Highlights of 2011 part 1

This has been another great year, in which our campaigners have achieved a lot. Here are some of the highlights.

This picture comes from a session where we were making seed bombs for going out and doing a bit of guerilla gardening - getting plants growing in pieces of wasteland.

And here was another piece of guerilla gardening that we did - planting sunflower seeds around Digbeth. Did you see any growing? There were certainly a few, although not as many as we planted, but it was a good social activity, too.

As a group that believes in the political process and engaging with politicians to win arguments on the evidence base we have, it is important that we speak to politicians in person. This year we have been very active at lobbying in person, as well as sending lots of emails, letters and petitions off.

This photo is from the HS2 debate we put on in partnership with Sustainability West Midlands. We had Christian Wolmar and Mike Geddes speaking against, with Jim Steer and Martin Dyer speaking for it creating a sustainable transport system and more jobs. Adrian Goldberg of BBC radio WM did an excellent job of chairing for us on a night when passion ran high amongst the large audience.

This was from Aston University's Go Green week, where we spoke to students about environmental questions around energy and cold homes - getting them to rate their digs and then created a video of it.

This is one of a few videos we've done this year with the help of Mandy Staunton - thanks to her for all the work she's done on that.

We arranged a Green Spring Fair in May at the Prince of Wales in Moseley, where we also held regular Swap Shops in the first half of the year.

A practical way to reduce waste is to try to find people who want the things you no longer do. The Swap Shop was really successful in this, with all kinds of odd bits of wire and cables finding someone who wanted them when otherwise they would just have been in the bottom of a drawer or gone to waste. There were clothes, bags and books, too.