Tuesday 7th February, 6.15 for 6.30 – 8pm, The Guildhall, Christ the Cornerstone Church, MK9 2ES
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AIMS OF THE EVENT
- Turn campaign proposals into a common agenda for 2017-18 by agreeing as an alliance to support them and build teams to take them forward.
- Prepare for public launch of campaigns at Accountability Assembly on 25th April 2017and commit to bringing 345+ people(15+ from each institution) to act on the relevant power-holders, e.g. politicians, business leaders, police.
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EVENT TEAM
Chairs:Chair 1, Lucian Hudson; Chair 2, Kurshida Mirza;Chair 3,Tim Norwood
Time keeper: MK Academy student?
Equipment: banners for member institutions, co-chairs’ table, flipchart paper (one per campaign proposal), laptop, data projector and screen (Peter H and Woody); slideshow operation (Peter L)
Refreshments: tea/coffee (Kurshida M and co)
Floor team: pens, clipboards and sign-in sheets (Yvonne S and Cornerstone volunteers)
Publicity: photographer(Tomor Peter L)
Materials: C:MK pop-up banners, 345 yellow stickers (15 per institution) and 23red stickers(one for each institution); slideshow, blutack, bell (Tom)
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Outline of Script
17.00Set up team arrives
17.15All speaking roles arrive and rehearse
18.00Hospitality begins
18.30Assembly start time
18.40Campaign successes in 2016-17 so far
19.15Campaign proposals for 2017-18: Fight Hate, Redways Relaunch, Mental Health, One-stop Cultural Centre
19.45Vote/veto
20.00AssemblyFinish
20.10Evaluation and clear up
20.30Leave
Schedule
Time / Agenda / Who / Slide no.17.45 / Doors open with registration desk, tea/coffee & biscuits available / Yvonne & Tess /
- 1
18.20 / Reminder from Chair 1 that proceedings will begin shortly at 18.30 and to find seats.
18.30
Welcome / Welcome to Citizens:mk Delegates Assembly 2017. This Assembly follows our Leaders Forum in November and aims to:
- Agree campaign proposalswhich need action onpower-holders at our Accountability Assembly on 25th April 2017
- Commit to bringing 345+ people (15+ from each institution) to the Accountability Assembly
- Strengthen campaign teams by encouraging delegates to volunteer
- Introduce Co-chairs and time-keeper, explain roles. Time allocations are tightly scheduled so it is up to each speaker to stop promptly after the time-keeper rings the bell! We pride ourselves on ending our assemblies on time.
- We ask for your consent to these aims and arrangements (ask delegates to raise hands in favour)
- Housekeeping: fire exit is...; toilets are...
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18.33
Roll Call / We now ask one leader from each institution to stand under their banner and say, in turn, the name of their institution and how many people they have brought this evening; also, to confirm whether they are committing to pay membership dues before April for the year ahead. Let’s have a big round of applause at the end!
- Brooklands Farm Primary School –
- Christ the Cornerstone Church –
- Future Wolverton –
- Global Outreach Foundation –
- Jubilee Wood Primary School – Louisa Franks
- MK Academy –
- MK Muslim Association –
- MK Quaker Meeting –
- MK YMCA–
- Middle Eastern Cultural Group
- Open University –
- Pakistani Kashmiri Welfare Association -
- Q:alliance –
- St. Augustine’s Catholic Church –
- St. Francis & St. Mary’s Church –
- St. Frideswide’s Church – Michael Willis
- St. Paul’s Catholic School –
- Southwood Primary School –
- Stantonbury Ecumenical Partnership –
- Summerfield Primary School –Scarlett Flynn
- Truby’s Garden Tea Room – Fozia Raja
- Transition MK –
Leaders of each member institution
18.40
What we have achievedUpdate on our 50th birthday campaigns 2016-17 / Now we’re going to hear how our four current campaigns have been progressing in 2016-17... / Chair 3
Living Wage
- What’s the issue?
- What was pledged at Accountability Assembly 26.4.16?
- What the campaign has achieved to date?
Weaving Trust
This time last year Kurshida asked delegates to support the Weaving Trust Campaign and endorse our goals of holding at least 8 WT events between April 2016 and March 2017, including at least one to be hosted by MK Council and one massive Weaving Trust event in January, to begin the year of MK’s 50th birthday celebrations involving 50 different MK institutions. So how did we do?
Weaving Trust has exceeded all its objectives for last year. We have facilitated well over 1000 conversations in more than a dozen hosted events, and held an MK50 celebration event attended by nearly 100 people from 50 institutions. The feedback from all these events has been overwhelming positive. The events have been well attended with people from diverse backgrounds in terms of faith, culture, and ethnicity.
We have found ourselves in some surprising places, as well as many faith institutions, we have visited the Council Chamber, MK Dons, Dentons Solicitors Offices, Thames Valley Police, and Woodhill Prison. The conversations have been diverse, thought provoking and memorable. Some have been very moving and their memory will stay with me, and others attending the same events, I am sure for a long, long time.
Yvonne mentioned the MK50 event which was the culmination of our efforts last year and was very well received. In that event, and slightly differently from others, we asked participants to text us their insights, foresights and ideas about how our shared community can develop. We have compiled that into a report and I have brought along an executive summary which you are welcome to take. The MK50 event left me with a great sense of optimism, but there was also an underlying sense of concern which we have tried to capture in the following issue statement: “How do we develop and extend a caring sense of community, which embraces our diversity and everyone, and can accommodate a large influx of new people?”
I think everyone here will recognise that concern and is trying to do something about it.
The idea of Weaving Trust is simply to facilitate conversations between people who may not otherwise meet. There is no other agenda – we believe that trust naturally emerges when strangeness and otherness falls away. Over the past year we have demonstrated a successful methodology – a well honed tool or service which we can make available, and adapt, to other host organisations and also to you as Citizens:mk institutions, or campaigns. Going forward we would be delighted to offer that service to you. To do so we need to build our team, and if any of you are interested in helping us market the service or deliver it please get in touch with me.
We also have an additional stretch objective. We are aware that we have not really engaged the more isolated and disadvantaged people in our community: hoodies, isolated mothers, people who need the food bank, homeless people, the very old. Some of you may be in a better position to help us host an event with these more marginal people and we ask for your help. We also need people willing to have conversations with them – is anyone up for that?” / Yvonne S
Alan B /
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Refugees Welcome
I am Jacqueline from the Refugees Welcome Milton Keynes campaign. We are a group of volunteers who work in close partnership with MK Council and the British Red Cross MK to welcome and resettle the Syrian families who come to MK under the British Government’s Resettlement programme.
- After last year’s Citizens MK Delegates Assembly we had but a few months before Milton Keynes welcomed its first three of five families in 2016. Our partnership has worked closely together and we are now working towards welcoming the next five families in 2017.
The British Red Cross provides the day–to–day support for the families including language learning, interpreting and transport needs.
- We help these refugee families furnish and equip their houses, also we provide modest grants and encourage integration. We provide speakers to present talks in schools and associations and have created a Directory of Services in which about 400 volunteers have registered their talents and availability to help achieve our objectives. There are financial costs and we have set up a fund to collect contributions. Should you like further information do look at our website and do come and collect one of our leaflets.
Community Energy
Hello, I’m Hilarie Bowman from Transition MK. We have been working with Wolverton Community Energy on a Campaign to be able to work with MK Council on a pilot community energy project.
The main ask was to achieve the installation of solar panels on at least 2 suitable roofs that MK council owns or controls and then to share lessons learned with the full council/cabinet, provide councillors with a 10 point plan to help further community energy within their ward and produce a good practice guide on community energy to go to the 50 MK parish and town councils.
The 2 roofs have yet to be identified, but a draft 10 point plan has been written for Pete Marland, following our meeting with him last week, to endorse. A good practice guide is being written at the moment.
A second ask was to designate a Cabinet member and Director with responsibility for tackling fuel poverty, reducing energy use and making MK a more sustainable city. This has been done. The member is Cllr Martin Gowans, member for Bletchley East and the director is Duncan Sharkey, Director of Place.
Finally we asked the council leader to support and promote the Energage initiative, launched recently as part of CAPE, Community Action Platform for Energy and MK:Smart projects, which aims to create, train and develop a network of volunteer Community Energy Champions, who will be able to assist their communities with energy-related issues and help them reduce their energy consumption, and make homes more efficient. He has agreed to speak at the Community Energy Conference being held at The Chrysalis Theatre on Saturday 25th April. / Hilarie B /
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18.50
Why and how we organise / Citizens UK
Citizens:mk is a chapter of Citizens UK, a national charity founded in 1989 to build powerful communities that work together for the common good. Our chapter was founded in 2010, and we have been going from strength to strength. I am pleased to announce that one of our leaders, Tim Norwood, has recently been elected to serve as Co-Chair of the Citizens UK Council, developing and overseeing implementation of the community organising strategy across the country. This is a credit to Tim personally and Citizens:mk as an alliance.
Now I would like you to approve our five representatives on the national Citizens UK Council for the year ahead. They are Tim Norwood of St. Frideswide’s Church, Kurshida Mirza of Truby’s Garden Tea Room, Fidele Mutwarasibo of Christ the Cornerstone Church, Mike Kasibo of Global Outreach Foundation and Tom Robbins of Q:alliance.
What is the Leadership Team and how it works
In Citizens:mk we have our own Leadership Team. This is a group 12 leaders from our member institutions which meets four times a year to develop the strategy and oversee the finance and operational management of Citizens:mk. Recently the team has grown and strengthened and we look forward to a productive year developing a sustainable business model which will our alliance to grow further. / Chair 1 / 1
- 1
What is Training and how it works...
Training is essential to our method. There is quite a lot of discipline in community organising and there are various training sessions available. The most powerful is the 6-day training run by Citizens UK three or four times a year. I attended 6-day training and the benefit I felt was...
Here in MK, Citizens:mk runs its own 2-day training for adults and 1-day training for schools in September. Please see me if you would like to know more about this and how you can benefit as institutions and as individual community leaders. / Chair 2 /
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Prioritising issues – how Leaders Forum fits into the process
Today’s Delegates Assembly is part of an annual cycle of events which helps us find out what issues are burning and how our members want to act to address them. It follows Leaders Forum in November, where each of our member institutions brings the issues its communities care most about, and from which teams of leaders from different institutions go away and research how these issues can be addressed. The have to come up with SMART goals...and it’s not easy. Thanks to the hard work and skill of our leaders, several new campaigns are going to be presented this evening to see if you as delegates are happy to back them for action at our big Accountability Assembly in April.
First we’re going to hear about two issues that were prioritised at Leaders Forum and researched over this winter...but are not presenting campaign proposals this evening due to not being able to engage the active support of at least three member institutions. First, the issue of Air Pollution. / Chair 3 /
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18.55
Research in progress / Air Pollution
Hello I’m Michael Sheppard from Transition MK and I was appointed leader of an Air Pollution campaign research team when this issue was raised at Leaders Forum in November. Unfortunately I have not managed to get enough support from other member institutions to present a joint campaign proposal this evening, but I can give an update.
Medical research has shown that traffic air pollution can cause lasting damage to children's lungs and the government's own data suggest that students one eighth of UK schools (3000 out of 24,000+) are exposed to illegally high levels air pollution.
The British Lung Foundation is campaigning nationally for air pollution monitoring outside schools and we are working on a plan for achieving this on a trial basis here in MK. It will involve spending about £70 per school on the measurement tubes which would be divided between term time and school holidays
Here's the good news: two schools have expressed an interest in participating in the pollution investigation – one is Summerfield Primary, a member of Citizens:mk.
Although this can’t be formally adopted as an alliance-wide campaign this year, here’s what Transition MK intends to do:
- Encourage schools and families to take more interest in clean air and investigating the current situation.
- Ask MK Council to have a differential taxi registration fees for zero or very low emission vehicles
- Support a no idling campaign in outside schools shops and other public places. Killer slogan –‘Idling is fuelish’!
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Homelessness & Housing
In November, not for the first time, our member institutions raised the issue of homelessness and housing. Again there was a strong feeling that something should be done about this. Again a campaign research team was formed, this time with members from several institutions. In January, a meeting was hosted by YMCA, with representation from Summerfield Primary School and St. Mary Magdalene’s Catholic Church...but again it proved too hard to create SMART goals with leaders to take them forward.
MK Council and others have been busy developing a strategy to address homelessness through a Homelessness Partnership, involving a many voluntary organisations, and we hope that Citizens:mk can eventually help to address this very important issue. / Becky D
19.00
How we relate - 121s / Now we would like you to leave your seat, get a refreshing hot drink if you wish, find someone you don’t know and have a 121 conversation about what you like about MK and what you would like to change in MK. Please be back in your seat at 7.10pm, when we will hear campaign proposals for the year ahead. There will be a warning bell at 7.08. / Chair 2 /
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19.10
What we want – campaign proposals / Campaign proposals will be presented as indicated on these flipchart sheets (name of each campaign at top of each sheet). These four were raised at Leaders Form as important and urgent...but are member-institutions willing to endorse these campaign proposals? It doesn’t matter how important you think a campaign is, if it doesn’t attract active votes then it is not going to going to be formally launched and backed by the Citizens:mk alliance this year.
Here is how we will proceed. When the presentations are over, each institution must vote:
- First, which campaigns need the power of our Accountability Assembly on 25th April to get a pledge from power-holders, such as the Leader of the Council or Police Area Commander? Your institution gets 15 votes and must allocate these across the campaigns presented. The three with the highest number of votes will proceed.
- If your institution does not agree with a particular campaign proposal and does not wish to see it proceed, please say so by using your red veto sticker. If this happens, then that campaign proposal will be suspended until further discussion has taken place between the leader of that campaign team and the Leadership Team.