Scarborough Climate Action Network opens community resource centre.

After being inspired into action by the fight against glob­al cli­mate chaos, the Scar­bor­ough Cli­mate Action group have opened “Green Plan­et”, a com­mu­ni­ty resource cen­tre for edu­ca­tion, infor­ma­tion and par­tic­i­pa­tion on the east coast of York­shire.

They aim to pro­vide a cen­tral point for peo­ple in the local area to find out how they can make pos­i­tive changes to their envi­ron­ment, as well as pro­vid­ing an autonomous space for peo­ple to use the inter­net, meet like-mind­ed peo­ple and get direct­ly involved with the new­ly bur­geon­ing Scar­bor­ough activist net­works.

The Scar­bor­ough Cli­mate Action Net­work, for­mer­ly Scar­bor­ough Against Cli­mate Change was set up in the after­math of last years Kingsnorth Cli­mate Camp. A group of local activists who attend­ed the camp were inspired to con­sid­er ways in which they could make more of an impact in their local area at a grass­roots lev­el. In a mod­el of how small, local groups can make a dif­fer­ence in their com­mu­ni­ties through col­lec­tive organ­i­sa­tion and coop­er­a­tion, the Green Plan­et resource cen­tre is now open to the com­mu­ni­ty.

Hav­ing organ­ised cam­paigns in the town cen­tre of Scar­bor­ough against the use of coal and to pro­mote the urgent need to cut car­bon emis­sions, it seemed clear from the pos­i­tive yet mis­in­formed response of the com­mu­ni­ty that a focal point was need­ed to raise aware­ness of the issues amongst the peo­ple of the east coast area. The need for an autonomous social space in the town was iden­ti­fied as the best way to get this mes­sage across and so the group set about mak­ing this hap­pen.

The col­lec­tives newslet­ter, being pub­lished and dis­trib­uted wide­ly in the local area, clear­ly sets out their core aims:

• To raise aware­ness local­ly, of the seri­ous threat of human induced cli­mate change, which is already affect­ing peo­ple world­wide.
• To encour­age local peo­ple to make envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly lifestyle changes
• To encour­age local and nation­al gov­ern­ment to take more effec­tive action to com­bat cli­mate change

With the pro­ceeds of fundrais­ing and a £3500 grant from Artists Project Earth (APE), they man­aged to obtain a prop­er­ty in Hanover Road, behind the Stephen Joseph The­atre in the town cen­tre. A team of vol­un­teers began the task of turn­ing the venue into an inclu­sive, open space in which to achieve their objec­tives.

Paint, wood and oth­er mate­ri­als were col­lect­ed from skips and bins in the local area and put to reuse as desks, shelves and dis­plays for cam­paign lit­er­a­ture and calls to action. A com­put­er that was donat­ed by a mem­ber of the col­lec­tive is being lib­er­at­ed by open source soft­ware and con­nect­ed to the inter­net for any­one in the com­mu­ni­ty to use. A small kitchen has also been set up to pro­vide drinks for vis­i­tors, in the hope that peo­ple will stop by reg­u­lar­ly to get infor­ma­tion and ideas for action.

The lit­er­a­ture avail­able in the cen­tre cov­ers a wide range of issues, from cli­mate activism to NO2ID. The col­lec­tive is also prepar­ing a list of books which pro­mote pos­i­tive envi­ron­men­tal change to order at the local library so as to be acces­si­ble to the whole com­mu­ni­ty. The main hope is that the peo­ple of Scar­bor­ough will turn to the space as inspi­ra­tion to make pos­i­tive changes to their lives, be it using alter­na­tive tech­nol­o­gy, reduc­ing their pow­er con­sump­tion, chang­ing their diet or any com­bi­na­tion of the many alter­na­tives that are need­ed to halt the cur­rent slide towards cli­mate cat­a­stro­phe.

The cen­tre will also func­tion as a place where peo­ple from the local area can get involved in the Leeds/Bradford IMC and will be host­ing a skill­share soon on media activism and elec­tron­ic secu­ri­ty. A range of oth­er skill­shares, film nights, action-based events and talks will also take place, both at the cen­tre and at the local Uni­ver­si­ty. These will be adver­tised local­ly and in the events sec­tion of LBIMC.

Any­one is wel­come to join the group and a call has been made for peo­ple to help with the day to day oper­a­tion of the cen­tre, with vol­un­teers need­ed to pro­vide good envi­ron­men­tal advice to the com­mu­ni­ty on a rota basis in order to make the resource reli­ably avail­able.

Any­one in the area with an inter­est is encour­aged to get in touch by email at scarboroughccc@hotmail.co.uk or sim­ply drop by the cen­tre for a friend­ly chat.

Links to local news cov­er­age of the group:
Cli­mate Group Head­ing to Camp | We must burn less coal | Set­ting the right cli­mate

Relat­ed Indy­media cov­er­age:
Cli­mate Camp 08 | Swin­don Cli­mate Action Net­work | Mass action at Drax