Region:
Yorkshire & HumbersideOur regional Civic Societies Week was very successful with nearly half of our seventy-five societies putting on an event of some kind. We also had a successful launch, hosted by Barnsley Civic Trust, where we had writer and broadcaster John Grundy as our guest speaker. During the week, I managed to see many of our societies in action on their home turf, people were getting stuck in and getting on with it, literally reaching out to their communities. On 25th October, at our meeting in Ripon, we will be awarding a trophy and £250 to the society which, in the opinion of the assessment team, demonstrated the most enterprise. All welcome.
We have been studying the Policy Exchange report ‘Cities Unlimited’, mis-reported in the media as a document requiring northerners to move south from their towns and cities which are not worth regenerating. Whilst I found much to disagree with, the section advocating giving more power to local elected bodies and less to unelected quangos like the regional development agencies, struck a chord. (Is this the opposite to what is happening with the Sub-National Review?) Something must be done to improve our local democracy, with its shockingly poor election turnouts, and to unlock all the latent energy and talent which does not, at present, engage with local issues.
I am getting my teeth in to my role as a Civic Trust Trustee. I have the following specific responsibilities:
1. To represent the interests of the civic society movement in discussions of the Board of Trustees;
2. To champion the civic society movement both inside the Civic Trust and with external stakeholders; and
3. To sit on the National Committee for Civic Societies and to support the Chair in helping to build a modern, vibrant civic society movement
After six years as chairman of YHACS and after getting to see a fair number of our societies in action, I am convinced that we need a revolution in what we do to keep up with the astonishing rate of change affecting society. We need to be stronger in campaigning, in project work, in building our image, in publicising what we do and then in raising funds to do it all. And, for me, this applies at local, regional and national level. I know there are many people working on this and that it won’t happen overnight. But if we are to have a viable, thriving civic society movement in the future, this must be the way to go, maintaining the status quo is not an option.
Peter Cooper
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