I thought that now the site is up and running you would want to meet the guy who built it. Go for it Simon…

Chooseday is such a simple idea that I caught the passion straightaway. The important point is that we choose to change or not. And if we do, the outcome is identifiable. The idea driving Chooseday is that together, in neighbourhoods, work-places, schools, everywhere, if we all choose to reconsider our lifestyles we can do something about climate change, but it needs some connectivity between us all.

Climate change can be difficult to appreciate: it is a big concept. Arguably the biggest on the planet. The chooseday.org web site is designed with this in mind. It is currently relatively small, with a few core features enabling people to sign up and support the idea. But it has within it the capacity to grow, adapt and change according to demand, so that, with time it could become the focus of an online and also a real world community of individuals joining together to make a difference. Currently, we have a ‘join us’ section and a newsletter, but with time this will grow.

My design ethos behind the site has been to keep it simple. It’s a simple choice…

Simon Bale, web site design

Having been to a Climate Change Speaker Training Day on Saturday I was interested to learn that the phrase ‘I’m not perfect’ is felt to be really important in communicating about climate change. I wonder why?

I suspect that people approach changing their lifestyles with some trepidation and one of their fears is meeting others who are further on the journey, who make them feel bad about themselves. How refreshing then to hear others admit that ‘I’m not perfect’ and to recognise that we are all living highly compromised lives today and that we all need to journey to something better.

Chooseday wants to be the sort of movement that encourages new people take their first steps in re-imagining their lifestyles in response to climate change. We want Chooseday to feel truly welcoming and great fun to be part of.

People keep asking me who it is doing our design work. So I asked Jon and Sean of Eatcake Design (www.eatcakedesign.co.uk )to tell us about their encounter with Chooseday.

“Right from our initial meeting with Chris we were very excited about the whole concept of Chooseday and it’s possible applications. Taking such a strong idea and finding ways of communicating it visually is what we are all about. Not only that, the aims of Chooseday were something Eatcake could sign up to without hesitation.”

September 14th

Good news - we have just agreed to employ Josh Hart, for a few weeks initially, to help launch Chooseday.

Josh was born in Stuttgart in Germany and has lived in both London and San Francisco. He has worked for ten years in the sustainable transport field and is currently doing a Masters at UWE in transport planning. Josh sees climate change as an opportunity to create livable and reinvigorated local communities, and says he is thrilled to be working with Chooseday to make it happen.

 Josh joins Penny Gane and Chris Sunderland as part of the Chooseday team.

Friday September 14th

Thanks Giovanni for your story about what you are doing and for introducing the car club.

My guess is that there are a lot of others like you who are already doing Chooseday in the sense of biking, walking and generally enjoyong getting around the city without a car. And you may feel there is not much more you can do.

But actually what you can do is massive, because Chooseday is going to be dependent on people like you passing the message on. There are so many in the mainstream of our society who are waiting to get involved, looking for something they can do that is genuinely significant. We would ask all those who are already ‘doing Chooseday’ to spread the word, come to the cafe, get the T shirt and sell the T shirt. And lets build a movement that really makes a difference to our carbon footprint.