How it was for us
Location: Cambridgeshire
The Thorney Built Environment Audit was a project which seems to have gone on for a very long time, though it was less than three and a half years from applying for the grant to finishing the project. However, in this time, many things happened which are to be expected in community projects – people moving away (though the Solomon Islands was a very long way to move!) and being hit by injury and serious illness, for example. However, at the end of the project we have some seriously useful outputs:- A written and published 38 page Audit Report, which has been well-received by members of the Thorney Society, and by local planners who value the information it contains
- A photographic archive of the village as it is now, including the less “glamorous” parts, which tourists don’t take pictures of. This has led to ongoing cooperation with some local photographers, who wish to continue to work with us, particularly to record in more detail the historic agricultural buildings around the village. This has been recorded according to national guidance on file types, and will be transferred to new media by the Thorney Society as storage technology changes. The contents of the archive can already be compared against photos the Thorney Society collected in the 1980s.
- The information from our Audit has been used by the local council and by our Village Design Statement group to inform planning policy for the area, as had already happened in our sister projects in Castor and Ailsworth
- The launch of the project got us coverage in the Peterborough Evening Telegraph – including a colour photograph – and two slots on the local BBC radio. The display we used at the launch then went to the local public library for three weeks, where it was seen by many local people. We have also kept the boards and the (well-produced) display materials to use in the future.
- As a group, I think it has done us good to work with one of the bigger local agencies, Peterborough Environment City Trust. I found it interesting to see how our work fitted in as part of a wide-ranging programme, and also enjoyed a trip to the House of Lords. This was to accept an award on behalf of PECT and its partners – a Green Apple National Gold Award for best practice in environmental work.
What practical advice would I offer to other groups doing this sort of project?
1. Have an agreed project plan for the project, including timescales. This would be very helpful for the link person between the community group and the body supporting the group, as it allows a basis for discussions when things may start to go wrong. It would also avoid the issue here, where the supposed plan for data collection was decided without taking into account my wedding and honeymoon, which caused problems.
2. Don’t let a short-term project worker loose with a mail merge programme if he has contact details for people in your community. One ill-judged letter from someone in that position can lose you an enormous amount of community effort and goodwill (as it did here) and make life very difficult for the person coordinating the project.
3. It is very helpful if more than one person understands the mechanics of the grant claiming process. Our treasurer moved to the Solomon Islands half way through, and I had to find out about the financial aspects from scratch…
Dorothy Halfhide
March 2005
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