Civic Societies Forum

Would your Civic Society be interested in voting on a shortlist of winning CTA schemes for your region?

2008-04-24T05:49:32+00:00

Civic Societies provide invaluable support to the Civic Trust Awards and as we enter the schemes 50th anniversary in 2009, we would like to seek your views and gain support for a new initiative to recognise some of the past Civic Trust Award winning schemes.

Do you feel Civic Societies and other members of the comminity would be interested in voting on a shortlist of winning CTA schemes for your region? Some of these schemes date back to 1959 and we would like for the community to determine which of these schemes has been the most successful for that region.

We would like to secure some regional funding to allow this idea to develop, but ideally we would like to recognise the “best” past winning schemes at the CTA Awards Event in March 2009.

Your views on this idea would be appreciated so that we can establish the likely success of the initiative - with a deadline for feedback to be received by Wednesday 28th May 2008.

In order to send us your comments, please CLICK post reply and tell us what you think.

Civic Trust Award Winners - Did we get it right????

2008-04-01T15:22:10+00:00

Thirty schemes from around the UK have won awards at a major ceremony in Newcastle on Wednesday 12th March. The Civic Trust Awards originally attracted over 400 entrants, and the winners are projects that are recognised as culturally, socially or economically beneficial, and make an outstanding contribution to the quality and appearance of the environment.

Chair of the Civic Trust, Philip Kolvin said: “This year’s winners include private houses and public spaces, museums, schools and public art. We are proud that the Awards encompass such a wide range of schemes, and allow commercial developments to compete with community projects in providing better places for people.”

Was Philip right, should the Civic Trust have given the Awards it did? Did we Award a Scheme that you did not agree with? Perhaps we did not award something you felt was particularly worthy?

We would be keen to hear your comments????

Design Champions - does your authority have one?

2008-03-30T10:40:07+00:00

The task of Design Champions, at councillor and officer level is to raise and maintain a high profile for quality design in the built environment within their organisations and localities and ensure the inclusion of quality design considerations within relevant strategy, policy and development documents.

Over 80 local authorities already have a design champion but the Civic Trust would like to see all 354 local authorities sign up to this initiative and encourage excellence in design.

Do you think the Design Champion Initiative is working? Could Local Authorities do more to promote it? Do you even know who your Design Champion is? Discuss this here!

Does any other society organise a Design Award?

2008-04-02T09:05:56+00:00

A current initiative we have is looking at developing a Design Award Scheme as we see this linking in with getting the local authority to also employ a design champion.

We want to show that we are the leaders in recognising excellence locally. The amount of buildings that are erected that are constructed with no imagination really does annoy us. We have decided to investigate an Award scheme to shame the powers that be that only schemes that benefit the community will be accepted.

We are also thinking about a top 10 list of the worst buildings although that will come a little bit further down the line. (again if anyone has done something similar we would love to hear about it.

I have created a poll to see if between us we can work out how many Civic Societies are organising Design Awards. Information like this would be really useful to show to our local authority to get financial support.

Become a Local Advisor for the Civic Trust Awards

2008-04-24T08:47:42+00:00

The Civic Trust Awards relies on the hard work and support of hundreds of voluntary judges. All entries are judged and visited regardless of location, size or scale.

Each area has its own assessment team. An Architect Assessor appointed by the Awards Team leads the ‘Team’ and an Access Advisor, a Local Advisor and the Liaison Officer supports them. The team will assess all of the schemes in the area and comments on the aesthetics, quality of the materials and finished building, accessibility of the scheme, sustainability of the scheme and local opinion.

Assessments take approximately one day, however in some areas the high numbers of schemes and the distance between schemes can mean more than one day is required. The assessment day takes place between the end of September and the end of October.

The Civic Trust Awards team are looking for Local Advisors to participate in the Awards. Generally Local Advisors include someone who is not and hasn’t been a planner or architect, but someone who has an interest in the built environment and isn’t afraid to speak up and represent the local community’s opinion. This is to ensure that a scheme is brings recognised benefits to the local community. If you think this is something you would consider why not contact

In addition as the Civic Trust Awards is continuing to grow we are always on the lookout for additional Assessors to help with assessing entries into the Awards. If this is something you would be interested in learning more about please click here