we reveal our raffle prizes.

Doors open at 7.30pm with dancing starting at 8pm. We’ll break for supper at 9pm and resume dancing at 9.45pm. Our raffle will take place at 10.30pm, before we end with a traditional Auld Lang Syne.

Tickets

Book Now!

Adult: £12.50

Child: £5

Family: £25 (maximum of 2 adults, minimum 1 child, and you can bring up to 3 children)

Ticket price covers entry to the event and supper.

This event is a fundraiser with any profits going to Greener Kirkcaldy and the money raised from the raffle going to our Help Fuel Fife Folk campaign.

Greener Kirkcaldy Annual Report 2018 – 2019

2018 – 2019 was an exciting year for us. Alongside activities surrounding food and growing, waste reduction, transport, climate change, energy advice, kids clubs and volunteering, we also moved into our new building at 8 East Fergus Place, Kirkcaldy, and received 2 awards for our work – a Kingdom FM Local Hero Award for Green Initiative, and a Climate Challenge Fund Award for Outstanding Contribution!

Read our highlights in our Annual Report for the year.

Greener Kirkcaldy Annual General Meeting 2019

We held our first Annual General Meeting at our new base at 8 East Fergus Place in October – a big milestone for us as well as a celebration of our 10^th Anniversary!

A few words from our Chief Executive Suzy Goodsir

Greener Kirkcaldy are delighted to be settled into our new building. The most recent developments for us are that solar panels have just been fitted to the roof and a Tesla Powerwall battery system is being put in place to store electricity generated from the solar panels. 90% of the funding came via the Scottish Government and The Big Lottery. The remaining funding element came from public donations. Greener Kirkcaldy is really grateful for the support received to achieve that. This will enable us to reduce the carbon footprint of our community building, making is more environmentally friendly, and more sustainable.

Cosy Kingdom, our Energy Advice service supported 2000 households in 2018/19. The Community Engagement Team continue to run a range of activities, events and workshops that encourage our community to learn and develop new skills to reduce waste, take personal actions on climate change, cook and grow, travel greener and cycle, and lots more.

Our Lang Spoon Community Kitchen is at the heart of 8 East Fergus Place. Our cooking programmes are growing – we have welcomed 80 people onto our paid evening and Saturday workshops and continue to offer a growing range of community programmes for free. Our Community Training Garden at Ravenscraig Walled Garden is thriving too.

We have recently consulted on a new Bike Upcycling and Repair Service project which we would like to develop and we’re working towards applying for funding to make that happen.

AGM

We had a short Annual General Meeting where a summary of Greener Kirkcaldy’s 2018 Accounts were presented, and an election of our management committee members also took place. Read our Annual Report here.

Guest Speaker – Richard Dixon

We were delighted to welcome Dr. Richard Dixon, Director of Friends of the Earth Scotland to speak at our event.

Richard became Director of Friends of the Earth Scotland in early 2013 and has been very involved in the campaigns against fracking and for strong action on Climate Change.  He helped set up Transform Scotland and Stop Climate Chaos Scotland, and serves on the boards of Postcode Culture Trust and SEPA, and is a former Chair of the Edinburgh Community Solar Co-operative.

This is a summary of Richard’s talk:

There have been many developments around Climate Change over the last year. Most recently, 7.5 million participated in marching about Climate Change around the world from first world to third world countries. 25,000 marched in Edinburgh and altogether 40,000 people marched across Scotland. The event in Edinburgh, with support from Friends of the Earth, was organised by young people. Richard highlighted how young people are continuing to become engaged in Climate Change, the most well-known being Greta Thunberg. She addressed a recent UN summit on Climate Change in New York and continues to greatly impress and influence her peers and other world leaders.

Back in Scotland, the Climate Change (Emissions Reductions Targets) (Scotland) Bill 2019 passed in September 2019. This Bill sets out targets for Net Zero Carbon by 2045. The setting of a short term target by 2030 was a knotty issue, as agreements on the final figure moved between Scottish political parties. However, a 75% target to reduce carbon in Scotland  by 2030 was agreed on the day the Bill was passed. Scottish emissions trajectories appear to be moving downwards since 1990, but it’s difficult to tease out what actors are at play with the closure and decline of coal mining and other heavy industries over the last 30 years. All sectors need to act to reach both short and long term targets from individuals making different choices to institutions, business, local authorities and national government needing to completely overhaul systems.

Focusing on individuals, analysis from the Scottish Household Survey showed that 65% of those asked described Climate Change as an immediate and urgent problem, with 58% acknowledging that their lifestyle choices contributed to Climate Change. 74% reported knowledge of what to do, but it’s difficult to measure this.

Richard discussed three key things that get talked about that can make a difference:

• Having less children
• Flying less
• Eating less meat

While we can change our individual actions, governments, businesses and institutions need to change what they do and help society make change easier. Infrastructure and systems need to help individuals make the green choices the norm – at home, how we travel, how we consume, farming and agriculture, and industry. These systems also need to lead by example. Fife Council declared a climate emergency, other local authorities are doing this too, but plans are unclear. Edinburgh and Glasgow are seeking to be carbon neutral by 2030. We need good examples to show us the way, encourage others and make things happen.

We also need to keep putting pressure on our representatives in local and national politics. We can challenge them to tell us what they are doing about Climate Change. The role we play as individuals is not always about protesting, but finding other ways to make a difference.

The next 6 months are important as strategies are revised, in particular on energy. Developing renewables is key, and the pros and cons need to explored further in relation to the tensions between green renewables and hydrogen/carbon capture. Friends of the Earth Scotland are already engaged in campaigns around energy for the future and moving away from the reliance on fossil fuels. However, it’s something we all need to be engaged in over the next few years to help steer good energy decisions in Scotland.

Richard concluded with a call encouraging interaction with the next UN Global Climate Summit in Glasgow in 2020. As well as hosting 200 World Leaders, lots of fringe activities are planned, such as talks, workshops, and a huge march calling for action on Climate Change. We can all get active in our own lives, whether it’s getting involved in Greener Kirkcaldy and our activities, with other groups and campaigns, or challenging our families, friends and workplaces to do more. We can all contribute towards making a difference.

Richard was joined by some special guests for a discussion panel on Climate Change.

A big thank you to everyone that came along, to our guests,  and to our volunteers for helping to make delicious cakes!

Greener Kirkcaldy AGM Climate Change Discussion Panel

We held a discussion panel on Climate Change as part of our 2019 AGM. The panel was led by Dr. Richard Dixon, Director of Friends of the Earth Scotland. Richard became Director of Friends of the Earth Scotland in early 2013 and has been very involved in the campaigns against fracking and for strong action on climate change.  He helped set up Transform Scotland and Stop Climate Chaos Scotland, and serves on the boards of Postcode Culture Trust and SEPA, and is a former Chair of the Edinburgh Community Solar Co-operative.

Richard was joined by panel members in a discussion on Climate Change:

• Jess Pepper, Climate Reality Leader
• Karen Dorrat, EATS Rosyth
• Catherine Payne, Environmental Strategy Officer, Resource Efficient Solutions

All panel members gave some reflections from being inspired by children and young people finding their voice on Climate Change and how we all need to raise our voices; the systems we live with need to make tackling Climate Change easier and normalised, and it’s important that people in Fife engage with ‘Climate Fife’, a Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plan (SECAP) which is being consulted on until 9th December 2019.

The discussion  kicked off on the topic of reducing plastic waste, packaging and the role of supermarkets in helping consumers reduce – ‘how can local suppliers enter the High Street?’ and ‘how can we protect non-chain shops’. While supermarkets are starting to wake up to reducing plastic waste, they have been slow to respond initially. If an individual or business do something different, we need to tell people about it. We all need to be braver about speaking up and trying to get what we want and need. Participants highlighted some great examples from Burntisland, where there has been a return of a grocer shop, a fish shop, and a Zero Waste Plastic Free refill shop.

Discussion turned to the merits of plastic versus paper – paper is not always the most environmental option. Substitutes can create more carbon, but can protect marine pollution. The global supply of food is complex in terms of food miles and providing livelihoods – we need to transition and consider people’s abilities to make a living too. Do we need to just stop buying and accumulating more stuff?

What are the economic benefits of being more environmentally friendly? Do these impacts need to be discussed more? Can we tell people more about the benefits of transitioning from old ways to new ways? This can help grow people, as well as having economic benefits.  The impact on our well being by being involved and doing things differently is a good narrative. The future might be very different but it doesn’t need to be bad, and the quality of our lives could be better.

Local authorities have less funding than cities to make big impact changes. There can be fears around being criticised for telling people what to do and not doing enough. However, Local authorities can help shape our lives and set structures in place to influence what we can do. These structures need to be accessible to all, and show that they will benefit everyone, and not just a few. There are always tensions around priorities locally – what people say they want and need in the long term. No one wants to fail, but local authorities don’t always know what to do. Our voices in helping to shape actions are important. The SECAP plan has 3 core principles – Climate Ready, Climate Friendly, and Climate Just (focusing on equalities). Some parts of our community are more vulnerable and less resilient to climate change impacts. Solutions need to apply to, and help, everyone from being able to grow food, access good food, access better and affordable energy choices, access effective transport systems, have better air quality,and so on.

Everyone agreed that greener choices are better choices, but the opportunity of choice is not the same for everyone. Community projects like EATS Rosyth and Greener Kirkcaldy run wide ranges of activities locally, from growing, to reducing waste, to cooking skills, that are accessible to all communities.

We talked about maximising momentum – more people are becoming aware of climate change, through TV programmes, social media, strikes and marches. We need to keep this going, especially in the run up the summit in Glasgow next year.

Read a summary of the report from the Greener Kirkcaldy 2019 AGM.