Civic Society Initiative – keeping communities connected
Howard Lake | 25 June 2009 | News
Griff Rhys Jones blog describes fight against supermarket development on historic Suffolk water meadows
The Civic Society Initiative today announced a series of measures which will enable civic societies, community groups, individuals, local authorities, planners and architects to stay right up to date with moves to strengthen the role of local communities in shaping the future of towns, cities and villages across the country.
Social networking tools are giving people across the world new ways in which to communicate and share information – its many tools are used regularly by millions of people and the Civic Society Initiative is:
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• Announcing a regular blog featuring renowned actor and heritage champion Griff Rhys Jones. http://www.civicsocietyinitiative.org.uk/blog
• Launching www.twitter.com/csinitiative giving communities and visitors daily descriptions of what’s happening with the Civic Society Initiative
• Promoting the first national Civic Society News RSS feed at http://feeds2.feedburner.com/CivicSocietyNews
• Launching a central video depository dedicated to the civic society movement at www.civicsocietyinitiative.org.uk/videos.html
These new resources will provide up to date information on the role being played by civic societies as local champions of the places where we live. They also provide opportunities for everyone to engage with the debate being run by the Civic Society Initiative to strengthen the role played by the hundreds of local civic societies and their 250,000 members.
In his first blog Griff Rhys Jones describes his experience of the campaign against a development by Tesco on the historic water meadows of Hadleigh, Suffolk. In the face of claims that the development will provide a stronger economic future Griff says:
“They don’t realise that Hadleigh is already the future: a place with mixed work use, where people live who will have light shopping demands and reward personal service in nice shops. We are still building faceless dormitories of “housing estates” with medieval street patterns as extensions to our cities and bulldozing the existing real medieval streets to accommodate the ambitions of retail units which need large scale parking and shops so that we have a centre. These places then die at night and become no go areas.
“Let the chain stores go. They will throttle small towns. I believe this is considered some sort of modern heresy, akin to the religious opinions that once had radical inhabitants of this town burned to a crisp, but Hadleigh was always dissenting. It has a history of speaking its mind and refusing to follow orthodoxy. I’m quite prepared to follow that. Though I hope I don’t get burned to a crisp.”
Tony Burton, Director of the Civic Society Initiative, said “There has never been a more important time for local communities to speak up and speak out about the future of the streets, buildings, parks and open spaces which we all inhabit. Using these social networking tools provides everyone with a way of keeping in touch and debating the key issues affecting communities up and down the country. Griff is well known for his passion for protecting the heritage of our country and we are sure his blog will quickly become essential reading for all those concerned for its future.”
NOTES FOR EDITORS
1. The Civic Society Initiative was launched by Griff Rhys Jones and Tony Burton on 1 June 2009. It has been established to support and provide a voice for the unique network of over 1,000 civic societies across the country following the Civic Trust going into administration in April 2009.
2. The new social networking tools are available at www.civicsocietyinitiative.org.uk.
Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent messages. People write short updates, called “tweets”, of 140 characters or fewer. These messages are posted to your profile or your blog, sent to your followers, and are searchable on Twitter search. Visit the Twitter home page to sign up and go to the support page to learn more about Twitter.
RSS is a way to be notified of new and changed content. Notifications of changes to multiple websites are handled easily, and the results are presented to you well organized and distinct from email.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:
Ian Harvey, Co-ordinator, Civic Society Initiative (m) 07877 096968
(t) 0151 708 9920
Tony Burton, Director, Civic Society Initiative (t) 020 7981 2881
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.