Here's a summary of some of our past activities.

 

Six more Kits Village Drop-in Spaghetti Nights in January! Community-wide DISN celebration Feb 1

................................................................

Vegan Soup and Storytelling

Usually 3rd Sunday

Vegan Soup 5:30-6:30pm – Mary’s place call 604-617-0142 or maryinvancouver@gmail.com.

Simple vegan dinner - we all leave by 6:45pm at latest. Some head out to Cric! Crac! others just go wherever they wish!

 

Come to Cric! Crac! by Vancouver Storytellers at 2nd and Larch or just head home or elsewhere after a shared meal.

Hope to see you at one or two or three of these events. I’ll be at half of them!

Mary Bennett home # 604-617-0142   2605 W 5^thAve

-------------------------------------------------------------------


 

April in Kits Village:monthly Plastic Recycling Depot on the 19th, Permaculture Blitz, Seed Savers and Car Free Days meetings, Monthly potluck, Canning group gathering, Vegan Soup get together, Crane Folding Spaghetti Dinner, Bee Parade, and more.

Kits Village activities in March (See Events page for details): Village Vancouver Activists Meeting (hosted by Kits Village) Thursday, March 1.  Kits Car Free Days Block Parties organizing meeting on Saeurday, March 3. Seed Saver Collective/Seed Library meeting Monday, March 5. Plastic Recycling Depot Thursday, March 15. Mary Bennett hosts our monthly Vegan Soup gathering on Sunday, March 18. Kits Car Free Days Block Parties organizing meeting on Monday, March 19. March 21 Seed Savers Collective/Seed Library gathering. Other VV activities in Kits: Friday, March 23: Potluck and followup discussion to Langara College presentation on Oil, the Media, and the Transition Movment with Lee Brain, Ross Moster and other VVers. March 27 Paper Crane Folding Potluck (for Earth Day Parade)

...............................................................................

February in Kits Village:

Sunday, Feb 5 Monthly potluck. Details below and on the Events page.

Wednesday, Feb 15 Plastic Recycling Depot. Organized by Malin Hansen. Details below and on the Events page. RESCHEDULED TO MARCH.

Sunday, Feb 19 Vegan Soup Get Together. At Mary Bennett's. Details on the Event page.

Saturday, Feb 25 Seed Savers Collective/Seed Library meeting and trip to Seedy Saturday at Van Dusen. Details on the Events page.

Saturday, Feb 25 Let's Talk about Transition Potluck and Discussion. Facilitated by Amanda Duncan.Details on the events page.

Other VV activities in Kits:

Tuesday, Feb 28 From Here to There (Part Two): Transitioning to Community Resiliency(at Museum of Vancouver). Details on the Event page.

.........................................

 

from Malin:

Hi all, since I have a newborn baby in my arms as we speak and since Ross is swamped with other things we have decided to postpone the recycling event until March. Likely 14 or 15. Stay tuned!

........

Hi all,

It's great to see so much interest in this!  With Malin having a baby, things just came together a little bit too late this month to make it happen, but next month for sure. Malin, thanks for all your great work in pulling the village depot together, and we look forward to the March depot.

Next up in Kits Village: Mary's hosting a  short Vegan Soup gathering at her place on Sunday; details and RSVP here, there's a Seed Savers get together the morning of the 25th (before we head off to Seedy Saturday at Van Dusen), and later in the day, Amanda Duncan leads a "Let's Talk about Transition"discussion (and potluck) . Hope you'll join us!

Cheers,

Ross

 

..............................................................................................................................................................

We Can do the Can Canning Group Potluck

Time: January 30, 2012 from 6:30pm to 8:30pm

Kits Village Potluck this Sunday

............................................................................................................................................................

 

Let's talk about our village. What do you like about it? What's working? What's not working? What would you like to see us doing in the coming year?

We can count potlucks, dropin spaghetti nights, movie nights, soup 'n shares, work parties, lots of food & other workshops, visioning our neighbourhood village together, plastics recycling, and a Permaculture blitz among our activities.

We've canned, gardened, and swapped seeds together, helped organize Kits Car Free Day block parties, gone to the Fireworks and down to Portland to help at the Village Building Convergence, celebrated the Plough Day farm holiday, partnered to promote more composting in the neighbourhood, co-hosted eco-arts activities, created or helped create a food forest and two community collaborative gardens, and co-organized a Vancouver Council Candidates meeting.

We have a fledgling canning group and a new seed library/seed saving group starting. Several members have expressed interest in starting a soft plastics recycling geoup/depot

A number of members keep bees and chickens, another tends an herb garden in a traffic circle, and, pending finding a location or two, there's some money to create another Permaculture food forest and to build a cob bench (and bulletin board/book nook?). There are proposals for new community gardens being put forward, and individually and collectively, we're engaged in sustainable, community building activities in many other ways as well.

In other words, lots going on.

What are you interested in doing in 2012?

.............................................................................................................................................................

Activities Last month:

Jan 15  Eco-Arts - Mary Bennett

Jan 19  Plastics Recycling

..................................................................................................................................

Come for a monthly eco-arts creation gathering  - usually on the 3rd Sunday of each month 2-5pm.in cooperation with Community Arts Council of Vancouver

contact Mary Bennett for address. Near 4th & Macdonald

Drop in for a bit or stay and hang out.

Partnering with the Community Arts Council of Vancouver  communityarts.ning.com

Mary Bennett  maryinvancouver@gmail.com

 

Monthly Plastics Recycling - We want to make this a regular feature of Kits Village. Malin is coordinating.

...................................................................................................................................

ARCHIVE:

Kits Village Potluck and talking about 2012 - Sunday, Dec 4 5:30-8 pm

Potluck 5:30, discussion to follow.  RSVP here for location.

Bring something yummy to share!

Let's talk about our village. What do you like about it? What's working? What's not working? What would you like to see us doing in the coming year?

We can count potlucks, dropin spaghetti nights, movie nights, soup 'n shares, work parties, lots of food & other workshops, visioning our neighbourhood village together, and a Permaculture blitz among our activities.

We've canned, gardened, and swapped seeds together, helped organize Kits Car Free Day block parties, gone to the Fireworks and down to Portland to help at the Village Building Convergence, celebrated the Plough Day farm holiday, partnered to promote more composting in the neighbourhood, co-hosted eco-arts activities, created or helped create a food forest and two community collaborative gardens, and co-organized a Vancouver Council Candidates meeting.

We have a fledgling canning group and a new seed library/seed saving group starting. Several members have expressed interest in starting a soft plastics recycling geoup/depot, and there's a Village Slow Food/Slow Everything gathering coming up on Terra Madre Slow Food Day on the 10th, and a Dropin Spaghetti Night on the 28th.

 

 

VV Slow Food, Slow Everything Day (on Terra Madre Day)

Time: December 10, 2011 from 11am to 11pm
Location: Kitsilano, RSVP here or to info@villagevancouver.ca for location
Website or Map: http://www.slowfood.com/terra…
Phone: info@villagevancouver.ca
Organized By: Village Vancouver, Kits Village, and Ross Moster

 

Celebrate Terra Madre Day. Join us for a slow food/slow everything day. Drop by anytime. Potluck lunch around one, potluck dinner around six, movie later on. In between, hang out, go for a walk at the beach, enjoy a conversation, read a book, or relax and do nothing. 11 am until late. RSVP for location. info@villagevancouver.ca

Terra Madre - Village Vancouver Slow Day

...........................

 

in our village...

 

From Here to There:

 Food, Energy, and Resilient Communities

Wednesday December 7

Museum Of Vancouver

Registration/Doors at 4:30PM
Event from 5:00 to 7:30 PM

 

Pre-registration recommended:
http://fromheretothere.eventbrite.com/

more info:

http://www.villagevancouver.ca/events/from-here-to-there-food-energy-and-resilient-communities

POTLUCK, VISIONING SESSION  and STEERING COMMITTEE FORMATION:

We had an exciting Kits Village potluck and visioning session on Saturday, May 28th!

grow more food? use less energy?  Permaculture design? save seeds? beekeeping? share tools? create more community? potlucks? have fun while living more sustainability? dinner co-ops? chickens? street reclaiming? community currency? book exchange? build benches and community bulletin boards? block parties? movie nights? fruit orchards? soup 'n shares?  dropin spaghetti nights? swap fruits and veggies?  community composting? more neighbourhood self-reliance?

 

Topics

VV Kits Village Billy Bishop collaborative garden open house 15 VVers (including a number of children) currently participate in our new garden.

Permaculture food forest open house Last month 2 dozen VVer's (1/2 from Kits) turned a front lawn into a food forest, installing an inexpensive drip irrigation system, building a swale, & planting various perennials, including berry bushes, kiwis, a fig whip, and herbs.

Transition film screening

Overview of Village Vancouver & the worldwide Transition Town movementResponding to peak oil/"peak everything"), climate change/disruption, & economic instability by connecting neighbours to grow more food, build community self-reliance, & have fun!

Visioning Kits Village

Discussion of our history & activities, inc. presentations from neighbourhood small grant recipients (Kits Villagers received several grants for beekeeping, canning, seed swapping/saving, fruit tree planting, a Permaculture demo garden, a public bench/book share nook/bulletin board making, tool sharing, neighbourhood movie nights, a car free day block party, etc.). 

Other current projects  -- Be the Change Action Circle, block by block backyard composting, community wide Kits Car Free Day Block Parties, Green Living Wall installation, Westside Collaborative Garden at Kits House, NOW BC Food  Co-op depots in Kits -- & regular activities inc. potlucks/garden parties, movie nights, soup 'n shares, & dropin spaghetti nights  

Kits Village as a Neighbourhood Food Network: How can Kits Villagers with different projects work together to help form a resilient grassroots local food web?

For example, the collaborative gardens could work w/seed savers to collect seeds from the gardens, w/local businesses to collect compostable for the gardens, w/the canning project to can and preserve fruits and veggies for the winter, provide gardening tools to use by tool library users, & work w/beekeepers to plant more pollinators in the gardens.

The Permaculture demo garden could teach other gardens how to incorporate permaculture design principles into their gardens. Information on available garden space in Kits could be made available to people looking for space to grow. Food from the gardens & fruit trees could be shared at the potlucks & movie nights, & we could organize a communitywide celebration featuring food grown mostly or entirely in Kits. Food oriented social enterrprises could be created.

Kits Village as a Localized Economy: How can Kits Villagers with different projects work together to help build a resilient local economy?

For example, the bench building project could donate tools to the tool library. We can talk to VV's Community Currency project about creating a local currency here - Kits Kash? Mapping our assets & resources could allow us to meet more and more of our needs locally. (More borrowing & sharing & less buying new, consumption and waste.)Some monthly village potlucks could be themed to discuss local economy projects.

"Reskilling" DIY workshops could be held to teach basic skills like sewing & mending. We could hold swap, barter & give away gathering & organize work parties to help each other and our community.

Discussion of new projects/ideas: Collaborate w/farmers in VV's Fraser Valley Farmers group to bring food into Kits Village (eg. things we're not currently growing), host one of the monthly VV meetups, form a dinner co-op, create a local currency...what else?

Lots of possibilities! New ideas welcome! What are you interested in? What would you like to see happen?

Where do we go from here? Discussion & formation of Kits Village Steering Committee

 

WATCH FOR

Monthly potluck, Visioning followup and formation of Kits Village Steering Committee, Dropin Spaghetti night, Movie night, weekly gardening collaborative work parties, Car Free Day block parties, Action Circles, more Permaculture opportunities...

 

We hope to see you!

-- Angela, Derek, Hart, Jodi, Karen, Kathi, Laura Lee, Mary, Nadia, Pia, Ross, Tom, & the rest of the Kits Village crew

 

Archive:

 

Join us in exploring how we can grow more food in the neighbourhood in public and private spaces, especially collaboratively.

Several other ideas have also been floated around in Kits, and the 2nd part of the meeting could focus on some of these, including an herb spiral on a traffic circle, a fruit orchard in a wide grassy strip between the street and sidewalk, and gardens in several places, including the railroad tracks area (Arbutus corridor), Music Academy lawn, Jericho Auxilliary, yards, and  various vacant lots. We'll also hear about whether gardening at Kits House is a possibility this year.

 

 JOIN US IN BUILDING COMMUNITY -- PROJECT IDEAS & NOTES from the Visioning going out soon!

 

Feb Visioning

SUNDAY FEB 20th, 3-6 pm 12 people attended.

What would a more sustainable and resilient Kitsilano look like? How can we take steps towards this?

With Permaculture designer Erin Innes (Main Street Neighbourhood village).

Here are a couple examples of recent visionings from other neighbourhood villages and an interesting neighbourhood in Portland.

Transition Strathcona

Ainsworth Street Collective

 

Hello everyone,

At the Village Vancouver Meet-up held last week, we broke off into groups corresponding to different geographical areas of the city and brainstormed various projects that could possibly be organised at the village level. The purpose of this is to get ideas flowing and to make everyone aware of the kinds of ideas they may share in common with others from the same village. I have been tasked with posting the results of this min-visioning session to the GW village page, so here it is:

 

1. Sustainable systems: Compost sharing/common compost, mutual assistance with set-up of grey water recycling systems, energy efficiency projects including possibly creating a system to allow the microfinancing of home retrofitting (maybe piggybacking on the city's current initiative to fund home retrofits for increased energy efficiency).

2. Social: Potlucks to encourage neighbours to get to know each other, "block buddy" system for mutual assistance in case of a disaster, mapping of community vulnerabilities and resources in case of a disaster, setting up "phone trees" for rapid emergency dissemination of information, checking up on people in case of a disaster, etc.

3. Children: Set up toy sharing, shared child care, organising nature outings for children.

4. Food: Sharing of food, storage and preservation activities/space/equipment, sharing of expertise, shared cob ovens, mutual help with watering gardens etc in case someone is away.

5. Elders: looking out for our elders by offering care and company.

6. Education: Setting up a common library for book sharing, mutual teaching

7. Medicine: Sharing of medicinal knowledge, herbs, etc.

 

POTLUCK, VISIONING SESSION  and STEERING COMMITTEE FORMATION: Saturday, May 28

grow more food? use less energy?  Permaculture design? save seeds? beekeeping? share tools? create more community? potlucks? have fun while living more sustainability? dinner co-ops? chickens? street reclaiming? community currency? book exchange? build benches and community bulletin boards? block parties? movie nights? fruit orchards? soup 'n shares?  dropin spaghetti nights? swap fruits and veggies?  community composting? more neighbourhood self-reliance?

Agenda:

11-noon Free compost pickup at collaborative gardenOur village collaborative garden received a large truckload of compost from the city last week & we have a couple meters left over. If you'd like some, bring a container. (We'll provide a few shovels.) 1st come, 1st serve.

11:30-noon Billy Bishop collaborative garden open house 15 Kits Villagers (including a number of children) currently participate in our new garden.

noon-12:30 Permaculture food forest open house Last month 2 dozen VVer's (1/2 from Kits) turned a front lawn into a food forest, installing an inexpensive drip irrigation system, building a swale, & planting various perennials, including berry bushes, kiwis, a fig whip, and herbs.

12:15 potluck

1 pm In Transition film screening (potluck continues)

2 pm Overview of Village Vancouver & the worldwide Transition Town movementResponding to peak oil/"peak everything"), climate change/disruption, & economic instability by connecting neighbours to grow more food, build community self-reliance, & have fun!

2:20 Break

2:30 Visioning Kits Village

Discussion of our history & activities, inc. presentations from neighbourhood small grant recipients (Kits Villagers received several grants for beekeeping, canning, seed swapping/saving, fruit tree planting, a Permaculture demo garden, a public bench/book share nook/bulletin board making, tool sharing, neighbourhood movie nights, a car free day block party, etc.). 

Other current projects  -- Be the Change Action Circle, block by block backyard composting, community wide Kits Car Free Day Block Parties, Green Living Wall installation, Westside Collaborative Garden at Kits House, NOW BC Food  Co-op depots in Kits -- & regular activities inc. potlucks/garden parties, movie nights, soup 'n shares, & dropin spaghetti nights  

Kits Village as a Neighbourhood Food Network: How can Kits Villagers with different projects work together to help form a resilient grassroots local food web?

For example, the collaborative gardens could work w/seed savers to collect seeds from the gardens, w/local businesses to collect compostable for the gardens, w/the canning project to can and preserve fruits and veggies for the winter, provide gardening tools to use by tool library users, & work w/beekeepers to plant more pollinators in the gardens.

The Permaculture demo garden could teach other gardens how to incorporate permaculture design principles into their gardens. Information on available garden space in Kits could be made available to people looking for space to grow. Food from the gardens & fruit trees could be shared at the potlucks & movie nights, & we could organize a communitywide celebration featuring food grown mostly or entirely in Kits. Food oriented social enterrprises could be created.

Kits Village as a Localized Economy: How can Kits Villagers with different projects work together to help build a resilient local economy?

For example, the bench building project could donate tools to the tool library. We can talk to VV's Community Currency project about creating a local currency here - Kits Kash? Mapping our assets & resources could allow us to meet more and more of our needs locally. (More borrowing & sharing & less buying new, consumption and waste.)Some monthly village potlucks could be themed to discuss local economy projects.

"Reskilling" DIY workshops could be held to teach basic skills like sewing & mending. We could hold swap, barter & give away gathering & organize work parties to help each other and our community.

Discussion of new projects/ideas: Collaborate w/farmers in VV's Fraser Valley Farmers group to bring food into Kits Village (eg. things we're not currently growing), host one of the monthly VV meetups, form a dinner co-op, create a local currency...what else?

Lots of possibilities! New ideas welcome! What are you interested in? What would you like to see happen?

3:45-4:15 Next Steps: Where do we go from here? Discussion & formation of Kits Village Steering Committee

4:15 Adjourment & Brief KV Steering Committee meetingS far, 4 or 5 people have expressed interest in being on the steering committee -- there's room for a few more!

 

Ross

Kits Village convenor

 

 

COMING UP IN JUNE:

Monthly potluck, Visioning followup and formation of Kits Village Steering Committee, Dropin Spaghetti night, Movie night, weekly gardening collaborative work parties, Car Free Day block parties, Action Circles, more Permaculture opportunities...

 

            June   Garage sale

Sun     Jun 19 Kits Car Free Day block parties

New activities/projects welcome. Please contact Ross, village convenor (ross@villagevancouver.ca).

We hope to see you!

-- Angela, Anna, Dayton, Derek, Diego, Gareth, Hailey, Hart, Jodi, Karen, Kathi, Laura Lee, Lauren, Marina, Mark, Mary, Nadia, Petra, Pia, Ross, Tammy, Tom, Virginia, & the rest of the Kits Village crew

 

Archive:

 

Kits Village Gardening Collabortative 

We had a successful 1st meeting and potluck, with 8 people attending, and a few others expressing interest. We discussed various potential gardening initiatives in Kits and visited the Billy Bishop site.

 

1st meeting 

Join us in exploring how we can grow more food in the neighbourhood in public and private spaces, especially collaboratively.

Agenda

We've been exploring the idea of establishing a collaborative garden at the Billy Bishop Legion Hall in Kits Point and have the OK from them to go ahead. Several neighbours are interested, and the 1st  part of the meeting will focus on this.

Several other ideas have also been floated around in Kits, and the 2nd part of the meeting could focus on some of these, including an herb spiral on a traffic circle, a fruit orchard in a wide grassy strip between the street and sidewalk, and gardens in several places, including the railroad tracks area (Arbutus corridor), Music Academy lawn, Jericho Auxilliary, yards, and  various vacant lots. We'll also hear about whether gardening at Kits House is a possibility this year.

In addition, we'll be holding a Permaculture PET day on Sunday, April 17, where a property will be made more sustainable for food production, using Permaculture Design methods.

And...we'll have some red wrigglers to give away.

 

 

Feb Visioning announcement

SUNDAY FEB 20th, 3-6 pm 12 people attended.

Facilitator Erin Innes.

What would a more sustainable and resilient Kitsilano look like? How can we take steps towards this?

There will be plenty of time in this visioning session to meet other members and explore possibilities, so bring your interests and ideas!

Cheers,

Ross

P.S. Here are a couple examples of recent visionings from other neighbourhood villages and an interesting neighbourhood in Portland.

Transition Strathcona

Ainsworth Street Collective

 

grandview woodland neighbourhood village:

(posted by Jordan Bober)

Hello everyone,

At the Village Vancouver Meet-up held last week, we broke off into groups corresponding to different geographical areas of the city and brainstormed various projects that could possibly be organised at the village level. The purpose of this is to get ideas flowing and to make everyone aware of the kinds of ideas they may share in common with others from the same village. I have been tasked with posting the results of this min-visioning session to the GW village page, so here it is:

 

1. Sustainable systems: Compost sharing/common compost, mutual assistance with set-up of grey water recycling systems, energy efficiency projects including possibly creating a system to allow the microfinancing of home retrofitting (maybe piggybacking on the city's current initiative to fund home retrofits for increased energy efficiency).

2. Social: Potlucks to encourage neighbours to get to know each other, "block buddy" system for mutual assistance in case of a disaster, mapping of community vulnerabilities and resources in case of a disaster, setting up "phone trees" for rapid emergency dissemination of information, checking up on people in case of a disaster, etc.

3. Children: Set up toy sharing, shared child care, organising nature outings for children.

4. Food: Sharing of food, storage and preservation activities/space/equipment, sharing of expertise, shared cob ovens, mutual help with watering gardens etc in case someone is away.

5. Elders: looking out for our elders by offering care and company.

6. Education: Setting up a common library for book sharing, mutual teaching

7. Medicine: Sharing of medicinal knowledge, herbs, etc.

 

About Kits Transition Village

We're part of Village Vancouver's Transition Town initiative. The Transition Town movement started in England a few years ago and has quickly spread all over the world. TT's are a way to generate a grassroots, community wide response to Climate Change and Peak Oil (have you noticed that we seem to be depleting a lot of our "natural resources" rather quickly?), and to the economic instability and insecurity we seem to facing more and more nowadays.

What it really all boils down to is that connecting with your neighbours can be one simple, but very effective way of dealing with some of this stuff in tangible (and fun and satisfying) ways.

Ongoing activities...

KItsilano Neighbourhood Food Network

Kits Village is one big neighbourhood food network.

Gardening and other workshops. Details posted on the events page and here as they're scheduled. We refer to these as "Reskilling" workshops because these are skills we've collectively tended to have more of in years past. Learning and relearning (and applying) these skills helps us to reconnect to healthy, nuturing food, and to grow and preserve more of our own food and become more self reliant as a community. This in turn helps creates a more sustainabe and resilient neighbourhood in very tangible ways.

Neighbourhood potlucks and work parties We gather to share and celebrate around food on the second Sunday of each month starting around 5:30pm. (These are "on hold" awaiting hosts. May start up for the summer again as picnics and backyard bbqs).

A feature of the potlucks are work parties, where we get together before the potluck to help our host out. We often meet at 4 pm and help out with gardening, clearing some junk out, and with helping setup for the potluck. A good time to set up a "free store" if you're cleaning up - or bring things for giveaways.

If you'd like to host a future potluck/work party, please contact Mary Bennett (maryinvancouver@gmail.com or on her VV page).

How does our garden grow? Many Kits Villagers participate in the Westside collaborative community garden at Kits House. Seasonal weekly work parties on Tuesdays from 1-3 pm.  Kits House will be undergoing extensive renovations, so we're currently looking for new spaces in which to garden see discussions below. If you're interested in participating, please join the discussion

Do you know of other opportunities or potential opportunities to garden collaboratively (growing together and sharing the harvest) elsewhere in Kits? Imagine if this was going on in a number of locations. Have a front lawn or a back yard you're not using? Know of a strip between the sidewalk and street where food could be grown? Other ideas for growing spaces?

There are lots of other ways to potentially plug in around food and other areas of interest...
Interested in helping start a neighbourhood seed saving collective or a chicken coop co-op or a beekeeping group or a dinner co-op? Holding a block party? Hosting a drop-in spaghetti night or the next monthly potluck/workparty? Swapping plants? Do you have space in your yard to offer to someone who's looking for gardening space? Starting something new in Kits that will help us become a more sustainable and resilient neighbourhood? Helping each other figure out how to make a transition to living well while using substantially less energy? Or?

Transition is not a spectator sport! One of the beauties of Village Vancouver is that there's room for just about everybody. Bring your ideas and interests and join the party!

 

------------

2010

 

Neighbourhood potlucks and work parties We gather to share and celebrate around food on the second Sunday of each month starting around 5:30pm. (These are "on hold" awaiting hosts. May start up for the summer again as picnics and backyard bbqs).

An occasional feature of the potlucks are work parties, where we get together before the potluck to help a host out or with the Kits Village Collaborative Garden.