Friday evening saw a different type of "meeting" being tried out. For the last year or so the City Council has been paying for ward based events for residents, councillors, agency reps etc. (LCVS would do the organisation and publicity) I had felt that our ones in Cressington weren't quite hitting the mark - you never really got in depth discussion of an issue but people who wanted to make a quick contact on a single issue were forced to sit through a lot of other stuff. So we tried a different format which was a series of stalls - Councillors, PCT, police etc - with a general invitation for residents to come and talk to whoever they wanted to. We invited along organisations like Bulky Bobs, Rotters etc as well. We were reasonably lucky with the weather and set up outside Garston Leisure Centre (the idea being that this was a time and place with a lot of people around). It felt a lot fresher and easier and I did manage to speak to some people who had not been at the previous meetings. And obviously where a more in depth follow up is needed it will happen.
We will probably try some other formats and venues over the next year.
2 comments:
I was not even aware of them, has there been any publicity?
Yes there has but I have reservations about it. LCVS has in the past produced fliers and some posters and sent some letters out - but these haven't, for whatever reason - hit the spot. There have been press releases too and I have copied some of the information onto www.garstonld.org.uk.
This time I organised a letter to go to roughly 300 houses nearest the venue we were using and Peter Millea did a short leaflet drop as well.
The events have existed for more than a year but I have all along argued that they weren't hitting the spot either because of format or publicity.
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