Lush prides itself on in-house inventions such as the solid shampoo bar and the shower jelly – and Lush inventors like to have particular fun at Christmas. Here’s a round up of the most exciting new products coming out of Lush land in time for a bit of festive bath time fun:

LUSH Chilli Tingle lip tint by Barb Royal. Inspired by a trip to Mexico, this lip balm is guaranteed to give you hot lips in cold weather.

Lip Scrub by Estelle Morris. Perfect for potential under-the-mistletoe snogging action.

The Golden Wonder bath ballistic bears no relation to the well known crisp brand but instead looks like a miniature golden gift, and it’s even better in the water – as the bomb dissolves it sends out a shower of golden stars and the water turns blue. All this is accompanied by the sweet scents of sweet orange, cognac and lime. Bring on the party season!

LUSH Christmas by Janneke de Jong.

The Northern Lights soap is reminiscent of the phenomenon in the sky, infused with the scents of a Nordic forest and shimmering in transparent stripes.

Magic Wand by Estelle Morris. Lay back, relax, and dabble your wand in the bath to produce the perfect amount of bubbles.

The Buche de Noel is a ‘cleansing roll’ that looks suspiciously like a giant slab of sushi, fitting then that it includes a nourishing sheet of Nori seaweed as it’s wrap.

LUSH Cinders Bath Bomb by Barb Royal. This Christmassy mix features popping candy for extra crackle when it hits the water.

The Jilted Elf shower jelly was inspired by a cocktail recipe from New York. It’s a zesty blend of grapefruit, vodka and ginger that should provide an uplifting start to the day.

I’ve always been partial to a bit of traditional Glogg, the traditional mulled drink of Scandinavian countries. Put the familiar ingredients of orange, lemon, red wine, brandy, cinnamon and clove together and you’ve got another very special shower gel.

Lil Lush Pud by Estelle Morris. Another festive bath bomb with a big personality – scented with marzipan, lemon peel powder, clove powder, aloe vera extract and rose.

Click here to view the embedded video.

LUSH Fresh Handmade Cosmetics by Barb Royal.

Lush Candy Cane soap.

Lush Gingerbread House. It looks good enough to eat but this one is for the water only. With essence of ginger, blackcurrant and lemon.

Train Illustration by Alison Day

I love trains.

I’m actually sat on one right now, as I write. The sun is just beginning to set and the pylons are casting long shadows across the country side. I’m slicing through fields, past dense forests and picture postcard villages, through cities and industrial sites, and fields full of  sheep. It’s just me, my music, my laptop and a cup of tea. A good cup of tea on a train is all the more appreciated in my books, having been made, as it was, whilst moving at 50 miles per hour on a tilting platform.

I don’t usually work on the train. My favourite train journey past time is to simply gaze out of the window and allow my mind to wonder beyond the everyday things, to the things that usually reside at the edges. Three hours to myself. As the train tilts and twists and wobbles on its journey, I watch peoples gardens as they whoosh by.  Fleeting glances through the windows, the flicker of a TV screen, children playing, pairs of tights dangling from the washing line; the shape of the oweners legs and feet still impressed into the elastic, like dangling legs in the wind.

Fair Fares Illustration by Faye West

I have been a frequent train traveller since I moved to London from Up North to go to University years ago. It started with the dreaded Mega Bus, always packed, the toilet always broken, with tyrannical drivers preventing us from getting off the bus at the change over. The toilet was the thing that pushed me, and almost my bladder, over the edge. I’d endured too many a Mega Bus journey ending with a sprint across the coach station to the toilet, laden with heavy bags and fumbling for 20p’s. Shudder. As soon as abject student poverty subsided into easily forgettable student debt I spent my meager pennies on catching the train instead, a luxury I reveled in. I found it easy to find cheap tickets at first, booked during the week of travel or even on the day.

31% Increase in train fares. Illustration by Matilde De Sazio

But as my university days fade so does the memory of cheap fares. Between 1997 and 2008, the cost of traveling by train rose by 46%, while the cost of traveling by car rose by only 26%
. UK rail fares are on average 50% more expensive than European fares. And if that wasn’t bad enough already, In 2012 the Government (“the greenest yet”) is planning massive fare hikes of 31% over the next five years – the biggest fare hike in a generation.

Craftivist piece by Hannah Henderson

I now struggle to book a cheap ticket weeks, sometimes months, in advance, such is the nature of the ticket allocation systems. Train companies have been expanding Peak times making it much harder to find cheaper tickets and without the buffer of my Young Persons Rail Card (R.I.P, sob) I could face Peak time fares of hundreds of pounds. I can buy flights for much cheaper, hell, I can buy whole cars for not much more. Its ridiculous.

Air travel is one of the biggest contributors to global warming, so reducing or avoiding plane travel is one of the single biggest ways an individual can reduce their carbon footprint. But ridiculously high train fares, coupled with ridiculously low air fares mean that many people choose flying, even if they really don’t want to. Cheap plane travel effectively privatises the pollution but socialises the consequences.

Eurostar commissioned some independent research which found that taking the train to Paris instead of flying cuts CO2 emissions per passenger by a massive 90%. To be in with any chance of reducing the massive levels of CO2 emitted by flying, governments need to be investing more in train travel and less in road and plane travel.  In an age when action on climate change is woefully inadequate and slow, increasing train fares is bad for people, bad for business and bad for the environment.

Craftivist illustration by Natasha Thompson

This is why I was intrigued to hear about the joint efforts of The Craftivist Collective and Climate Rush to take a stand against excessive rail fares.  The Craftivist Collective last weekend  joined in a nationwide protest to demand a halt to rail fare increases.  ‘Stitch-ins’ were held at stations across the UK where fabric train carriages were embroidered with some of the eye watering facts about the rise in train fares. Groups spread picnic blankets on station concourses and preceded to eat cake and jam sandwiches whilst crafting away and chatting to members of the public about their campaign. The embroidered messages will be sewn into a petition-train and taken on a Fair Fare Railway Adventure by Climate Rush this Saturday 16th April.  It will involve bikes, more jam sandwiches and bright red petticoats. For more information, or if you would like to get involved, click here. Alternatively, you can add your name to the Unfair fares petition from the comfort of your armchar right here.

Craftivist illustration by Natasha Thompson

One day a few years ago I agreed to go on an intrepid action to highlight the causes of climate change. I didn’t know where or what it would be, but as a climate activist I trust the many people that I know who are willing to invest a huge amount of time, effort and (often their own) money in taking action for climate justice. So it was that I came to be in the Iona School in Nottingham on Easter Monday, 13th April 2009. In a hall packed full of committed climate activists I discovered the sheer scale of the unbelievably audacious covert operation and as I looked around I tried to imagine how we could possibly pull it off: we all suspect that undercover cops must operate within our networks. We were fed, given instructions concerning our target and duly sent to bed in one of various rooms in the school which had been hired out for the weekend. Having made sure that my day pack was ready (warm clothes, a book, some high energy food) I rolled out my sleeping mat, got into my pyjamas, stuffed ear plugs into my ears and settled down for a short night’s sleep before we headed down to Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal fired power station in the early hours of the morning.

Ratcliffe Disaster by Victoria Archer.

Ratcliffe has been the focus of quite a few climate change demonstrations, not least the Great Climate Swoop, a publicly advertised assault that took place on this huge coal powered station later in 2009. Ratcliffe-on-Soar was chosen because it is one of the biggest coal fired power stations in the UK and it’s owned by E.ON, who were the energy company behind plans to build a new coal fired power station at Kingsnorth (now shelved) and who were the focus of Climate Camp actions throughout 2008 and 2009. In the event of a successful shut down electricity for the surrounding area could easily be obtained from other sources.

Ratcliffe by Farzeen Jabbar.

As I went to bed there was an the air of the calm before the storm, especially after we received conflicting reports about a growing police presence near the power station. It just seemed so incredibly unlikely that out of the several hundred people involved in the planning of the action (including drivers, hosts, etc) no one could have let slip our plans. Nonetheless I was tired and soon fell asleep.

A few minutes after I dozed off I was woken by my friend screeching POLIIIIIIIIIICE in my ear. No amount of deeply inserted ear plug was going to stop me leaping into immediate bleary eyed action as I realised that the entire building was surrounded and being battered from all sides. I just had time to struggle into some decent clothing before our room was filled with policemen who immediately handcuffed us all, regardless of our state of dress. I never knew I would find out what it’s like to be treated like a terrorist, but I can now safely tell you that I do. And it was utterly surreal. We were kept in our respective rooms (chosen for the type of action we would be taking) for what seemed like hours. As we waited we could hear people singing protest songs up and down the corridor. Domestic Extremists we might be. Your standard terrorists we ain’t.

Amelia Gets Arrested by Abigail Daker.

I was desperately keen to take my belongings with me as we were finally led out of the room – I’ve had previous experience of them being kept by police and I knew how long it would take to get them back (nearly a year as it turned out), but my arresting officer would not allow me to pick them up despite others being allowed to do so: the first sign of a somewhat shambolic operation with far from clear instructions.

Ratcliffe on Trial by Rukmunal Hakim.

Things were shortly to get much more surreal. We were frogmarched two by two – handcuffed to our respective officers – into an impromptu photo studio that had been set up in the school nursery. Our mugshots were taken in front of the kids’ brightly coloured artwork before we were packed off into vans and taken to holding cells at police stations all over the city. I was held through the night and for most of the ensuing day. Being a well trained activist I kept to No Comment throughout my interrogation, though the investigating officer was very interested in my ear plugs (convinced they were a clue that I was headed to the noisy coal conveyor belt) and my Climate Rush badge (at that time I was still involved with the Suffragette inspired group).

My Mugshot by Alison Day.

My DNA was taken before I was eventually allowed to leave, taking none of my belongings. I was simply ejected into the night. With no money and absolutely no idea where I was in Nottingham. Fortunately there was legal support waiting in the station car park and I was scooped up and taken to a safe house. I spent another night sharing a bed with an activist before hitching the first lift out of Nottingham. By this time I was desperate to get back to London because I was worried that my house would be raided – someone else had left a piece of paper with my details on in their wallet and it had been waved at me as evidence in the police station. I spent the next few weeks worrying whether I would be raided when my interns were in the house, thereby putting their computers at risk as evidence too. In the end my worries were unfounded, though many other people were raided.

Ratcliffe Trial by Matilde Sazio.

It has taken nearly two years for this case to come to court, during which time I have not been able to talk about it for fear of affecting the outcome for the 26 who were charged (out of the original 114 activists who were arrested). Many of those spent the better part of December 2010 fighting their case in court in Nottingham. Green Party leader Caroline Lucas gave a statement and James Hansen testified. Despite comprehensive evidence proving that the climate crimes of corporations such as E.ON are way worse than anything we were planning to do, the activists were all convicted and given a mix of fines, conditional discharges and community service. Maybe the jury was won over by the prosecution argument that we would have been better off spending our time getting Cheryl Cole to promote second hand clothing. Bleurgh. The judge did however praise the defendents for their “intelligence and dedication” – climate activists are certainly some of the most clever and interesting people I know.

Illustration by Gareth A Hopkins.

Six more activists were due to go to court today with a defence of Not Guilty because they had not yet decided to take part in the action when they were arrested. It was set to be an extraordinarily interesting case that would challenge the excessively expensive largest ever pre-emptive arrest, which in retrospect seems to be have been designed to capture the details of the entire UK climate activist network in one fell swoop. But their plans have at the last moment been thwarted. The reason? Our very own police mole.

Ratcliffe by Gemma Birss.

A few months ago the indymedia networks were rife with the news that a climate activist mole had been unmasked. For seven years Mark “Flash” Stone (so called because he always seemed to have lots of cash) was a familiar face on the activist circuit until he was outed by ‘close’ friends who eventually became suspicious of him. He also happened to be involved in much of the preliminary planning for the April action on Ratcliffe: hosting meetings, driving trucks and planning to lead climbers up the huge chimney stack.

Now it is revealed that Mark has left the police force, apparently ashamed of the consequences of his actions. The Ratcliffe Trial blog states that he was even planning to provide evidence in favour of the defendants he did so much to help arrest back in 2009. However it appears that outside pressures (the police he used to work for? surely not) recently caused him to withdraw his offer. The case was then mysteriously dropped in its entirety after the defence pressed the powers that be for details of Mark Kennedy’s involvement in the initial planning stages of the Ratcliffe action.

Climate Change by Jane McGuinness.

Even before today’s revelations it already seemed a sure bet that Mark’s insider knowledge helped to secure huge funding for the police raid, which cost upwards of £700,000 and ensured that officers were drafted in from across the county on huge overtime wages over Easter. That’s over £6,000 on the cost of arresting me alone. Not to mention the fact that the extremely expensive court case may have collapsed in its entirety had Mark’s involvement been known earlier. I can think of better ways to spend cash, can’t you?

Police The Community Ignore The Environment by Gareth A Hopkins.

In the last year Climate Change has all but dropped off the mainstream media agenda and many of our most committed activists have been tied up in lengthy court proceedings. Yet climate change continues unabated. Next month Climate Camp will run a five day long event at Monkton Wyld Court in Dorset called A Space for Change, which will seek to “reflect and re-assess climate justice activism, re-dream what a radical movement can be and re-invigorate ourselves and our network.” There’s never been a better time to get involved in climate activism. You can find out more details here.

In June, Amelia’s Magazine previewed Just Do It: get off your arse and change the world, a feature documentary (in production) from Age of Stupid Executive Producer Emily James. At the time of writing, Just Do It had just launched their innovative crowd-funding scheme to help raise the final funds required to complete the film for release in early 2011. From October 12th and for the next 18 days (this article was posted on 14th October) Lush Cosmetics will match all donations made to the Just Do It website POUND FOR POUND! The challenge? To raise 20K in 20 Days.

You might be wondering why a feature film is asking for money now, rather than at the box office? The answer is surprisingly simple, Just Do It will be released for free under creative commons across the internet, your donation today means people across the world will be able to watch it for free, forever. The other reason the film needs your support is Just Do It is a completely independent production – there are no TV/Film backers, a decision carefully made by Emily James in order to protect the rights and the representation of the activists who kindly let James film their actions over the course of two years from the G20 to those sad talks in Copenhagen.

Meet the Team!

And whilst you’re at it why not sign up for The Crude Awakening action happening this very Saturday? That’s right, as well as putting your money where your mouth is, you can put your feet there too…

Just Do It introduces those of you unaware to the adventurous and inspiring world that is UK Climate Change Activism. A cause that has been documented, reported and championed in these very pages in the Earth Section established by Amelia Gregory. It is a cause that needs your help and your support – watch the trailer, the bike bloc and the guide to Climate Camp. Watch all the videos and if you feel inspired and want to know what to do next, the answer is multifold. First you can visit the website, donate and find out how you can get involved if your time rich but cash poor…

Transition Heathrow

The Crude Awakening is a mass action aimed at waking up the oil industry, to the responsibility they owe the earth. There are three different mass actions to get involved in – click on the links to find out more about each, and to sign up to receive SMS texts as the action takes place, from 10am this Saturday 16th October…

Dirty Money Bloc – Drawing attention to the involvement of BANKING in the oil industry, for example RBS has been linked to extremely devastating practice of mining the Canadian Tar Sands. If you like the sound of holding your own space and being creative to beat the oil industry… If this sounds out like your bag, find out where to meet here.

Photograph Courtesy of Amy Scaife

Building Bloc – The building and occupying of space through structures expressing dissent at the unchecked flow of both oil and finance. If you have a head for heights and want to be actively involved, click here to find out more…

Finally the Body Bloc celebrates the “carnival of life, death, fun and resistance.”
Do you have an imaginative idea of life beyond (and without) oil and wish to turn the impossible possible? Find out more here.

Illustration by Faye West

So that’s two things you can do alongside your recycling – the first is find out how you can support Just Do It and the second is to support A Crude Awakening on Saturday 16th October.

Having been to each and every Sunrise festival since it started in 2006 I became one of the Sunrise Off Grid organising team this year. It’s only the second time this offshoot has happened but as I watched the site take shape with a mix of anxiety and hope I realised that of course it would be a wonderful event. Sunrise has never failed me, so why would it now?

Us Brits we love to talk about the weather right? Well, Off Grid was WET and I saw this as a healthy test of how good the event really was; sunshine softens the edges but water is transparent. If people could leave the rainy site saying they had the best weekend ever then we had done it, and they did! An incredible display of enthusiasm and participation took place: people made soap under an umbrella over a fire with one of the guys from Lush, went for rainy walkabouts to find herbal remedies and hacked away at tin cans to make rocket stoves – there was a constant crowd of students at the Off Grid college in the Transition Towns Tin Village, all studying an alternative lifestyle.

There is nothing more gratifying after months of work than to know that something is going well. A momentous moment for me was dropping in on the Future Farming Conference and witnessing of key agriculturalists moving towards sustainability and co-operation in the South West. A Transition Towns phrase used by Sunrise was echoed by Tamsin Omond of Climate Rush, who gave an inspirational talk on the direct action side of things. “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world – it’s the only thing that ever does.”

Not only did the event inspire me and many others in practical ways, but the emotional aspect was also huge. The Kindness Offensive gave a talk which further deepened my faith in human action, offering a simple insight into why doing good and being kind is infinitely powerful. Mark Boyle explained why living free doesn’t come at such a high cost as we sometimes think, and venues all over this tiny and manageable site gave forums to those with bright ideas and amazing initiatives into ‘Spiritual activism’ – ways to be happy, healthy, helping each other and the planet.

Obviously a festival wouldn’t be a festival without any music, and even though Off Grid is a small festival of 500 punters, the music played a large part, as tends to happen at Sunrise. The Zia Solar main stage, in the barn, was powered entirely by wind and sun (along with the rest of the festival) and had a great line up of local and distant musicians who gave performances as valued contributions to the event. Thursday started things off with a harmonica and the amazing vocal talents of Phillip Henry of The Roots Union (watch that one), followed by some Afrocelt treats from Simon Emmerson DJ-ing (after his talk on bird species and bird song, a pastime of his outside of AfroCelt Soundsystem). The weekend continued in the same exciting fashion with funky soul 10-piece, Glastonbury-based Gente, easy-skanking Avalon Roots, foot-stomping Celtech, circus-swinging, slightly spooky, theatrical showmen Spanner Jazz Punks (!), modern traditional folk from Forcenra, musical activsts, Seize The Day and many many more marvelous minstrels about whom I could ramble for hours!

Poetry didn’t miss a beat at Off Grid and dance workshops prepped people for the lively nights. However, all of this I know and trust will come from Sunrise each year. What really moved me, personally, was the display of determination to make something beautiful in the rain, to learn something essential and gather together to discuss and network over something truly important: our relationship with this planet. I work for Sunrise because I don’t think that a single person leaves either Sunrise Celebration in June (check out www.sunrisecelebration.com), or Off Grid (www.sunrise-offgrid.com), unaffected by the energy in the heart of the event, which drives us to reassess our lives, our actions, and to love it all just a little bit, even a lot, more.

Left Field Films is producing an exciting new documentary film on climate change and is asking for your help to get it completed. Since 2009, Just Do It: get off your arse and change the world has been following the mischievous antics of UK Climate Change Activists. Emily James, the film’s director was granted unprecedented access to document a variety of direct actions from the fraught G20 protest, the occupation of Blackheath by Climate Camp to Copenhagen and the spectacular failure of the UN COP 15 climate talks.

This is the briefest of introductions to a film that will inspire you to get off your arse and change the world and does no justice to the breadth and width of the activities and activists who inspired the project.

Heard about the time a load of bikes closed down Westminster?

Click here to view the embedded video.

For more videos documenting the variety of actions appearing in the film, check out the Just Do It website.

What makes this film really special is that it will be completely non-commercial and is being produced by a combination of volunteers and film professionals. As none of the costs will be coming from sales Just Do It are asking the public to help fund the production costs, to enable this exciting documentary to be released completely for free under creative commons.

Launched on Monday 14th June, the crowd funding appeal enables you to help make a film you would like to see by putting your money where you mouth is and sponsoring the film.

Photography by Kristian Buus

This is a community engaged film in which the move away from a financially driven production model towards self publishing enables the contributors and the wider team to have far more rights and input than if this was a commissioned documentary. Importantly Just Do It are able to tell the stories of the activists without the editorial or stylistic concerns of a Broadcaster.

Just Do It is the story of people standing up to worldwide governmental inefficiency to tackle the problem of Climate Change. It is a tale of people getting up, leaving the house and taking a stance for what they believe. Just Do It introduces the people behind the politics as they stand up against corporations and the subsequent treatment they receive.

Photography by Rob Logan

The film is: “a story of heroic individuals throwing themselves against the might of the machine, because it’s the right thing to do, regardless of success or failure. By telling their story, we hope to inspire and incite others to do the same.” Just Do It 2010.

Photography by Rob Logan

By releasing the documentary under creative commons Just Do It are making this film “in a way that reflects the culture that it is about. We want to give it away rather than capitalise on it, and support the Creative Commons and Free Culture movement.” Just Do It 2010

Photography by Kristian Buus

What are you waiting for? Just Do It!

Directed by Emily James it follows the story of 3 organisations, 2 loose affiliations and one domestic extremist: Marina Pepper (Seen in the Last Picture).

The Royal College of Art has really gone to town for the graduate shows this year: there’s a huge SHOW sculpture around the entrance to the college in the same neon orange as their invite that ensures you’re not gonna miss the location if you’ve never been before.

The MA graduation shows are always a very mixed bag – the RCA lays claim to the pick of the creative crop, but despite much lauded links with the creative industries I find that many of its students still very much have their head in the clouds when it comes to producing something that will appeal to more than a few people. This morning I only had time to get around the printmaking and photography exhibitions so will leave the rest to another time, if I find it. Within the photography section I was only really moved by the work of Noemie Goudal – who had pole position right next to the free teas for press in the entrance hall stage right. Her strongest piece is Les Amants (Cascade), which shows a waterfall in a woodland artfully recreated with some draped plastic. I won’t try to paraphrase the abysmal entry in the RCA catalogue describing her work but it’s obviously a commentary on the presence of humans in nature, and I always like that kind of thing.

Les Amants (Cascade) by Noemie Goudal.

In printmaking I walked straight past the work of Cordelia Cembrowicz, though I should have seen her giant Climate Rush inspired print straight away – it’s an event I remember well. The last big Climate Rush action to inspire the masses took place in June 2009 when we organised a huge bike rush which ended with a blockade of Westminster Bridge right outside Parliament (read about it here), and the print depicts Cordelia astride the famous statue of Boudicca. It makes me sad to see work inspired by Climate Rush and these artworks feel a bit like a memorial to a certain place and time that has now passed. Still, they serve as a reminder of how much we achieved before the group (as it was then) imploded under Tamsin Omond’s drive to reach her next goal – becoming MP for the constituency of Hampstead and Kilburn as head of her own political party, To The Commons. She failed, but I’m sure she has a new plan in the pipeline.

Boudicca (Deeds Not Words) by Cordelia Cembrowicz.

Still, our clothes and actions were always going to be ripe for artistic plundering and Cordelia (who joined us for a couple of actions) has done an admirable job of producing some wonderful lithographs inspired by photographs of various associated members of Climate Rush. I particularly love the one of Tracey – who will be well known to those who have campaigned against Heathrow in Sipson – grasping at a clutch of planes.

Tracey by Cordelia Cembrowicz.

And the print showing a crouched Brenda, fist to the sky in front of a decorative Shell rondel, is simply stunning. Just look at the detail on Brenda’s proudly displayed armpit hairs! Around her dead yellow canaries are sploshed against some psychedelic swirls; presumably inspired by our No New Coal Awards back in February 2009, *sigh* those were the days. And there’s Cadi, smoke stacks billowing out of her multiple heads on a stained glass window designed for a new look Westminster.

Brenda by Cordelia Cembrowicz.

Detail from a stained glass window showing Cadi’s mulitple heads, by Cordelia Cembrowicz.

What a shame it all went tits up.
Moving swiftly on….

I was most intrigued by a group of tables set up with various kitchen implements and paint, but had to have the concept explained to me. In a flight of fancy the like of which you can get away with at the RCA, Helen Murgatroyd has set up her own homespun cottage printing industry utilising kitchen implements and other familiar domestic objects to create a traditional looking screenprint of a plate on a checked table cloth, rendered special by the process that produced it. She must be doing something right because she has just had her entire graduate collection bought up by Terence Conran.

Part of the installation by Helen Murgatroyd.

Another printmaking graduate that caught my eye was David Orme, whose work so reminded me of Luke Best that I asked if he’d had him as a tutor. He hasn’t, but has heard the comparison before. I particularly liked his decorative use of metallic foils in a group of voyeuristic illustrations inspired by tourism, but was unable to take a decent photo. The work on his site showcases an altogether different style.

Detail of a work by David Orme.

Next to him Olenna Mokliak showed large lithographs etchings and aquatints of weird monsters with extendable fingernails and ballet shoes. Very weird, I like a lot, but she has made the unforgivable error of not creating a website before her graduate show. Who tutors these people?! Fail!

I AM AFRAID I’VE HAD TO REMOVE THIS WORK – SEE COMMENT BELOW.
Detail of a work by RCA show 2010 Olenna Mokliak.

Downstairs my trip was curtailed still further when I bumped into a friend that I haven’t seen in over a decade. I studied fashion textiles with Philippa Wagner at the University of Brighton and she is now a top trends forecaster, living with her young family in sunny London Fields. She too was enjoying the Hackney Parks for Life festival with her kids last Saturday when a gang shot a passer by who was innocently enjoying a picnic just like us. More like Parks for Death me thinks. It was nice to catch up, albeit briefly, and I just had time to take in the work of Sun Ju Lee – stunning shadow-like prints made with great delicacy on fishing wire, almost lenticular in appearance. Unfortunately not translated well into 2D.

A Practiced Place by Sun Ju Lee.

Part one of the RCA show continues until 6th June 2010. It’s open from 11-8 daily at the Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore, London SW7 2EU. Admission is free.

So today’s the day: the day that I sprung out of bed at an ungodly hour with only one thing on my mind. Who will be our next prime minister? I’ve not been so excited about a general election since 1997, when I memorably got so drunk dancing on the tables in a north London pub that I thew up in the gutter. Of course back then I was excited for a very different reason. Yes, hands up, I was one of many who voted Blair in – after years of Tory rule we were excited about a future under Labour. Oh how very chastened we now are 13 years later.

Solving Hung Parliament by Val Woodhouse.

In 2010 it seems I am not the only one who has gotten swept up in the election. Even before the tales of queues at the polling stations I had a gut feeling there would be a high election turn out this year. Okay, so in my local Tescos the regular cashiers were overheard saying “Are you going to vote?” “Nah, they’re all the same aren’t they?” but when I walked through Camden yesterday I overheard lots of people talking about voting. It seems that we’ve finally managed to reawaken our democratic spirit.

Illustrations by Colourbox.

I think this can be attributed to a few things – the Leaders’ Debates on television have increased popular interest in politics and Twitter allows for lots of interesting conversations, but there’s more to it than that… We are now so thoroughly fed up with the current system that we’ve collectively become hungry for change. And I’m not talking the kind of rhetorical change that Cameron espouses every time a camera is pointed in his direction. I’m talking serious, deep systemic change. Most people have been complacent for so long for only one very good reason: like the cashiers in Tescos they don’t feel that their vote makes the blindest bit of difference.

Illustration by Creaturemag.

Gordon Brown by Gareth Hopkins.

And so, whilst the big party leaders have been spinning the same old shit about how we should avoid a hung parliament at all costs because what we most need now for our country is stability or the markets will fail (big bloody boohoo) it seems that for many voters this has been like a red rag to a bull. Not even copious riot porn from Greece has phased us. Okay we’ve said: bring it on. We want serious upheaval! Nobody I have spoken to has feared the result we now have; instead we’ve positively hoped for a hung parliament precisely because we may finally see some changes to our electoral system. Of course, I’m as thoroughly baffled as the next person when it comes to the many forms of proportional representation, and I know the argument that PR could lead to as many representatives of the BNP in government as there could be Greens, but frankly that doesn’t frighten me. Our current “democracy” quite clearly doesn’t work and so something else that better represents the wishes of voters has got to be worth giving a go.

I love this clever graph from Information is Beautiful, showing up the glaring inadequacies of our current system.

Illustration by Colourbox.

I’m worried, of course, about what will happen if Cameron forces a Tory led government on us without sufficient recognition of the electoral reforms so many of us want. But actually I don’t really *fear* it – I think that if he does ignore the clear wishes of the voters then there will be widespread unrest and direct action of the kind that we saw just a glimpse of last night at polling stations across the country.

The Polling Station in Sheffield Hallam, illustration by Abigail Daker.

I called in late to my polling station in Bacon Street just off Brick Lane, and there was no one to impede my progress to the ballot box. However I was lucky, and people up and down the country are quite rightly furious that they were unable to vote thanks to a higher than predicted election turnout and antiquarian voting methods which have allegedly shocked even our visiting developing world adjudicators. I was as incredulous as ever. “You mean you don’t need to take my polling card as proof I am me?” It is utterly nuts that we don’t need proof of identity to vote. Next to me a boy, surely not a day over 15, was pushing his papers into the box. Who was he voting for? Just days ago a huge amount of voter fraud was uncovered in my constituency of Bethnal Green and Bow. In fact, it was uncovered on my own street – visible from my studio window is a building in my estate that allegedly houses 18 Bengalis, all registered for a postal vote.

Illustrations by Mel Simone Elliott.

In demonstration against our fraudulent system the Whitechapel Anarchists got together to spoil their ballots with great fanfare in Altab Ali Park, the Space Hijackers took their campaign bus on the road with the banner “Voting Only Encourages Them” and the Democracy Village is camped out in Parliament Square. There’s definitely a faint whiff of revolution in the air. That or the right to vote in a more democratic way.

Caroline Lucas by Antonia Parker.

Despite this unrest, I was absolutely ecstatic to hear that Caroline Lucas has become the first ever MP for the Green Party in the district of Brighton Pavilion. I met her when we did the first Climate Rush on Parliament in 2008 and I’ve been keeping my fingers and toes crossed that she would win this seat for some time now. If some form of electoral reform goes ahead there’s the thrilling prospect of yet more Greens in Parliament to represent my views. In the meantime, there’s always a nice bit of Direct Action to force change far more quickly than our government seems capable of. Climate Camp is targeting RBS this year. We look forward to making a big impact on our corrupt financial systems, whether or not change is decreed from on high.

Caroline sees green by Currentstate.

Illustrations by Lazarou Monkey Terror.

Question: How do you use direct action that really engages and aids the local community in making a stand against Heathrow’s proposed third runway?

Answer: Occupy a site set to be demolished for the runway with the intention of returning it to its former glory as a local landmark.

That’s what a group of activists, drawn from Plane Stupid, Climate Camp and Climate Rush, have done in the village of Sipson, which lies directly in the path of the proposed runway and would be swept away – along with hundreds of homes – unless the plan to build it is scrapped. And on Saturday, I headed over to the site to see how they were getting on. It was a sunny and, perhaps forgivingly, warmer day than it’s been recently. In fact, one of the Transition Heathrow activists, Lily Kember, informed me the weather hadn’t been bad all week, which must have helped the cause.

“We took the site on Monday morning,” she said, “and established squatters’ rights by putting a padlock on the gate and erecting signs declaring what we were doing. Since then, we’ve been working on the site and staying overnight here. This weekend we’ve invited members of the local community to meet us and help us clear the site of scrap and get it going again.”

The idea is to transform the 50m X 50m land into the market garden it was for decades before the arrival of Heathrow when it fell into disrepair and, recently, became an eyesore used for dumping car scrap. Three greenhouses, each about 35m long, still stand on the site, which the activists and locals want to make full use of, as well as a wooden shed. So, unquestionably, the site is promising, even if the work has only just begun. And the project, officially entitled ‘Grow Heathrow’, is part of a wider initiative that the activists would like to see fruition in the shape of establishing a transition town in the area. But first things first, the task right now is to ensure fruit and veg see fruition as the market garden is re-established.

All hands to the pump – or the wheelbarrow: activists and locals work together – kids are welcome too

“It’s been an amazing transformation in just six days,” said Lily. “And the locals are really getting involved – the intent is for this to become a genuine resource for the community’s people. They’ve been dropping by with food for us throughout the week and we’ve had 30 people in total today working on the site.”

Indeed, in my time onsite, there was a definite ‘whistle while you work’ atmosphere, with renditions of anti-Heathrow and anti-Gordon Brown chants, as well as less political sing-a-longs; far more an everybody-muck-in atmosphere than that of a tense demo. The activists smartly sought to get the locals involved right from the start and it’s clearly working.

“I think they’ve got the full support of the whole village,” said Alan Boyd, who lives in the neighbouring village of Harlington and is on the area’s residence association, and had come along to help clear the site.

“With this project they’ve given us a real oomph in our eforts to stop the runway – and they’ve captured the oldies among us. We’ve got an ageing population here because we can’t sell our homes owing to the runway, so younger people and families aren’t moving in. Personally, I’m only too happy to help with this project; I want to stay in contact with them and support them as much as I can.”

Around the fire: at least that car scrap is useful for something

According to another local who’s come along to help today, fellow residence association member Linda McCutcheon from Sipson, the site used to contain some of the best soil in Europe and was prime agricultural growing land up until the end of the Second World War. The current landowner bought it without realising it was land designated for the proposed runway, explaining why it hasn’t been developed on and used as a dump instead. As part of the project the activists are talking to the landowner and trying to come to an agreement over its future.

“We’re doing this in conjunction with Greenpeace’s Airplot initiative, which is up the road from here,” said another activist, Barry Wilson. “I’ve been involved in things like this before, but this is the result of different projects coming together – it’s a real concerted effort and part of a bigger picture in terms of preventing the third runway.

“It’s not just about community resilience though, it’s also about sustainability. If you can grow your own food supply you can become independent. At the bottom of the site there’s a wild area where someone has cheekily decided to put their horses, so we can use the manure from there when we need to.

“Also, eventually we want to see people from the community who have the right skills come and work here permanently, as we’ll need caretakers for the site. Frankly, even if we don’t manage to get a transition town going, I think we’re doing something really worthwhile – we’re bringing the community together.”

Where it all happens: refuelling’s important – get your tea here

And on the evidence of my short time spent on the site, I’d definitely agree with Barry. Opposition against Heathrow’s extension plan is obviously very strong in this area – there’s certainly radicalism in the air among the locals. Generally, Middle England doesn’t go in for radicalism, but like a wild animal, if you poke it enough eventually it will retaliate, and this venture looks like a wonderful mixture of locals and activists pulling together for a goal that will benefit the community in more ways than one. You can only but wish them the success.

The earth section will bring you all the latest news from the Sipson site as and when it develops in the future…

Obviously climate change is a massive issue, yet the current political response is poor. It must be made known to governments and corporations that business cannot continue as usual, for the sake of all of us. Speakers already confirmed for the event include: Oliver Tickell (author of Kyoto2), Martin Reynolds (editor of the Environmental Responsibility Reader), Victoria Johnson (New Economics Foundation), James Garvey (author of The Ethics of Climate Change), Harry Shutt (author of The Decline of Capitalism), Ruth Davis (RSPB), Rupert Read (Green Party) and activists from Workers’ Climate Action, Biofuel Watch, Climate Rush, the Camp for Climate Action and more. Get down there and join their voice.

Saturday 28th November 2009.
School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), rooms G2, FG07, FG08
London WC1H 0XG
Nearest Tube: Russell Square
Cost: Free (Donations welcome)