Category: East Midlands

Loca­tion announced, work­shop sched­ule pub­lished, and how the kids space is going to work. All for the Earth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing which begins on the 10th of August and runs until the 15th.

Get in touch if you need more infor­ma­tion.

The gath­er­ing this year will be held at Woolsey­bridge Farm — a love­ly site in Nor­folk with lots of trees and a lit­tle stream. It’s approx­i­mate­ly 1.5 miles NNE of Diss. Diss has reg­u­lar train ser­vices and a whole­food shop.

If you can come down to help set up please do, we start on August the 5th, if you can stay a few days after the gath­er­ing to help bring it all do that’d also be grand.

Site phone num­ber 1 is 07551689365 or try num­ber 2 on 07866797016.

Here’s a detailed map

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And here’s the work­shop sched­ule:

Wednes­day

11:30–1

Nation­al Bargee Trav­ellers Asso­ci­a­tion

Infor­ma­tion and dis­cus­sion ses­sion on the cur­rent strug­gle of trav­el­ling boat dwellers to keep their homes in the face of harass­ment and unlaw­ful enforce­ment by British Water­ways. Come along if you live on a boat, or if you want to know how you can help the boat­ing com­mu­ni­ty fight back!

Frack-Off! An intro­duc­tion to the threat of hydraulic frac­tur­ing.

Frack­ing is a night­mare! Tox­ic and radioac­tive water pol­lu­tion. Tap water you can set on fire. Run­away cli­mate change. To pro­duce expen­sive gas that will soon run out. So why are we doing it? This will be a detailed prac­ti­cal, par­tic­i­pa­to­ry work­shop aimed at bring­ing peo­ple up to speed on the issue, the specifics of which areas of the UK are direct­ly under threat and par­tic­u­lar­ly, where to find organ­ised resis­tance.

Squat Electrics

Deal­ing with our shit- Men against the Patri­archy. An open dis­cus­sion on the ways in which men can unlearn the arse­hole patri­ar­chal behav­iours they’ve picked up by being alive in this soci­ety, and rein­force with­in the rad­i­cal envi­ron­men­tal move­ment.

2–4

Pop­u­lar Edu­ca­tion & Train­ing

Skill-share for Train­ers! Inter­est­ed in pop­u­lar edu­ca­tion & train­ing? Come learn & share pop­u­lar edu­ca­tion exer­cis­es & games designed for group par­tic­i­pa­tion and hor­i­zon­tal learn­ing. Find what col­lec­tives are work­ing in the UK (& beyond!) and the work they are doing.

Oh Fuck it’s the Apoc­a­lypse

work­ing on the basis that the col­lapse of indus­tri­al soci­ety is fair­ly immi­nent, and that we need to plan for it. To this end we’re look­ing at sus­tain­able liv­ing, per­ma­cul­ture, etc, with a sur­vival­ist angle; at ways to sur­vive a col­lapse and build a more sane soci­ety from the ruins; and dis­cussing how this analy­sis affects our oth­er activism and pri­or­i­ties. We’re a bit like Tran­si­tion Towns with an Edge and a Clue.

Using Radios- A begin­ners guide to using radios dur­ing actions.

Set­ting up a Tri­pod- Nev­er put up a tri­pod before, want a use one on an action. Here’s your chance to find out how.

4–6

Squatting,Direct Action and New Laws

Film: ‘Gasland’

When a doc­u­men­tary film-mak­er is asked to lease his land for drilling, he embarks on a cross-coun­try odyssey uncov­er­ing a trail of secrets, lies and con­t­a­m­i­na­tion. A recent­ly drilled near­by Penn­syl­va­nia town reports that res­i­dents are able to light their drink­ing water on fire. This is a US doc­u­men­tary, how­ev­er shale extrac­tion or ‘frack­ing’ is now head­ing to the UK.

Tin­kers Bub­ble

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Thurs­day

10–1130

Intro to Con­sen­sus

Con­sen­sus is wide­ly regard­ed as one of the most empow­er­ing and cre­ative ways of mak­ing deci­sions in a non-hier­ar­chi­cal group, but it isn’t always easy. This par­tic­i­pa­to­ry work­shop pro­vides an intro­duc­tion or refresh­er to what it’s all about and how to make it work.

Rec­c­ing

Struc­tured and facil­i­tat­ed dis­cus­sion to share skills and tips for suc­cess­ful rec­cies for action. Includ­ing a check-list of what to find out, inter­net and phone search­es, site vis­its, tricks and dis­guis­es for get­ting info, secu­ri­ty tips etc.

Intro to EF!

Lon­don Olympics

Resist­ing the Lon­don 2012 Olympics (Cor­po­rate Watch and the Counter Olympics Net­work)
What can we do to resist the Olympics in Lon­don next year? Peo­ple are aware of the prob­lems with the games — sur­veil­lance, gen­tri­fi­ca­tion, envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion, pri­vati­sa­tion, job inse­cu­ri­ty etc and the ben­e­fits to cor­po­ra­tions. Come and dis­cuss these and how we can resist, tak­ing inspi­ra­tion from peo­ple who have resist­ed oth­er Olympics.

How to plan a kick ass action:

You’ve tak­en action before and now you’re ready to start plan­ning your own proac­tive and cre­ative Kick­ass Actions…

1130–1300

Bank­ing & finance

Lock­ing on

Prac­ti­cal work­shop for learn­ing dif­fer­ent lock-on tech­niques for block­ades and oth­er actions. Arm-tubes, d‑locks, chains, hand­cuffs, super­glue and more!

20 years of EF! Look­ing for­ward

Fight Frack­ing

Shale gas extrac­tion or ‘frack­ing’ has been pol­lut­ing drink­ing water and the cli­mate in the US, where it has caused numer­ous health prob­lems. It’s been blamed for mini-earth­quakes in Black­pool and there are plans for projects across the UK, includ­ing in South Wales, Lan­cashire, Som­er­set, Kent, Sur­rey and Scot­land. Join an open dis­cus­sion & plan­ning ses­sion on how we can resist these projects.

Infil­tra­tion- Activist Trau­ma

2.00pm‑4.00pm

Deal­ing with Con­flict

An intro­duc­tion to under­stand­ing and deal­ing effec­tive­ly with dis­agree­ment and con­flict in our groups. www.seedsforchange.org.uk

Intro to Anar­chy

Smash Edo

Anti-cuts and Against Aus­ter­i­ty

An open dis­cus­sion on how we’re cur­rent­ly work­ing against the cuts, what are we learn­ing about the sit­u­a­tion, what is prov­ing to be effec­tive, do we need to unlearn cer­tain behav­iours that have dom­i­nat­ed activist cir­cles in order to broad­en and con­nect the resis­tances cur­rent­ly occur­ring.

Men­tal Health

4pm- 6pm

Action Plan­ning for a kick ass action

You’ve tak­en action before and now you’re ready to start plan­ning your own proac­tive and cre­ative Kick­ass Actions…

Self-Defence for Paci­fists

Safe self-defence that does­n’t rely on strength and appro­pri­ate for any lev­el of expe­ri­ence. Can be applied in direct-action or every day sce­nar­ios. Bring your (emp­ty) plas­tic water-bot­tle and we’ll play with some ‘weapon/baton’ defence at the end. Num­bers capped at 20, only appropriate15yrs and over (apolo­gies for that arbi­trari­ness).”

Shell to Sea

Trou­ble Shoot­ing in meet­ings

A work­shop on trou­bleshoot­ing and improv­ing your meet­ings.

Pup­pet show

Per­for­mance and dis­cus­sion of a pup­pet show cel­e­brat­ing the his­to­ry of envi­ron­men­tal direct action in the UK.

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Fri­day

10.00am- 11.30am

Affin­i­ty groups

Par­tic­i­pa­to­ry work­shop explor­ing how and why work with oth­ers for action, includ­ing inspir­ing case stud­ies of suc­cess­ful autonomous actions.

Basic bike main­te­nance.

An infor­mal work­shop on brakes and gears, can also cov­er tru­ing wheels and look at oth­er repairs with no or few tools, by Bicy­col­o­gy.

Intro to EF!

Facil­i­tat­ing Par­tic­i­pa­to­ry Work­shops

Have you got skills or infor­ma­tion you’d like to share? Or maybe you want to sup­port peo­ple to learn from each oth­er, or share expe­ri­ences? Devel­op skills, confidence& under­stand­ing to facil­i­tate fun, par­tic­i­pa­to­ry & dynam­ic work­shops.

Sol­i­dar­i­ty is a Weapon

1130–1pm

Intro to Direct Action

Direct action is about tak­ing things into our own hands instead of ask­ing the rich and pow­er­ful to do the right thing. Empow­er your­self to go out and make change hap­pen!

Intro to indus­tri­al Agri­cul­ture and GM

Anar­cho-Fem­i­nist

Black Fish

The Black Fish is a new­ly found­ed Euro­pean based con­ser­va­tion organ­i­sa­tion that takes action on the issues of whal­ing, indus­tri­al fish­ing and marine ani­mals in cap­tiv­i­ty. Using edu­ca­tion, inves­ti­ga­tion and non-vio­lent direct action, The Black Fish has set out on a mis­sion to change atti­tudes towards our pre­cious oceans and work to pro­tect the unique life with­in them.

2–4pm

Sus­tain­ing Resis­tance- A work­shop to explore how we can make our activism more sus­tain­able and effec­tive in the long term. Find­ing sources of per­son­al sup­port to help us stay inspired, nour­ished and cre­ative for the long haul and iden­ti­fy­ing how we can chal­lenge dam­ag­ing cul­tures of over­work and burnout in our activist groups.*

Doing Actions with­out get­ting caught

Prac­ti­cal work­shop cov­er­ing var­i­ous aspects of doing actions with­out get­ting caught, includ­ing get­ting to your tar­get with­out detec­tion both in the day and in the dark, foren­sics and dress sense, get­ting togeth­er mate­ri­als, com­mu­ni­ca­tions, get­ting away. Parts of the work­shop will involve phys­i­cal prac­tise, please wear suit­able clothes for crawl­ing through bush­es…

Women’s Self Defence

The lud­dites 200 year anniver­sary and tech­nol­o­gy pol­i­tics today

Cel­e­brat­ing the 200 Anniver­sary of the Lud­dite Upris­ings: Tech­nol­o­gy Pol­i­tics Then and Now (Cor­po­rate Watch and the Luddites200 Organ­is­ing Forum
In 1811-12 Arti­san cloth work­ers in the Mid­lands and North of Eng­land rose up against fac­to­ry own­ers who were impos­ing new machines and putting them out of work. Since the 1950s the Lud­dites have been paint­ed as fools opposed to all tech­nol­o­gy and progress, but in fact the Lud­dites were very selec­tive in their attacks, break­ing only machines they thought were ‘hurt­ful to Com­mon­al­i­ty’. What can the Lud­dites teach us about the ongo­ing use of tech­nol­o­gy to replace work­ers’ jobs, as well as issues like GM food and nuclear pow­er? Can we escape the myth that tech­nol­o­gy always brings progress?

Activist Trau­ma

4–6pm

Get­ting over Fences

Priv­i­lege and Oppres­sion

Pow­er and priv­i­lege play out con­tin­u­ous­ly in our group dynam­ics. This work­shop will explore the roles we each play as priv­i­leged and as oppressed in our move­ment and in wider soci­ety.

Dale Farm

this is the biggest unlaw­ful Trav­eller site in the UK. Res­i­dents own their land but have been repeat­ed­ly refused plan­ning
per­mis­sion and Basil­don Coun­cil have now gath­ered £18million in order to evict them. After years of fight­ing their evic­tion through the courts they have now been served their papers, and have until the 31st August to leave. this work­shop will out­line the his­to­ry of the cam­paign, dis­cuss plans for resist­ing the evic­tion and, if there is enough inter­est, organ­ise a work­ing par­ty to vis­it Dale Farm to help them pre­pare for evic­tion.

Coal Action Net­work

Intro to what’s hap­pened so far with CAN. Dis­cus­sions about what peo­ple would like from the network/website and where peo­ple think coal cam­paig­ing is going. How to get involved in CAN.

Tripods

Doing Actions with­out Get­ting caught part 2

We’ll be prac­tis­ing how to move in the dark with­out being spot­ted. Please wear dark clothes suit­able for crawl­ing through the bush­es and a torch if you can. Meet at 8.30 sharp at the gate tent. The prac­tise will fin­ish by 10pm.

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Sat­ur­day

10–1130

Facil­i­ta­tion

If you’ve nev­er facil­i­tat­ed a meet­ing before, or want to brush up your skills and gain con­fi­dence, this work­shop is for you.

Intro to EF!

Basic land nav­i­ga­tion

An intro­duc­tion to nav­i­ga­tion with map and a com­pass for total begin­ners or improvers. Please bring a com­pass if you have one . Also, an overview of very sim­ple route find­ing using the sun, stars and oth­er nat­ur­al signs.

Envi­ron­men­tal and Autonomous Edu­ca­tion for young peo­ple

A dis­cus­sion about var­i­ous alter­na­tive edu­ca­tion projects for young peo­ple, a space to share ideas, expe­ri­ences and rethink the ways in which we engage in these projects.

Coal Action Scot­land- What’s going on in the Val­leys at the moment and how can peo­ple get involved.

11.30am- 1.00pm

Build­ing Strong Groups- Share ideas and learn from oth­ers for mak­ing your group more acces­si­ble, inclu­sive and sus­tain­able.

Organ­is­ing the next win­ter moot and sum­mer gath­er­ing

Enjoyed this gath­er­ing? Thought this gath­er­ing was crap? Come along and start work­ing out how next years gath­er­ing could turn out.

Nutri­tion 101

May­day Indy­media

What is indy­media and how does it work? This work­shop, run by mem­bers of the col­lec­tive which looks after the indymedia.org.uk web­site, will attempt to answer your ques­tions about indy­media and will give you the infor­ma­tion you need to report your news effec­tive­ly on the uk site [and the local sites Birm­ing­ham, Sheffield and Oxford?], includ­ing writ­ing mid­dle col­umn fea­tures for the uk front page to give promi­nence to your cam­paigns and actions. Find out about the edi­to­r­i­al guide­lines and mod­er­a­tion, as well as how to raise queries and how to start up an indy­media col­lec­tive in your local area.

Rewil­d­ing

Facil­i­tat­ed dis­cus­sion.

2.00pm‑4.00pm

Who Cares?

Open dis­cus­sion based around recent arti­cle pub­lished on Cease­fire enti­tled “Who Cares?” which talked about the fail­ures of the rad­i­cal move­ment with­in the UK to engage with child care in a way which relat­ed to anar­chist pol­i­tics.

Know your rights: Legal and arrest work­shop

Cov­ers basic law for activists and the arrest process. If you’ve
nev­er been nicked before or you want to brush up on your knowl­edge, this is for you. www.seedsforchange.org.uk

Anti-Nuclear- Cam­paign update and info ses­sion

Using Radios

Sav­ing Ice­land and Samaren­dra Das: The Glob­al Crimes of the Alu­mini­um Car­tel

Behind the shin­ing image of alu­mini­um is a dark side of envi­ron­men­tal cat­a­stro­phes, the arms indus­try and cul­tur­al geno­cide. A joint pre­sen­ta­tion by Sav­ing Ice­land and Indi­an author/activist Samaren­dra Das. It will include cur­rent threats to the Ice­landic high­lands, one of Europe’s last great wilder­ness­es, the his­to­ry and future of the cam­paign and the fal­lac­i­es of hydro and geot­her­mal ener­gy. Samaren­dra Das will speak about the present strug­gle of Adi­va­sis against com­pa­nies such as Vedan­ta and the real facts behind the alu­mini­um indus­try.

2.00pm‑4.00pm

Self-Defence

Safe self-defence that does­n’t rely on strength and appro­pri­ate for any lev­el of expe­ri­ence. Can be applied in direct-action or every day sce­nar­ios. Bring your (emp­ty) plas­tic water-bot­tle and we’ll play with some ‘weapon/baton’ defence at the end. Num­bers capped at 20, only appropriate15yrs and over (apolo­gies for that arbi­trari­ness).”

‘The True Cost of Coal’

The Bee­hive Design Col­lec­tive (part of the Ris­ing Tide North Amer­i­ca Net­work) cre­ate portable murals of col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly pro­duced illus­tra­tions with an amaz­ing­ly engag­ing cen­tral nar­ra­tive. ‘The True Cost of Coal’ will take you on an inter­ac­tive visu­al tour of the con­nec­tions between Coal Min­ing, Cli­mate Change, the Ever Expand­ing Cap­i­tal­ist Econ­o­my, and the Strug­gle for Jus­tice in Appalachia, North Amer­i­ca and through­out the world.

GM Cam­paign- Cam­paign update and info share.

Com­mu­ni­ty Defence: Build­ing our own Exarchia’s

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Sun­day

10.00am- 11.30am

Region­al Meet­ings

Dsei

DSEi is the worlds largest Arms Fair, as many EFers know. This year it’s from Sep­tem­ber 13–18. It’s not sim­ply about the arms trade. It’s about pub­lic ser­vices “cuts”: the envi­ron­ment: bank­ing and investors: the con­flicts in the Mid­dle East and North Africa. Not to men­tion the bor­ders that stop peo­ple flee­ing con­flict There’s a call for a mass block­ade of the DLR on the Tues­day. Pre­vi­ous Days of Action- and oth­er days in the week ‑have includ­ed street par­ties, Crit­i­cal Mass bike rides, die-ins, mock sales of “arms”, legs and even a tank; splash­ing fake blood across the entrances, engag­ing with arms deal­ers on the trains and plat­forms, invad­ing the car park and rail entrance, block­ing the roads, lock­ing on to the trains, even swim­ming in the dock! And vis­it­ing the investors offices of course. And in ther run-up- your local arms fac­to­ry. Will be talk­ing about all this — Not to men­tion that vis­it to your local arms fac­to­ry!

11.30am- 1.00pm

Action Update

Gath­er­ings Col­lec­tive

Basic Plant I‑d

Dis­cus­sion about Veg­an­ism

Direct Action Train­ing

Come and get active in this inter­ac­tive and hope­ful­ly fun work­shop where we’ll be look­ing at some fun­da­men­tal build­ing blocks for tak­ing non-vio­lent direct action to fight suf­fer­ing, and prac­tis­ing dif­fer­ent non-vio­lent ech­niques to hold occu­pa­tions, block­ade, break out of ket­tles, de-arrest peo­ple, and to deal with oth­er police tac­tics, like snatch squads, hors­es and dogs. We’ll also give lots of oth­er tips for deal­ing with pub­lic order sit­u­a­tions and for affin­i­ty group actions, includ­ing some key legal infor­ma­tion which you should know when you’re tak­ing action, and some tips about deal­ing with the media. And we’ll look at some of the val­ues and atti­tudes which are key to tak­ing NVDA, like non-hier­ar­chi­cal organ­is­ing and con­sen­sus (and oth­ers). We’ll hope­ful­ly be able to adjust the work­shop to cov­er what you want, and to answer all your ques­tions.

2.00pm‑4.00pm

Gath­er­ing Feed­back Show

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Kids’ space and activ­i­ties

If you do not have a kid, we might still need your help, so read
on.……

The kids’ space is designed as a place where chil­dren and those car­ing for them can relax, play and eat. The space con­tains books, toys and craft mate­ri­als.

The kids’ space is NOT a creche and does­n’t have staff or facil­i­ties to care for chil­dren.

Par­ents and car­ers are respect­ful­ly remind­ed that they will need to col­lect chil­dren at meal times/breaks and that they much keep adults in the kids space informed of where they can be found; please also fill in the forms in the kids kitchen regard­ing food aller­gies etc.

If you do not have a child at the gath­er­ing, but would like to help in kids space, please talk to the col­lec­tive. Help with read­ing sto­ries, play­ing games, art and crafts always wel­come.

Kid’s kitchen

This pro­vides meals suit­able for and at appro­pri­ate times for chil­dren. Kids meal tick­ets cost £2 or £3 a day for 2 meals (the low­er rate is for tod­dlers); please buy these at the gate tent. This is the first time we have sold kids meal tick­ets and hope­ful­ly this will cov­er the cost of meals, but we may need to ask for help if this is not enough to cov­er our costs.

Even those with­out chil­dren can help by with cook­ing and wash­ing up in the kids space, please vol­un­teer if you can.

Games and activ­i­ties

Dur­ing the morn­ing (approx 10 am ‑noon) there will be activ­i­ties and work­shops for kids in one of the work­shop spaces.

In the after­noon (after lunch), there will be games in the top mead­ow for chil­dren and adults togeth­er. Again, any help with these very wel­come — just ask the collective/kids space crew.

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Pub­lic Trans­port

The site is eas­i­ly acces­si­ble by pub­lic trans­port, you can get the train either to Diss or Nor­wich and then catch the bus route no 1 (Sim­monds) from Diss to Nor­wich. Or you could walk or cycle — it’s only 1.5miles away from Diss train sta­tion. Please come by pub­lic trans­port if at all pos­si­ble! .

We will run pick-ups from the train sta­tion for any­body who can’t use the bus ser­vice or for larg­er groups of peo­ple. If you need a lift please let us know well in advance (and not in the mid­dle of the night, when you’re at a train sta­tion some­where!). !

Wheel­chair users intend­ing to use Diss sta­tion will need to book assis­tance with the train oper­a­tor. There are no lifts so sta­tion staff have to assist mobil­i­ty impaired cus­tomers across the track. Appar­ent­ly the sta­tion is not manned 24 hours a day and the gate for the cross­ing is kept locked — so do phone and book to be sure .We have been told the bus ser­vice includes some low-floor bus­es with easy access for pushchairs, peo­ple with mobil­i­ty impair­ments etc.

Hitch to Nor­wich or Diss; from Nor­wich hitch south on the A140 to Dick­le­burgh. It is then a 3 ‑4 mile walk or hitch to the site; on the Dick­le­burgh bypass (don’t go into Dick­le­burgh vil­lage) is a right turn to Shim­pling and Burston; fol­low this road through Burston vil­lage, past the vil­lage green and out of the vil­lage. There is a sharp left turn, then down a hill to a sharp right turn. Site is on the right just over a lit­tle brick bridge.

From Diss either walk or bus, or car­ry on up the A140 to the turn­ing on the Dick­le­burgh junc­tion as above (only this time the junc­tion is on the left).

[some even more detailed info includ­ing post-code, from pre­vi­ous year, at http://www.earthfirstgathering.org.uk/2008/where.html]

efsummergathering2011@riseup.net