Welcome to April’s Update from Climate Action Stokesley & Villages
Supporting local action for a sustainable, greener and more resilient Stokesley & surrounding villages
This month we have lots of ideas for getting active outside – community gardening; surveying mammals, birds, butterflies and rivers; spring cleaning community spaces and free stuff for your garden or outside space at our Repair & Reuse Cafe. So step outside – you benefit & nature benefits!
Diary 1: CASaV / local (details below in newsletter)
Tuesday 21/4 19.30 Whole group meeting at Stokesley Community Library
Saturday 11/4 10.00 – 12.00 4th Repair & Reuse Cafe with focus on gardening & growing your own, Stokesley Community Library
Monday 13/4 17.00 – 19.00 Stokesley Mending Circle, Stokesley Town Hall
Tuesday 14/4 13.30 – 15.30 Brighten Up Great Ayton: Yatton House Community Garden Working Party
Tuesday 14/4 19.00 – 20.30 Rethinking Resources (formerly Waste) group meeting by zoom
Thursday 16/4 15.00 Nature group meeting Stokesley Community Library
Saturday 18/4 14.00 – 16.00 Brighten Up Great Ayton: Spring Clean Great Ayton Village Hall garden
Saturday 25/4 time tba Great UK Waterblitz river monitoring flood meadow, Great Ayton
Looking ahead – save the date!
Friday 1/4 Sunday 31/4 No Mow May
Saturday 6/6 – Saturday 14/6 Great Big Green Week – library displays, Repair & Reuse Cafe
2: Regional, National & Global (follow links)
Wednesday 1/4 – 30/6 Birds in Greenspaces birdsingreenspaces NB read more in the Nature group section below
Monday 20/4 – Sunday 26/4 National Mammal Week national-mammal-week NB read about how our Nature groups are gathering data about local mammals
Wednesday 22/4 Earth Day earthday.org/earth-day-2026/
Friday 24/4 – Thursday 30/4 The Big River Watch the-big-river-watch
Saturday 25/4 – Saturday 25/4 Mend In Public Day mend-in-public-day/
Wednesday 29/4 Stop Food Waste Day StopFoodWasteDay – NB read about how our Food group prevents food waste every day with the Foodshare in the Food Group section below.
Tuesday 21/4 19.30 Whole group meeting & ideas for Earth Day 2026 at Stokesley Community Library
We will be sharing updates on the work of our sub-groups and planning for Great Big Green Week. As it is the day before Earth day 2026 we can also reflect on our ideas to celebrate the day.
NB We have decided to postpone the ‘Greener Together’ event planned for 25/4 until later in the year to give more time for planning.
Saturday 11/4 10.00 – 12.00 4th Repair & Reuse Cafe with focus on growing your own – seed swap, gardening tools swap, gardening books & magazines to take away
As always, our friendly pink T-shirted volunteers will be here to fix your beloved household items – electrical appliances, toys & bikes, wooden furniture, clothing & textiles, clocks, glass & ceramics, electronic items including laptops and phones as well as sharpening household and gardening blades.
We are also extending our gardening theme from last month with a focus on growing your own fruit, veggies and flowers with a seed swap, garden tools swap and free gardening books and magazines to take away. We will have the seed swap library from sownorthern.co.uk/seed-swap again so please bring along any surplus seeds you have to swap for ones you need, also bring any gardening tools you don’t want – trowels, forks, secateurs – and swap for tools you do need. Our trusty blade sharpener will be on hand to ensure your gardening tools are sharp for the job and you can take away (preloved) gardening books and magazines for free.
This is a great opportunity to meet with friendly, like minded people and learn new repair skills. New volunteers are always welcome – come along, have a cuppa and a chat or email Simon Gibbon. If you are not sure come and / or bring an item to be repaired to get a feel for the Repair Cafe.
Monday 13/4 17.00 – 19.00 Stokesley Mending Circle, Stokesley Town Hall
All are warmly welcome to join the Mending Circle which meets every second Monday early evening. Learn sewing / mending super powers from scratch or get help and inspiration with your current sewing project. Mending clothes has a significant positive climate impact by reducing waste and conserving resources, as extending a garment’s life by just nine months can lower its carbon, water, and waste footprints by 20–30%.
Tuesday 14/4 13.30 – 15.30 Brighten Up Great Ayton: Yatton House Community Garden working party Tuesday 14 th April
Spring is a busy time of year for gardening so it would be great to have some extra help in the Yatton House Community Garden when we will be sowing seeds, cutting back last year’s growth that we had left for hibernating insects, and turning compost.
Saturday 18/4 Brighten Up Great Ayton: Spring Clean Great Ayton Village Hall Garden Saturday 18 th April, 2-4pm
To help re-launch the Brighten Up Great Ayton, now a sub-group of CASaV, we will be holding a Spring Clean session in the village hall garden on Saturday 18th April, 2-4pm. If you would like to help give the Village Hall garden a spring clean and meet others interested in brightening up the village then email Caryn
Saturday 25/4 (time tba) Citizen Science: Water testing River Leven, Great Ayton
Caryn is acquiring a water testing kit to monitor the water in the River Leven near the Floodplain Meadow in Great Ayton on Saturday 25/4 during the Spring Great UK WaterBlitz greatukwaterblitz between 24-27 April. If you would like to join her then email Caryn to make arrangements & also let her know if anyone else has ordered a water testing kit.
Coming up – save the date!
6 – 14/6 Get Involved In Great Big Green Week
Get ready for Great Big Green Week (GBGW), the UK’s largest celebration of community action to tackle climate change and protect nature, returning this year from the 6th to the 14th of June! This year’s inspiring theme is “Together for good,” highlighting how everyday, collective community actions create real, practical benefits for our planet and our shared future. Whether you are an environmental expert or just want to make a local difference, there are endless ways to get involved—from organizing a simple clothes swap, community walk, or a local climate conversation cafe, to simply bringing an existing sports club or choir event under the GBGW banner. By hosting an activity, no matter how small or “low effort,” you will be joining a massive national movement to show politicians that we urgently care about a greener, fairer world. Start thinking now about what fun, local activities you or your community groups could organize to help us come together for good! Our Repair Cafe on 13th June will be part of GBGW activities. Please get in touch if you want to help or have another event you want to come under the GBGW banner – gbgw@casav.uk
News, campaigns & subgroup updates
Seed Sovereignty talk – 17/3
At our last CASaV meeting Catherine Howell, Seed Sovereignty Programme, asked us to imagine a positive future for seeds that is very different to the current situation – see her talk slides here:
seed-sovereignty-talk-slides-march-2026.pdf Currently 75% agricultural plant diversity has been lost since 1900 but diversity is essential for plant adaptation. Four seed companies (Corteva, ChemChina, BASF and Bayer control over 60% global seed market and 80%organic vegetable seed is imported. (65% non-organic).
What can we do?
– Buy locally or UK-grown, organic if possible, seasonally appropriate, food
– Grow as much of your own food as possible (but small is better than none!)
– Choose seeds that are UK-grown from independent suppliers that favour agro-ecological systems and have good business ethics e.g. Esk Seeds, Real Seeds, Seed of Scotland, Vital Seeds, Tamar Organics, Wales Seed Hub…
– Learn how to save your own seeds and share your spares!
Catherine discussed the resources on the Seedsovereignty website. She also highlighted Professor Tim Lang’s report on Food Resilience
We hope to organise a workshop on seed saving and processing in September/October – please let us know if you are interested.
Parliamentary Repair Cafe & Repair / Reuse Declaration 25/3
Kate represented our Repair & Reuse Cafe at the Parliamentary Repair Cafe at the invitation of Helen Hayes MP (spot our signature pink t shirt!). Over 100 UK Repair Cafe representatives and several national reuse organisations attended to hear talks by Mary Creagh, Minister for Nature (biodiversity, net zero, water quality, and environmental sustainability). Repair Cafe representatives talked directly to nearly 100 MPs who attended and persuaded them to sign the repairreusedeclaration calling for an expansion of the right to repair, making repair more accessible and affordable and prioritise reuse and repair over recycling. Kate also networked with other Repair Cafe representatives, sharing good practice and gleaning new ideas to expand our Repair & Reuse Cafe.
Ideas & news from the groups: Rethinking Resources (Not the Time to Waste) including Repair & Reuse Cafe
https://casav.uk/rr
This subgroup focuses on rethinking resources: rethinking & reducing consumption; repairing, repurposing and recycling materials that might otherwise go to landfill or incineration.
Please join us at this month’s zoom meeting on Tuesday 14/4 19.00 – 20.30: contact email Simon Gibbon for a zoom link
What’s in a name? Group name change from ‘Waste’ to ‘Rethinking Resources’
Initially we focused on waste management as a means of climate action e.g. by promoting local opportunities for recycling but have now expanded activities to move towards the more preferred options of the ‘waste hierarchy’ through circular management so it is time to rename the group!
For four years we have run Repair Cafes (and for most of that time we have been the top Repair Cafe in the UK for the number of items fixed per year!), saving thousands of items from landfill or incineration and saving thousands of pounds in cost of buying new for our local community.
We have been providing opportunities for reusing items e.g. the ‘Halloween Switch’ and ‘Xmas Xchange’ where people donated or swapped specialist clothing items which might otherwise have been used once and then discarded. Our collaborators have run successful Clothes Swap events where people have exchanged good quality clothing, reducing the need to buy new.
We have run crafting workshops to show people of all ages how to repurpose materials (which might otherwise have gone to waste) saving people the cost of buying new and saving the earth’s limited resources from manufacturing new.
We have now extended the successful Repair Cafes into being Repair & Reuse Cafes. We regularly fix broken and unwanted electrical and electronic items which the original owners donate to local communities in need to be reused. In addition to fixing broken items we have repurposed waste fabric into free draught excluders to not only save textiles from landfill but also save our community’s energy bills. Waste fabric has also been repurposed into free long lasting shopping bags to prevent plastic bag waste and plastic pollution. Unwanted books, magazines and crafting materials have been given away to be reused.
This month we will be extending this to gardening equipment reuse and in May we will focus on cookery books & kitchenware reuse, in June and July we will focus on toys, bikes and outside games. If you have unwanted items in these categories that you’d like someone to benefit from or if you are looking for free items like this to use for you and your family make sure you come to our upcoming Repair & Reuse Cafes!
Local recycling / repurposing collections
Medication blister packs – collection boxes now at Stokesley Community Library & the Discovery Centre, Great Ayton collected for recycling at Boots stores in Northallerton and Guisborough (or better still use the recycling points in these Boots stores directly).
Since restarting the collection box in Stokesley Community Library last November our group has ensured that nearly thirty standard bin bags full of blister packs have now been saved from waste.
Plastic milk bottle tops – Rea Funeral services, Stokelsey, raises funds for cancer research
Spectacles – Cooper & Barr, Stokesley collects unwanted spectacles to repurpose for good causes
Bras – donate usuable condition bras to raise funds for breast cancer research, collection boxes at Hutton Rudby GP Surgery as well as Mowbray House Surgery, Northallerton. We are hoping to launch a bra collection point in Stokesley or Great Ayton soon so look out for updates!
Used postage stamps, used but clean aluminium foil, children’s wellies, good condition underwear – all being collected locally for good causes contact Louise
Small electrical appliances – the Mind charity shop, Stokesley collects these for sale after safety testing.
Ideas & news from the groups: Nature Group
This subgroup focuses on discovering more about and supporting biodiversity and our living environment. Face to face meeting Thursday 16/4 15.00 at Stokesley Community Library, Stokesley. Contact Bridget Holmstrom for more information.
Members of the group have been busy this spring gathering essential data on the state of local biodiversity. Here are some ways in which you can join them getting outside in our glorious natural surroundings whilst also being valuable citizen scientists!
Wednesday 1/4 – 30/6 Birds in Greenspaces
The British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) is launching this survey to understand how many birds use and rely on our greenspaces. Open to all experience levels, with simple and flexible methods, BTO would like us to record the location & how long we spent there, and which birds and how many observed. There is a free app (Birds in Greenspaces) or
using a paper recording form via their website projects/greenspaces
Where to go in our area? Think of local parks, playing fields, village greens, local nature reserves, and cemeteries – they need to be free to access, and are at least 0.5 hectares (just smaller than a football pitch) within or next to a built-up area.
Monday 20/4 – Sunday 26/4 National Mammal Week
This is an annual celebration of Britain’s wild mammals, and the people working to monitor, protect and restore populations of these vital species. Find out about local organised activities as well as projects you can do as an individual national-mammal-week
Citizen Science: Butterflies
The recent warmer weather has brought out the first butterflies of the year. The website yorkshirebutterfliesgives information about sites around Yorkshire where you can observe butterflies. For some of these sites there is more detail contained in the butterfly-walks . The website also has recent sightings of the butterflies and moths in Yorkshire and information on recording and monitoring. You can record your Butterfly sightings also on the very handy iRecord Butterflies app. irecord-butterflies
Himalayan Balsam Management
This project has been set up to control the invasive species Himalayan balsam which is destroying biodiversity on the river Leven and tributaries from its source in Kildale to Crathorne. People are already working to reduce the extent of balsam on the river but there are significant areas of balsam for example between Great Ayton and Stokesley that need to be worked on. The group is working with the Tees River Trust to deliver training on species identification prior to ‘balsam bashing’ sessions – dates for both coming soon! If anyone is interested in joining the group please contact balsam@casav.uk.
Cod Beck Project 2026
The Nature Group is working on a larger project at the Cod Beck Reservoir and events held throughout 2026 may include bat walks, butterfly and moth walks, and fungus forays. We will be giving a training session on using the iNaturalist app with the help of representatives from the wider Cod Beck Discovery Project. More details will be given on Facebook and through the Balsam group. If you want to find out more please contact codbeck@casav.uk
Ideas & news from the groups: Food Group
This subgroup focuses on food & its impact on climate change – from growing your own and eating seasonally to reducing food going to waste. Meetings held bimonthly, next meeting online will be in contact Wendy Smith for a link to join
Foodshare – nightly food redistribution
Foodshare is a joint initiative by the Food and Waste groups and is organised by Jenny. EVERY evening at 9pm a volunteer collects surplus food from the Ayton Coop and Premier supermarket and both Stokesley Coops and takes it to various distribution centres (often in Middlesbrough) such as Nitelight (for homeless) for use/distribution to those in need. This is fresh food such as fruit, veg and bread, NOT tins and dried food that are needed by Food Banks.
Our group collects 40-60 kilos of food every day with a value of approx £250, worth £78,000 every year.
What can I do now? Jenny is always keen to recruit more volunteers to support the foodshare so if you feel this is something with which you could help, please contact Jenny here Jenny Earle.
Growing your own – good for you and the planet
Growing tip of the month:
The first leaves that appear when you sow seeds are the cotyledons or ‘seed leaves’. They often bear little resemblance to the true leaves but it is worth trying to learn them so they do not get weeded out.
Wendy has been busy stocking up the Seed Share at Stokesley Community Library – pop in to pick up free flower and vegetable seeds. Growing your own not only benefits you physically, it’s also good for your mental health too, read more here why-gardening-is-good-for-your-mental-health
There is also a Seed Share / Swap at the Discovery Centre, Great Ayton and at this month’s Repair & Reuse cafe.
Ideas & news from the groups: Energy
This subgroup focuses on using sustainable energy sources & energy saving in the home
Help Us warm Up Our Community!
Do you have an eye for detail and a passion for planet-friendly living? Climate Action Stokesley and Villages (CASaV) is launching an exciting new project to help our community beat the chill and lower their energy bills. We are planning to apply for a National Lottery “Awards for All” grant to fund a thermal imaging camera, allowing us to show residents exactly where their homes are leaking heat. By identifying these “cold spots,” we can provide practical advice on making local homes cosier, cheaper to run, and much greener.
Before we hit “send” on our grant application, we need you!
We are looking for enthusiastic volunteers to join our Energy sub-group to help coordinate and carry out these surveys. You don’t need to be an energy expert or a tech wizard—we are going to be learning from other areas’ local groups, who will provide all the training you need to use the camera and interpret the results. Whether you can spare a few hours a month to visit homes or prefer to help with the behind-the-scenes organising, your contribution will make a tangible difference in our community’s fight against climate change. If you can help please email energy@casav.uk
Powering Stokesley and Villages: Now is the Time for Community Energy!
Recently, CASaV attended the “Seeing is Believing” community energy event hosted by the North East and Yorkshire Net Zero Hub. The event brought together experts and local groups to showcase how ordinary communities are taking control of their local energy systems—and the main takeaway is that there has never been a better time for us to launch our own local energy initiatives.
Why Now? The national momentum behind community energy is growing at an unprecedented rate. Through the recently announced Local Power Plan, the government has pledged £1 billion to support over 1,000 local and community energy projects. Additionally, there is now an abundance of tailored support, one-to-one expert surgeries, and grant funding specifically designed to help community groups get their ideas off the ground.
Successfully setting up community energy projects allows us to generate clean, renewable power, but it also does so much more. It keeps financial benefits circulating within our local economy, builds community resilience, and significantly lowers energy bills for vital community buildings.
What Are Our Next Steps? We already have great local ambitions. We want to acquire thermal imaging cameras to help residents identify heat loss in their homes, and we are eager to get solar panels installed on the roofs of our local schools. While we have faced some roadblocks in the past—such as navigating school trusts and Church of England approvals—the event opened new doors. We have connections to specialised net-zero officers and successful sustainability groups from nearby areas who are ready to help us break through these specific barriers.
The key lesson from the event is that we don’t need to start with anything big. Other highly successful community groups started with something as small as two solar panels on an allotment. Starting small builds confidence, allows us to test our ideas, and proves to future funders that we can deliver.
Get Involved! We are looking for enthusiastic community members to help us turn these energy ideas into reality. Whether you have professional experience in planning or finance, a bit of spare time to help with community engagement, or simply a passion for making Stokesley and our villages greener and more resilient, we need you.
Let’s harness this momentum together. Please get in touch with CASaV today to find out how you can get involved in shaping our local energy future! energy@casav.uk
Ideas & news from the groups: Environment & Climate Osmotherley (ECO) Group
Environment Climate Osmotherley (ECO) meets regularly and holds events which raise awareness and address local environmental issues such as becoming a Dark Skies Village and increasing local biodiversity.
Contact Becci Wright for more information
Signing off
If you have any news or any event / activity you would like promoting on next month’s (May’s) update please email Kate Gibbon by Thursday 23/4
Hope to see you at the whole group meeting Tuesday 21/4 19.30 at Stokesley Community Library
Kate Gibbon,
on behalf of the Climate Action Stokesley and Villages Steering Group Steering group:
Bridget Holmstrom, Caryn Loftus, Ron Kirk, Barry Warrington, Helen Almond, Simon Gibbon
Climate Action Stokesley and Villages 