Greenpeace has enlisted the help of the Cowshed Recording Studio in London to build a low-carbon straw bale recording studio (also called Cowshed).

The studio has been built in a bid to encourage festival goers to record their very own 1960s-style protest songs. Environmental issues are the main focus, and Greenpeace is planning to use the best tune to celebrate the launch of a new Greenpeace Rainbow Warrior boat later in the year.

Some great pictures of the eco-friendly recording studio being built show what a lovely structure it is, with a raw-log frame complete with all the knotty, knobbly bits. And with the straw in place, the whole thing looks rather cosy.

Just about all of us, one way or another, are fed up with the status quo, and one of our most effective communication tools – music – has been failing to reflect this adequately. We’re calling on all left-field artists, musicians, writers; everyone who opposes exploitation, destruction, corruption, manipulation and fraud – stuff that has become staple fodder of the increasingly half-baked media reporting we routinely ignore. Raising Voices aims to use the uniquely positive environment that is Glastonbury to build momentum around the protest song.

- Joe Leach, Cowshed Studios London

For more information, you can check out the Cowshed’s Facebook page and the Cowshed’s Tumblr Blog (where you can also see some of the recent recordings from Glastonbury goers).

Meanwhile, those of us who aren’t lucky enough to be enjoying the muddy wonders of the Park Stage (Radiohead are apparently doing a “surprise” set this evening) the stone circle and Shangri La can instead enjoy this video of the Super Furry Animals at Glastonbury 2007 performing — rather aptly — Slow Life.

Recommended reading:
How to have a greener festival. Judy gives some top tips on how to make your weekend of music and camping more eco-friendly.

Øya Festival: Norway’s coolest and greenest music festival

Three of the best slow life festivals

And for more green Glasto news elsewhere on the web, check out:

Organic Energy provides hot water at Glastonbury with its zero carbon wood pellet boilers

Glastonbury cuts water bills with flow instrumentation‎

If you enjoy a spot of wildlife watching — and the wealth of nature programmes like BBC’s Springwatch would suggest a lot of us do — it might be worth considering getting involved in some of the tracking and sighting projects that take place across the world.

Essentially, these projects are based on interactive maps, where you can add your own sightings of particular species.

Here are our current favourites:

Butterfly Conservation

The Butterfly Conservation is currently running a campaign to spot the Painted Lady butterfly or the Humming-bird Hawk-moth. All you need to do is add your pin to the map, along with details of your sighting. If you’re blessed with a beautiful garden, you shouldn’t have to look too far for examples.

UKWaspWatch

UK Wasp Watch is an initiative by Rentokil, the pest control company, to track wasp sightings across the UK. Sometimes, species need to be tracked for the safety of humans too. This is a useful resource for tracking wasp nests, and the movement also has a charitable edge. For every sighting submitted, 20p is donated to The Anaphylaxis Campaign by Rentokil.

You can submit a sighting by using the hashtag #UKWaspWatch on twitter, submitting it through the form on Facebook, or by logging it straight onto the website.

Whale Watching

If you live in Australia, you might want to check out the Whale Watching website, which regularly updates both its website and Twitter account with sightings of various whale breeds around the coast of New South Wales.

Sea Turtle Sightings

Residents of Southern New England can contribute their sea turtle trackings to this site. The great thing about this particular initiative is that it helps boaters locate areas where sea turtles have been spotted. Those areas can be avoided in future,  reducing the chances of the turtles coming to harm.

Do you know of any great wildlife tracking initiatives? Let us know in the comments or on Twitter.

That was the question that the people over at Hulger asked themselves, which is why we now have the Plumen 001 — an eco-friendly lightbulb that is a thing of beauty in its own right.

And there’s no doubt that compact fluorescent lightbulbs needed a bit of a PR makeover. The press loves composing stories about people hoarding incandescent bulbs, terrified that they’ll have to live their lives in the full glare of CFLs once their supply runs dry.

Having to wait a few seconds for a bulb to emit its full potential is apparently quite traumatic for some.

Hulger hasn’t tried to tackle those who fear for the future of their dimmer switches, opting to appeal to the aesthetes instead. And it’s about time! Quite why so many CF bulbs are designed to be long and lean is a mystery — it just means they end up with their ugly bottoms poking out of the base of your lampshade.

The Plumen bulbs are designed to be pretty enough to go completely nude — in fact, if you don’t get a flash of bulb bottom you might feel a bit disappointed.

You can buy them from the Plumen shop. They’re available with bayonet and screw tops and there’s a choice of US, European and UK formats. They cost £19.95 and they last eight times longer than incandescent bulbs.

Plumen

Image: Plumen

So far, so Slow.

Harmony and flow is the key to this £2.2m grand design home, recently completed at Darras Hall, Ponteland in Northumberland, UK, according to interior designer Nicola O’Donnell.

The contemporary family home set in 0.6 acres of landscaped garden with mature trees has been designed, built and decked out by Nicola and her husband Liam, a developer. (It’s got to be handy having a developer husband, hey?)

Liam has a passion for contemporary design and energy-efficient buildings while Nicola draws her inspiration from nature to turn the design into a family-friendly environment.

“Liam has a passion for contemporary design and ecological, energy efficient building methods,” says Nicola. “He takes his inspiration from anywhere in the world and develops a unique look and feel for the building.

“My inspiration comes from nature and in Northumberland there is plenty to inspire. It is my task to turn the grand design into a warm, welcoming environment.”

It’s eco creds — about which we look forward to hearing more — are more than matched by its luxury creds.

The house boasts a 9×4-metre indoor swimming pool, five bedrooms with three en-suite, a sunken Zen garden, decked courtyard, a two-car garage, a living room with home cinema, games room, gym, large kitchen / dining area and a family room.

The home is designed to be ‘future proof’ with a server room and home hub controlling whole-house-audio, mood lighting, garden lighting, under floor heating, pool heating and filtration, data, audio and internet feeds.

But how many of those crowd-sourced public displays of silliness involve bicycles?

Well, we’ve done you a handy run down of some of the best bike-based flash mobs out there.

Do let us know if we’ve missed any; we can’t get enough of watching videos of surprised onlookers; there’s always a man with a face like thunder, pursing his lips in disapproval.

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Choir, bike, beat-box flash mob combo

Sticking with the traditional train station location, this Belgian flash mob involves bike stunts, an operatic arrangement of Queen’s Bicycle Race and some last-minute beat boxing.

Mojo Media (“cross media storytellers”), set up the flash rock opera to promote 11.11.11‘s “De Ronde van 11” event. 11.11.11 is a not-for-profit that fights for a fairer world without poverty.

It’s hard to work out exactly what the “bike event” they are promoting is all about, as the website doesn’t work and all the media around it is in Flemish (or a bit vague).

Whatever it is, it appears to involve encouraging people to use bikes, of which we heartily approve. You can watch a behind-the-scenes video for more Queen-based singing.

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Boris Bikes flash spinning class.

What do you do with a bank of unused “Boris Bikes” from London’s cycle-hire scheme?

If you are self-facilitating media nodes, Knuk (“a London-based multi-disciplinary collaborative studio where the combination of our varied backgrounds leads to powerful effects of creative synergy”), you hold an impromptu spinning class.

A lot of the commenters on YouTube have got themselves in a tizzy by what they see as an abuse of the Boris Bikes; a quick glance at YouTube reveals there are plenty more Boris Bike abuse videos to get angry about.

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Interpretive bicycle dance flash mob

This is what I imagine the world would look like if bicycle-loving zombie mimes took over the universe.

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Critical Mass

Of course, no round up of Flash Mobs Involving Bicycles (of which there are many this one) would be complete without something from Critical Mass to Represent.

And if you want to be scarred by Critical Mass gone wrong, tentatively click on these videos of a driver driving straight through Critical Mass Brazil, a guy getting his foot run over and a car running into a whole group after the traffic cop waves cyclists through a red light.

So when I visited my hippy friends down in our woodland, I was excited to see their temporary “bender” in the garden.

A bender is a woven wooden structure with a tarp thrown over the top.

With a thin cotton tarp and a wide open doorway, the bender provided shelter from the heat and direct access to lawn-based sun lounging.

You’ll see all kinds of variations on this simple theme, with more adventurous types building in windows and doors — and even flooring (for the more permanent sit-in protest type dwellings).

Rather than buy one of those ugly plastic gazebos or tents from [insert name of nearest cheap store or supermarket], you could take the Slow Life approach and build yourself a tent in the garden.
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How to build a bender

My friend is a skilled weaver of the thin and supple hazel that grows in our woodland.

She makes a simple dome frame by interlacing green (ie fresh-cut) hazel into a sturdy structure.

Here is a great guide to making a bender in the Roma Gypsy style. This is a more basic framework than my friend’s — though she would tell you to start making it and add bits to it as you go until you’re happy.

The great thing about a shelter like this is that you can incorporate whatever materials you have lying around. Old doors, things you still haven’t taken to the tip, plastic sheets, old duvet covers, the bits you chopped off the over-grown bush in the front garden — the world is your oyster.
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How to make a tipi

If building a bender is a little bit ambitious (or if you’re still trying to locate a cheap and sustainable source of hazel) a sheet of cotton canvas, some rope and a large pole can work wonders.

There are plenty of ambitious types who will give you detailed instructions on how to build a teepee (or tipi), but you really can keep it simple.

Some long-handled brooms, a sheet and plenty of tent pegs and ropes have provided us with some lovely dens over the years.

Probably not strictly a teepee, but while the purists are arguing semantics, we’ll be having a little snooze in our camp.

Top tip: when attaching ropes to sheets, put a stone in the fabric and tie the rope around that. It’s more secure and prevents tearing. (Thanks to the Happy Campers for that one)

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How to build a garden shelter

(courtesy of Woodlands.co.uk)

Recommended reading:

New Slowdown Skill: learn to navigate by the stars

New Slowdown Skill: make a patchwork quilt

How to buy a woodland

Check out all the Slowdown Skills on Jorg&Olif.

Image: London Permaculture’s Build a Bender Set.

It’s an admirable move, and the stamps cover everything from buying local producing using reusable bags, to sharing rides and riding your bike. The stamps, featuring tiny green cartoons, are clearly aimed at children. It’s no bad thing to encourage the next generation to be more green.

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21st Century kids

The thing is, children don’t write letters any more. They email. Or text. Or IM/DM/FB each other. So we either need to encourage kids to  put pen to paper more (surely the slow life communication equivalent of the various technological advances), or look at how we can get the messages of green living across to the next generation using new technologies.

I’d love to see more people writing letters: there’s something particularly lovely about receiving a hand written letter in the post. But using the postal service has its downsides…

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Setting an example

Amusingly, as Good.is points out, the United States Postal Service itself is not particularly efficient or green. Perhaps addressing their own processes and business approach is a more effective way of passing on the green message to the next generation.

However, if the stamps inspire conversation in American households around the issues of green living, at least they will have achieved something.

Some of the stamps on sale (with the tips from USPS):

Plant trees. Besides producing oxygen and removing carbon dioxide and contaminants from the air, trees and other plants provide a habitat for birds and other wildlife.

Adjust the thermostat. Every degree you lower your thermostat in cold weather, or raise it during hot weather, can lower your energy bill by 3 percent and conserve valuable natural resources.

Use public transportation. Taking the bus, train or carpooling vs. driving your own car saves gas, money and reduces pollution.

USPS Stamps

Related:

Leave a personal note with a handmade calling card

Rediscover the lost art of letter-writing

That seems to be the stock question about five minutes after I’ve walked into a museum or gallery.

There’s something strangely soporific about the air in a museum. Perhaps it’s the gentle hush, or the calming lighting, or maybe it’s just that by the time you’ve got yourself through the crowds of shoppers and into the cool air of your local cultural haven, looking at artefacts pales in comparison with the baking smell emanating from the canteen.

It doesn’t help that we seem to think we’ve got to see it all. Apparently, we spend just eight seconds looking at each exhibit in our bid to stare at every item on display.

Slow Art Day is a bid to change all that.

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Global Slow Art Day

Rather than whizz round trying to take it all in, Slow Art Day founder, Phil Terry, wants us to spend five to 10 minutes really appreciating each piece.

And because there won’t be time to see everything before the cafe sucks us all in, just a handful of pieces should get the slow treatment.

Each Slow Art event will be hosted by a volunteer who will gather the group for lunch in the cafe where they can discuss the artworks or artefacts witnessed.

The plan is that the group will keep meeting for more slow experiences. This is the Slow-Life Movement in action — and what a great way to meet fellow lovers of slow living!

If you’re keen to get involved — either as a host or as an attendee — there is a huge list of cities and venues taking part, which you can find over on the Slow Art Day website. There are already over 90 volunteers involved and all this has been achieved without funding: this global event is being powered entirely by enthusiasm.

Slow Art Day 2011 – Saturday, 16 April

Also in April:

International Downshifting Week (end of April)

Slow Fashion Bistro (16th April – same as Slow Art Day)

John Brown, founder of the Slow Home Movement, has criticised many so-called eco-friendly houses for being fast when they’re claiming to be slow.

In an interview with the Miami Herald, he picks out “low-flow toilets, solar panels and bamboo flooring” as products that are often used as green window dressing for a house that is ultimately not all that sustainably built.

Greenwashing has long been the scourge of the environmental movement, and we’ve all been suckered into buying something we thought was the ethical option only to find it was less wholesome than we’d expected (see “bamboo: eco-friendly or greenwash? on Eco Salon”).

Recently, I visited an ‘eco-friendly’ office space that promised to be one of the most green buildings you could work in. The man showing me round made a lot of fuss out of the amazing rubber floor, which was made from recycled tyres.

He also made a lot of fuss about the fact that no one in Europe made recycled rubber floor tiles so they bought them over from America.

I didn’t point out the obvious flaw in their eco flooring.
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What is the Slow Home Movement?

If you haven’t already seen it, the Slow Home Studio website is well worth a visit.

John Brown and his partners Carina van Olm and Matthew North run an architectural firm with the focus on slow design and sustainable building principles.

The Slow Home Studio is the place where they gather all their knowledge on “practical sustainability” and “design with depth”.

Although not quite as extreme as the Small House Movement, many of the principles are the same, with a focus on good design and houses that “flow” in a way that maximises light, movement and space.

Check out their 10 Steps to a Slow Home, which is a great introduction to the movement (and a litmus test for how Slow your own home is). There’s also a very handy video –  Creating A Slow Home — which offers advice on how to slow down your home.

[Source: Walletpop A Real Eco-Friendly House Avoids Meaningless 'Environmental Bling]

This passion with everything seasonal constantly grew, and the couple became curious about the effects of the seasons. So one day, when the couple pondered ‘Could you travel at the speed of spring?’, they decided to take some time to find out.

The result is Chasing Spring, a documentary website where they aim to find out what happens when spring moves up the UK.

Starting at Land’s End, the couple are taking two months to travel up to John o’Groats on their bikes, interviewing people as they go to find out how spring changes things.

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The Chasing Spring Documentary

Chasing Spring is full of videos, blog posts and photos, along with regular Twitter and Facebook updates on the pair’s adventure.

A recent update by Izzy details everything from the cycling facilities and roads of Bristol, to the little changes in nature that she notices while on her bike. It’s beautifully written, and Izzy paints such a clear picture that you feel like you’re there.

Matt’s updates have a more humourous edge, and his interest seems to be more firmly rooted in the impact on the people he meets. There’s content there for everyone to enjoy and find something of interest.

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The ripple effect

It’s not all about Matt and Izzy though. There’s a community page which allows visitors to add their own pictures of spring. Story submissions are encouraged too.

The thing I really love about Chasing Spring, is that it makes you stop and look around your own environment for signs of spring.

Yesterday, during a dog walk, I took the time to notice the cherry blossom tree behind my house, and the daffodils popping up along the lane.

It’s one of the most exciting seasons, so it’s great that Izzy and Matt can encourage more of us to stop and observe all the changes.

Are you following Chasing Spring? Have you noticed the signs of spring?

Image: [michelle brunner]