Tag: Community (Page 2 of 8)

Community singing session, profits donated to local food bank.

Blossom’s Big Sing – For Folk Against Fascism & We Shall Overcome

Let’s learn again to sing together and brighten up the long dark evenings!
In these difficult times, getting together to sing can be a radical act of sustenance for our souls.

Come along with your voices and join Blossom for an evening of chorus songs. All are welcome to lead in song – any style welcome, the more the merrier.
Just listening and enjoying the cafe corner or bar is also fine.
Free entry, but any donations welcome in the bucket to support a local food bank and cover room hire cost welcome if you wish / can support.

 

During Forest Fields Social Club events under 18s must be accompanied by an adult who remains responsible for them whilst on Sumac premises.

Wednesday Pop-up Cafe and Cool Space

Pop-up Cafe : every Wednesday

Join us at Sumac Centre cool space for hot drinks, free wifi and hot meal.

There is often a meal at about 1pm for a suggested £3 donation, or what you can afford.

Also community food hub for wholefoods, zero waste supplies & free food redistribution, radical library and book stall, #RainbowCentre Archives, games library & toy box, informal meeting space with zoom & #SumacScreenRoom facilities.

Every Wednesday 11am – 4pm at Sumac Centre, 245 Gladstone Street, Forest Fields, Nottingham NG7 6HX . Direction & contact.

Community Food Hub

We redistribute fresh foods from Foodprint and Sanatan Food Bank, saving their surplus veg from going straight to landfill.

Pop in during the regular Sumac Sunday Brunch or Wednesday pop-up cafe & warm hub, or at other times on our events diary.

SUMAC FOOD REDISTRIBUTION

FREE – PLEASE TAKE WHAT YOU CAN USE OR SHARE

  • Food is a right, not a privilege.
  • Food poverty, the inability to afford, or to have access to, food to make up a healthy diet, affects 8-9% of the UK population. [Ref: Sustain]
  • Food loss and waste accounts for 8-10% of annual global greenhouse gas emissions. [Ref: United Nations UNFCCC]
  • The Sumac Community can play a valuable role in tackling food waste.

Surplus foods are shared with Sumac by Sanatan Food Bank and FoodPrint. As well as being good for the Sumac Community, we provide a valued service to them by helping reduce their waste, which would otherwise go to landfill or incineration.

This, together with an option of sharing our surplus with Sherwood Exchange and local animal rescues, gives SIX opportunities for these foods to be consumed!

It is the obsession with perfection by the food industry and supermarkets that is driving the food waste crisis.

The planet benefits by surpluses being diverted from landfill, even if it ultimately ends up making compost for the Sumac Garden.

food.gov.uk recommends a visual check or the ‘smell test’ to assess the quality of fruit and veg, or packaged foods with a ‘best before‘ date. Packaged foods should not be given or taken if past its ‘use-by‘ date. Our volunteers make every effort to check that everything is edible, vegan and not subject to an ethical boycott. Please draw any inappropriate goods to our attention.

We need more help.

If you value this initiative, please ask how you can support our work.

For more information see the Community Food Hub post by Veggies.
You could also read or share the latest version of the Sumac Food Redistribution flier.

 

Visioning the Green Festival

We are grateful for the continued support shown to the Green Festival. Like you, we are looking forward to the next event on Sunday 13th September 2026. The event has been running for over 30 years and has seen many changes and improvements in recent years.

The Festival continues to be supported by a wide range of local talented performers, musicians, family entertainers, speakers and educators.

The event now extends onto the grass area for the Family Zone and the Speakers Forum aka Knowledge Garden is now well established.

Many more stalls are now accommodated, beyond Lime Tree Avenue, into the Family Zone, around to Feargus O’Connor Walk and the Chinese Bells into the Rose Garden. We hope that we have an appropriate mix of small green businesses, food providers, campaigns and charities, all of whom are important to the Nottingham Green Festival.

This year we invited the Cycling Zone to expand into the Arboretum Gardens opposite the Bandstand, to include the pedal-powered Mammoth Cinema.

Some things haven’t really taken off, such as a second acoustic or busking area.

We also have vision to extend through the tunnel to maximise use of the Arboretum site, right through to the Mansfield Road entrance.

We need your visions too.

You are invited to join us on Sunday 7th December at 2pm at the Sumac Centre.

You are welcome to arrive sooner to enjoy the famous Sumac Sunday Brunch (11am to 2pm) and the Forest Fields Social Club aka Sumac Bar will be open through to 4pm. Veggies Catering Campaign will provide their ever popular ‘Samosas for Social Change’, cakes, teas & coffee and soft drinks.

We hope to reflect on some of the topics mentioned above and other ideas that you might suggest by email to info@NottmGreenFest.org.uk

You are welcome to send feedback in advance of the meeting to help set the agenda for discussions. If you cannot attend on Sunday 7th your emailed comments are also most welcome.

NottmGreenFest.org.uk . @NottmGreenFest on Bluesky . Mastodon . Facebook . Instagram (and Twitter)

Basil Boys presents: A Very Basil Christmas!

A Christmas variety cabaret raising money for individuals from the Nottingham transgender community.

Come and join us and be delighted by an evening of  seasonal themed drag, burlesque, comedy, poetry and more!

General entry £10

Admission + Donation £15

Can’t make? Donation only ticket £5

For more information & to book tickets in advance please see event link to Fixr website below.

Doors open at 7:30pm for show starting at 8pm

Ticket requirements : Over 18’s only.

 

 

Private event (Dolls Mondays)

The Dolls Dining Co-op (DDC) is intended to provide a free vegan food for transfeminine people.

DDC is on every Second and Forth Monday at 7-9pm

Green Festival Planning Meeting

Planning meetings continue for Nottingham Green Festival, a sustainable-themed festival, organised by a volunteer cooperative planning group.

The  Green Festival wil be held at Nottingham Arboretum on Sunday 13th September 2026 and your support is most welcome.

Join us at the Sumac Centre, or get in touch for details to join the online via zoom.

Note that times may change between Winter & Summer meetings – see future  meeting dates … (Also event listing on Veggies Diary)

Skills Exchange Nottingham Social and Meal

Skills Exchange Nottingham

♫ You are cordially invited to our social. Learn about time banking.

All welcome.

7pm, Friday 26th Sept

Featuring live music from Hummingbirds and Dave Fairey, also Poetry, Quiz and Raffle.

Vegan meal & cake for a donation.

Sumac Centre, 245 Gladstaone Street, NG7 6HX

tol2.timebanking.org/skillsexchange

Skills ExchangeNG@gmail.com

You can find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nottinghamskillsexchange/

Share details on Mastodon (social.coop) https://social.coop/@Veggies/115268142316858735

 

Creative Arts & Makers Club . Wednesdays at Sumac

The Creative Arts & Makers Club at Sumac now happens every Wednesdays.

Activities include:

  • Cloth mending, including darning, sewing patches.
  • Card making.
  • Up cycling, eg peg bags.
  • Scap/sketchbook keeping. Why do it, ideas and practice.
  • You ideas, inspiration, skills and requests very welcome

Resistance Exhibition

Since the early 1980’s the Rainbow Centre in Nottingham – now the cooperatve behind the Sumac Centre, has provided space, facilities and resources for a huge diversity of radical campaigns for positive social change. Our closely supported the emerging Road Alert network, @EarthFirstUK & later , Camps and more.

Nottingham Rainbow Centre  linked up with the (unrelated) London Rainbow Centre, and numerous other ‘Info Shops’, ‘centres for change’ and similar initiatives all over the UK. This was a powerful network, with its own media, such as SchNews, Squall, Undercurrents, ARC News, Free Information Network newsletters such as Notts FIN AKA Ned Ludd’s News,  and later Nottingham Indymedia.

Nottingham is dubbed the “City of Rebels” due to its long history of protest and defiance against the establishment.

As Left Lion, today’s batton carrier for indy media puts it:

As wider society became more conscious of environmental issues and animal rights, the activist subculture, which had loosely centred around the old Environmental Information Centre, needed a home. It found it in a little building on Mansfield Road, where various groups, including the Nottingham Friends of the Earth and CND, formed a collective space for gathering, learning and reading known as the Rainbow Centre.

Protests in Nottingham . Left Lion August 2018

All this leads us to …

The Resistance Exhibition

Documenting over 40 years of protest and resistance in the UK, through photos, videos, text and objects.
Resistance Exhibition, aims to foster a public archive of a vibrant protest culture in the UK; a documenting of history by the people who made that history.  It is an organically evolving archive that aims to span 25 years of movements for social change, from the 1990s road and animal rights protests to squatting and housing, from domestic violence and disability rights to LGBTQI and feminism, from anti-war and anti-racism to anti-capitalism and climate justice, and much more…

We are pleased to offer an exclusive opportunity to view the Exhibition, and discuss its contents with one of its curating team, at the Sumac Centre on Sunday 8th June. As well as the physical exhibition Sumac Screen Room will stream related activist filmed footage and you can explore our Rainbow Archive.

This event is the 3rd in a series, following and connecting DISCLOSURE: Unravelling the Spycops Files, with Kate Wilson on Sunday 1st June, and the   Battle of the Beanfield – 40th Anniversary Presentation  on Saturday 7th June.

As at many ofthe campaigns documented by the exhibitiion there will be #FoodByVeggies including Sumac Sunday Brunch and  #SamosasForSocialChange.

 

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