Joe Mobbs – recently seen in St George’s Square Hebden Bridge handing out Stop TTIP leaflets – is calling a meeting on Sunday 2nd November, 5 – 7pm, at the 3 Wise Monkeys, Water Street, Todmorden, to present the idea of a climate festival in Todmorden.  All are welcome.

Saturday 7th March 2015 is a climate day of action, so that’s the date Joe when aims to hold the Todmorden climate festival.

Joe said,

“I think it would be great if we could organise a hustings too, to put Climate Change on the agenda for the elections.”

Joe has come back from France, where on 6th October 2013 there was a big climate festival under the banner:

“Let’s change the system, not the climate.”

A village of alternatives called Alternatiba spread throughout the old city of Bayonne.

Joe said,

“Some 12 000 people participated. The organisers of this Alternatiba have drawn up a blueprint for creating such a festival and I was one of the people who helped translate it into English.

According to the originators of Alternatiba,  the essential force of an Alternatiba is to combine a temporary “village” of concrete alternatives occupying the streets, with a weekend of round tables on all aspects of the climate issue, and presentations and workshops on anything that can be thought to contribute to responding to the climate crisis and to a truly sustainable and socially just society, locally or internationally. All this in a popular, festive framework, with local food, music, street theatre, etc. (Alternatibas are temporary events, although they generally are organised by groups working on the climate issue on the longer term.)

As well as trying to set one up in Calder Valley, I’m trying to spread the idea as far and wide as I can.”