Linda cobbingApril 2011
OVERVIEW
Linda volunteers with Transition Finsbury Park and manages a variety of small local projects using a material called cob, which is essentially clay, to bring communities together.
MOTTOES
‘Our name is mud!’ or ‘building communities naturally’.
It’s a ‘straight forward process’ or ‘Dinosaur pooh’.
WHAT IS IT?
Cob is an ancient earth building technique which uses a combination of earth, straw, sand and water. Working with alternative materials that recycles skills and materials within a community. The recycled ingredients can be mixed together by hand and or stomped with feet. The mix is formed into lumps or "cobs" which are pressed together to form the walls of a building or turned into a house, cob sculpture or structure, such as a cob oven or work bench. However, within London there are restrictions as the city has limited land space for some of these initiatives.
WHY DO YOU DO THIS?
It breaks down social barriers and people feel a sense of achievement as they have created something from scratch. People work together as a team to achieve a common goal and if any mistakes are made they are easily fixed. All of which is also good for physical and spiritual journeys. Meditation and Alexander techniques work in similar ways.
Linda runs a variety of projects locally whereby she works with local communities to build with cob, these groups of people have previously included:
- School Children
- Building parties with youth offenders
- Corporate parties and group - to bring people together, to promote teamwork in the workplace
All of these projects have identified goals upfront and they use the cob building process to reach these goals.
HOW DID YOU GET INVOLVED IN WORKING WITH COB?
Trained in 2008/09 in Ireland where Linda met Rob Hopkins who was one of the first people to build his own house out of cob materials and promote the concept to others. Rob moved to Totnes, Devon and started the Transition Movement. The cob work is a passion of Linda's, which is treated separately to her day to day life as a consultant.
WHAT MATERIALS ARE REQUIRED?
All raw materials are reused from sites and materials that are destined for transit to a refill site. All of the materials are either natural resources or recycled materials that are reused for local community projects. Materials include:
- Mud sourced from the ground
- Straw sourced from local farmers yards
- Sand sourced from the ground, sand pits and construction sites
- and volunteers
the mud look is inWHAT IS THE PROCESS?
In a nutshell the process is as follows:
- Mix the straw, mud and sand together
- Create a mixture of dry solid/hard, with wet clay
- Stomp clay with feet or hands
- Pat together to make clay bricks
- Build good foundations and begin layering a structure
The bricks and structure slowly dry out. On hot days the drying process is sped up. It takes approximately 6 months to dry completely. It can then last for 100 years or it can be melted back to disintegrate sooner, depending on the need of the material.
If it’s built to last for a shorter period of time the rain will wash away and corrode the walls of the structure.
WHAT ARE THE LOCAL PROJECTS YOU HAVE RECENTLY BEEN INVOLVED WITH?
flatbread frenzyPooles Park Primary School
Brief: grow things and cook them locally
Materials: rubble, mud, sand, straw
Items built: An earth kitchen consisting of an oven (6 by 4 metres), a work bench, handles and two benches. The oven was used to cook flat breads and mini pizzas for the children. This is an easy material with no machinery required.
How did you engage people?: Local children and families took part in this project. The children owned the project, which meant that they had a lot of fun building the cob kitchen, which would eventually work to cook pizzas to feed the community.
Vauxhall City Farm Project
Brief: To alleviate the status of ecology and create a training space.
How did you engage people?: The young farmers would pretend that they were designers and they built mini sculptures and put together farm selected designs. One included, a scarab beetle with wooden wings which housed beetles that lived underneath it.
Activities: Festivals, Blue grass band and Pond dipping
PROJECTS THAT ARE COMING UP
Kentish Town
When: May/June 2011
What: Building a community gardening space to grow edible plants and foods
Meadow Orchard Project (supported by the Transition Crouch End group)
When: June/July 2011
Where: Crouch End, site in the building
What is it for?: The area is used for growing food
Why?: It draws out people from the environment and people learn a skill. The scheme is created by the local communities to create a balance of needs and competition in the area.
Activities include: side workshops, mosaics, polly tunnels, growing sap from trees to make maple syrup.
BUILDING A LARGE PORTABLE OVEN PROJECT
When: September 2011
Why: To cook food with at the Well Oiled Festival on the 17th September at Finsbury Park between 2pm – 8pm. All of the community is welcome to attend this event. For further details about the festival see the following link.
http://transitionfinsburypark.org.uk/WellOiled2011
Video of cob mix at Pooles Park Primary in early stages followed by Linda talking about process.
Video of finished mix.
