a heartful exchange of time, energy and things made by hand

Hello and thanks for checking out the skill-sharing fundraising drive! More info on how this all came about here. (list updated June 16th)

$5

• Shelby makes you a set of recycled paper postcards
  or silk-screened patch…

$10

• Shelby makes you a set of recycled paper postcards or silk-screened patch,
  and bakes you a batch of cookies

$25

• Shelby makes you a set of recycled paper postcards or silk-screened patch,
  a home-baked hearty loaf of bread,
  and a mix tape

• or Shelby sends you a print of your choice

• or Paul, an artist in the animation industry, draws an illustration or caricature of you (limited)

• or Janaia and Robyn of Peak Moment TV sends you a signed copy of a DVD of your choice: peakmoment.tv ($20 value)

$50
Opt for two things from the above $25 pile or spend some time with one of these fine people…

If in Vancouver:

• Chris, a Cypress Mountain Ski Club coach, gives you and/or your child a personal ski lesson OR
• Laura, a certified snowboard instructor, gives you and/or your child a personal snowboard lesson at Grouse Mountain OR
• Karina gives you a personal accordion lesson

If in Halifax:

• Josee, leads a workshop on consensus-decision making or will teach you how to knit over a cup of tea OR
• Jyelle, an artist and graduate of NSCAD, instructor with Inkstorm, gives you a personal lesson in screen-printing OR
  
• Melissa, radio host with CKDU and member of Circus Circle, gives you a 2-hour tutorial in Audio editing or radio production or juggling OR
• Paul gives you a personal lesson in brewing a fine ale

$75 (limited edition of 4)

• Shelby makes you a set of recycled paper postcards or silk-screened patch, a home-baked hearty loaf of bread, a mix tape… and:
  

• Debra of Damselfly Designs sends you a handmade necklace or belt ($40-$50 value): http://damselflydesigns.etsy.com

• or Shelby will spend an afternoon… setting up websites, customizing web tools, desktop publishing, running errands, gardening, field work, cleaning, painting, helping with renovations, tuning up your bike for Spring…

$100

• you pick what you would like from the above lists!

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SKILLSHARERS // BIOS

Chris MacDonald

Like many residents of Vancouver, Chris is a transplant, originally hailing from the deep, dark, (and often smelly) recesses of South-Western Ontario. Some may say he has blossomed into a beautiful flower since developing interests in cooking and baking, being seen with his guitar and finding a love for cycling, running. When he isn’t busy being a student or sitting in front of a computer at work he spends his free time in the winter coaching ski racing, first in Ontario and now British Columbia. With a lengthy ski racing career behind him he has his level two CSIA instructing and level two CSCF coaching certifications and has coached for the past seven years.  So whether you want to drop into Spanky’s Ladder at Blackcomb or drop into your first pair of skis somewhere closer to Vancouver, Chris would love to teach you how to do it like a pro and have fun.

Debra Gilman

Debra is an art junkie. She has been making things for as long as she can remember and is never as happy as when she is creating stuff. She loves working in many media; photography, collage, fabric and jewelry. The pendants, rings and belt buckles that she has recently started making bring together several of her loves! Her inspiration comes from nature, colour and travels. If you are in Vancouver you can find her work at the following shops: Smoking Lily 3634 Main Street Vancouver or 569a Johnson Street, Victoria, Virgin Mary’s 1035 Commercial Drive, Vancouver, Favourite Lonsdale Quay (Upstairs) North Vancouver, BC, and Sweet Somethings Galiano Island.

Janaia Donaldson & Robyn Mallgren

Janaia Donaldson and Robin Mallgren of Yuba Gals Independent Media are the creators of Peak Moment Television. Janaia is producer and host, Robin director and videographer. They live and work near the South Yuba River in an off-grid home on 160 forested acres in the Sierra Nevada foothills, which they protected with conservation easements. They are inspired to meet people shaping the transition to a localized, lower-energy future, and help spread the word through their video programs.  Started in 2006, Peak Moment Television emerged out of the desire of creative partners Janaia Donaldson and Robyn Mallgren to find models among grassroots entrepreneurs working to create a sustainable future, especially in response to looming concerns about oil dependence.  Programs started in their small-town Northern California community access TV studio (NCTV) in early 2006.  That summer they climbed into their Vanagon camper and visited over 20 West Coast communities, taping more than 90 half-hour Peak Moment Conversations in 21 communities. Peak Moment TV Conversations are about locally-reliant living. Viewers meet like-minded individuals showing their grassroots activities to increase household, neighborhood and community security while adapting to the new economic conditions and laying the groundwork for a sustainable society. The team plans to tape programs beyond the West Coast in the next few years, and invite suggestions of people and projects. Contact Janaia@peakmoment.tv // visit www.peakmoment.tv

josée madéïa

josée madéïa is an otesha olumni who took advantage of her bike tour experience to write an m.a. thesis on alternative democratic practices and youth engagement. as a result, consensus decision making is way up there with bike bells and kazoo choirs on her list of faves. she also took to knitting with BC branches on her tour, and is making plans with shelby to develop the very first halifax consensus knitting collective.

Jyelle Vogel

Jyelle is an artist through and through. Hailing from Kamloops, BC, she finished her Fine Arts degree at the University of Victoria and studied on exchange to NSCAD in Halifax. She has done residencies at various galleries, including the Struts Gallery in Sackville, NB. She is an active volunteer at Bike Again and the Roberts Street Social Centre, teaching screenprinting classes and organizing all manner of fun events. From painting beautiful canvasseses stretched on recycled bicycle wheels to decorating gingerbread folk, she is a wonderfully creative and is a lovely person to be around. She is also very modest and most certainly did not write this bio.

Karina Koczapski

Karina is an artist, musician, crafter and soon to be occupational therapist! Karina and Shelby have known each other since they were in the first grade. Since then they have gotten into all manner of mischief. In the last few years, Karina has lived in various parts of Canada, and the UK, having completed her studies in Art History at the University of Victoria…where she also came upon Jyelle and Michael. In her spare time she is also a diligent tooth fairy.

Laura Bird

Laura Bird is extreme. She loves snowboarding, mountain biking, surfing, skateboarding…and most other things fast and slightly dangerous. She is also studying to be a forest scientist and, she has the best smile ever. Laura is certified by the Canadian Association of Snowboard Instructors.

Melissa Albiani

Melissa produces episodes for Operation Wake Up, which brings headlines, interviews and reports from the CKDU news collective. You can always hear Operation Wake Up on the www.ckdu.ca webpage as well, through our program archives. Among her many pursuits, she is also a wickedly skilled juggler and has performed and trained with Circus Circle, a social circus program for youth in Nova Scotia.

Paul Legere

Paul is a graphic artist will a love of good food. He can often be found cycling the streets of Halifax and is in the midst of planting sunflowers outside his house. He will be coordinating an event in conjunction with Halifax Bike Week called Superfly your bike!

Filed under: art, community, projects

Looking back on 2008 | relocalize.net

With the economic crisis pointing to harder financial times to come, the need to build local resiliency is coming to the forefront of discussions among policy-makers on local, regional and national levels. Relocalization is about reducing consumption and producing locally — building community resilience as a response to climate change and energy uncertainty. It is also a way to preserve and promote local knowledge and culture. It’s about being self-reliant, planning for the unknown, and understanding the risks of putting all our eggs in one basket.

Take, for example, food. 2008 saw a massive swell of interest in local food and urban gardening. Food riots and e-coli scares demonstrated the vulnerability of our current food system. The concern that this caused, along with inspiration from a growing body of literature on the topic, resulted in community gardens and farmers markets cropping up in increasing numbers on abandoned strips and empty parking lots. More people are searching for local producers to source their basic needs, and have challenged themselves to eating a local diet. People understand the importance of supporting the local economy, but even more so it seems that people want to rediscover their sense of place. In an era of globalized culture, it’s in the local parks and markets and squares that people are connecting with the neighbours and strengthening their ties with the place in which they live.

There is no shortage of ways for people to get involved and take action to help their communities develop resiliency. Members of the Relocalization Network in 2008 engaged in all sorts of activities from working with local elected officials on policy development to getting their hands in the soil and transforming lawns into productive food gardens. Transition Initiatives have grown leaps and bounds and have laid down a lot of the groundwork in getting communities to think about relocalization and local resiliency. This diverse and integrated approach allows for the strategy of relocalization to be inclusive and action-oriented, whereby people of all backgrounds can contribute and be engaged. Here’s a snapshot of some of the Relocalization Network activities in the past year.

The current mix of political momentum and economic circumstances present us with the opportunity to think hard about the track that we’re on and redefine how we live our lives based on what truly makes sense. This shift is unique and unprecedented in that while the work ahead is to be done on a local community scale, globally we are more connected than ever before. Global campaigns are mobilized in a matter of days. Anyone with access to the internet can publish content and have it viewed by millions of people around the world. These tools are allowing us to leverage a collective body of knowledge and glean from it best practices and models for alternatives ways of making the local economy work. We are far from alone in this endeavor.

I feel very fortunate to be working with the Relocalization Network community and I look forward to seeing more projects grow, gardens tended, workshops held, and bicycles repaired in 2009!

Filed under: community, food systems, projects , Relocalization, transition

Preparing for the cold

From November 21, 2008:

Yesterday marked the first snowfall of the year in Halifax. As I biked home through the blustery snow, I couldn’t help thinking about how fortunate I was to come home to a house with electricity and hot running water. Grabbing my thickest knit sweater and layering on some woolly socks and leg warmers, I settled down to think about this month’s Relocalize newsletter theme: heating.

What to do when it gets cold out?

Many of us live in temperate climates where winters are cold. Since we are not able to take the route of hibernating for the winter season (appealing though it might be sometimes) most of us must rely on some kind of fuel to keep us warm. Indeed we have been doing this for thousands of years, and now the rising cost of fuel is making this dependency ever more apparent. Fewer daylight hours mean less potential to soak up heat from the sun and more time with the lights switched on after the sun has gone down.

Wondering just how much of a difference taking energy saving measures will make to your home? Here are some home heating stats courtesy of Treehugger:

• 10 percent: Percentage of your heating bill you can save in the winter by using a ceiling fan, which circulates warm air from the ceiling to the floor.
• 8 percent: Amount of heat that escapes through your chimney when the fireplace damper is not closed.
• 5 percent: Amount of heating costs you save by cleaning your furnace filters monthly. Dirty filters restrict airflow and increase the amount of energy used.
• $115: Amount of money saved per year by installing an Energy Star thermostat. [What is Energy Star?]

In shifting away from our fuel dependency, we will be returning to one of the fundamental lessons that we learned in kindergarten: it’s better to share. When it comes to staying warm, inviting people over to your home is like carpooling with shared costs and shared benefits. Nothing heats up a house better than fresh bread in the oven and bodies chatting! Increasing social ties and developing strong community networks is essential to relocalization and building community resiliency. If you have an elderly neighbour or relative, keep a special eye out for them in the winter months and make sure they are safe and well.

Filed under: community, energy, health, lifestyle , Halifax, heating