Notes from ACTion With Communities (ACT & VAC) in Cumbria AGM- 9th Nov 2010
Formal Business then the following speakers:
Rural Cumbria & The Big Society (Nicola Kirby)
Big Society = movement of powers for central to local government, an active involvement by citizens in their local community, support (but nor necessarily financial) for charities. National there are 4 community vanguards and one of those is Eden. The area covered has 3 clusters made up of over 30 parishes and they have completed community action and fundraising plans for the future.
Rural Advocacy, the Rural Share and the Rural Challenge (Roger Roberts)
ACT work to:
Help communities with emergency planning strategies for issues such as flooding
Whole Valley project works with various agencies & local farmers to tackle environmental issues that effect communities as a whole.
Tebay & Orton Project is a sense of place project working with the local community they have undergone archaeology workshops and plan to utilize part of a local church as a local heritage information/ records centre.
Provide a directory of community assets e.g. village halls.
Exchange is a project where communities have lost assets (shop, post office) and work to try and create a local exchange (cafe, book exchange) so people have somewhere to meet and be sociable.
BASIS is for developing youth & rural organisations, helping to develop marketing, planning, policies etc.
OCSI were procured to produce a statistical document that looked at local communities below the super output area level. The aim was to count people as individuals instead of percentages to gain a real visualization of where deprivation (transport, services, income, unemployment, fuel poverty) lay throughout Cumbria. This document may be useful for future grant applications and is titled The Rural Share of Deprivation in Cumbria.
The Tebay & Orton Project (Annie Hamilton-Gibney)
See above
Future Plans, ACT strategic plan 2009-2014 (Roger Roberts)
In line with the current economic climate, the theme here was about flexibility, partnership working & responsiveness rather than ACT creating a detailed future strategic plan, until it was clearer what the future held.
