The Love Poundbury committee has been exploring the future role of the organisation. We have come up with some thoughts and would welcome the views of residents.
Background
- As Poundbury nears completion, we feel our focus should move away from the issues around physical development, construction etc. to community development.
- About a third of Poundbury residents live in low cost or social housing. About the same proportion are young families. We do feel Love Poundbury – or the community generally – is not engaged with these groups.
- There are issues of isolation and loneliness, not just among older residents.
- At present, the PRA largely represents new homeowners and focusses on development issues.
Future Role
- The Duchy, developers and Council have designed and built the physical Poundbury settlement. It is up to Love Poundbury and others to use what has been provided to build a strong and vibrant community.
- Our mission would be to bring together and represent those who love living or working in Poundbury inclusive of social housing, private rental and business as well as homeowners.
- The aim would be to foster a connected, resilient and sustainable Poundbury.
- Connected– we work to reduce isolation and provide information.
- Resilient – we work with individuals, groups and the wider community to positively address challenges.
- Sustainable – we build capacity to make improvements last.
Help!
- We do not currently have the capacity to do this so we would require more volunteers to get involved – people who have specific expertise to carry out defined roles. These roles would not necessarily involve committee membership – many people don’t want to be on committees!
- Extensive consultation with the community will be needed to assess the level of support for these ideas. If there is support, then a detailed proposal and plan would need to be developed and approved.
What is your view? Please let us know.
In the meantime we have an immediate need for volunteers in the following roles to help keep Love Poundbury going:
Website Manager: Responsible for technical and design support for the website. Do you have expertise in this field? It’s not a huge task and we do have professional backup for the more specialist tasks. It would not be necessary for you to join the committee but you may wish to attend meetings on occasions.
Editor/Contributors: To source, edit and publish a wide range of news and other articles of interest to the Poundbury community – for website and social media. To research and/or write articles or other content on a wide range of subjects: social; business; environmental; architectural/town planning; arts; events; young people; Journalistic experience would be useful but more important is a flair for writing engaging, informative and entertaining articles. Again, it would bot be necessary to join the committee.
If you think you might be able to help please contact us here