With the end of the year drawing to a close, we held an ELCAN Winter Gathering for an evening of music, food and celebrating local climate action. The date fell on Thursday 28th November, which is Thanksgiving Day in the U.S. This date seemed perfect to collectively commit to continuing to take action against climate breakdown and for justice and to give thanks for all that we have.
We opened the event with incredible local musicians, fiddler and guitar player Morag and Lewis. You can hear snippets of their wonderful music here: https://moragandlewis.weebly.com/music.html
The Good Table Catering company provided us with a feast of food and our guests (over 40) brought an incredible potluck array of sides and cakes – thank you to all who cooked and brought food!
A time to celebrate
In the spirit of celebration and gifting, we asked ELCAN members to share their achievements so we could hear the fruits of climate and nature action in East Lothian. We invited member organisations who were awarded Seed Funding grants from the East Lothian Climate Hub to share the successes of their projects and work. We heard from community gardens (Our Kitchen Community Garden, Haddington) to primary schools growing food with their pupils (Campie Community, Musselburgh) to organisations running workshops and peer to peer learning on retrofitting (Heat Hack). This highlighted parts of the network of local activities around nature to food growing to energy. All of this work is necessary to meet the scale of the challenging times we live in.
WHY WE ARE HERE
The Climate Hubs role is to look how we can support this work and to upscale action across East Lothian. Relationships are key to build the kind of network, support, and solidarity needed to meet the challenge.
It’s quite a task to imagine how we can address the climate and nature emergency on a local level, to support global climate and nature action efforts. And yet, we are here doing this daily in our streets and gardens and woodlands. And we are doing this already in the face of scarcity, of resources and time, which will grow.
What allows us to go the extra mile to carry on supporting each other and leaning on each other is relationships. And this is why we chose to gather this winter around food, music, and connection building. The Climate Hub will hold regular ELCAN gatherings, beginning in early 2025, so we have the space to meet, connect, exchange, learn and build relationships and partnerships together.
So here’s to building connections and relationships with colleagues and old and new friends. And here’s to the joy that we are fighting to have in our lives now and for the generations to come.
May you and yours have a happy festive season.
