The Start of a Journey?
Through an unbelievable succession of chance meetings and incidental conversations an opportunity has presented itself to us. We have been offered a chance to put in a proposal to develop an Electric Pedals open space for workshops and community activities in the heart of London. We're terrified, excited, up for it and clueless all at the same time.
The rumour is we can have the space at a very reasonable rate if we can prove our worth to the local community and help maintain the upkeep of a skate park which backs onto it (which by the way could double up as an incredible after-hours events venue).
We already have a seed of an idea for an events and activities programme which fits under our core value of, 'waste not, want not'. We want to extend the education 'bit' of our work from simply demonstrating renewable energy and encouraging people to waste less energy, to teaching people how they can waste less of everything (including money). We're all guilty of forking out to buy new stuff, because we want something new and fresh, because we can't be bothered to fix the stuff we've broken or we don't have the skills to know how to do it. This is something we'd like to try and address. We'll share more of our plans and ideas for this over the coming months.
For now the big questions are, how do we develop this space into a functional and sustainable workshop/visitor centre? How do we fund it? Who's going to design it? And build it? How can we do this renovation work in the cheapest and most sustainable way possible? Who is going to tell us about the best and greenest ways to do all this?
We're very lucky to have the support of some architects and council workers who know this area well and we'll be hitting the net with our crash course on urban redevelopment, but if there's anyone out there who likes the sound of the project and has some skills or knowledge of doing 'eco' builds and renovations... we'd love to hear from you!!