Weeknotes for, um, the last 2 weeks...

Last week was certainly an eventful one as, at the Greater Cambridge Shared Planning Service, we launched our big Local Plan consultation on 1st Nov. This is the third major plan-making stage I've shepherded out into consultation at GCSP and slightly bittersweet as I'm moving on at the end of the year. But it also shows exactly why I'm moving on. The launch went really smoothly - and I know the team can now build on a solid foundation of engagement and communications practice that I've helped develop. We've got the interactive map which links through to the full digital plan, we've got three gorgeous videos on targeted social media placements which have already had over 20,000 views, we've got great illustrations to show that planning isn't just blobs on a map, and we've got over 30 events, online and in-person, from youth club sessions to community coffee mornings and webinars that are actually interactive, not just chalk-and-talk. Already we have hundreds of brilliant comments in feedback.

The first webinar was all about plan-making and how consultation influences the process, and it's well worth a watch. In it, we explore a lot of stuff about the different kinds of insight that consultation and engagement bring. Its really important to me that consultation is seen as research, rather than a referendum. It's user research, social research, evidence gathering. The day before the webinar I went to a youth club and heard a massive range of important observations about place and identity. I simply learnt things I could not have found out in any other way. Consultation is not about seeking approval for things, or making a protest. It's about improving, it's part of a process, it's about learning and teaching and reflecting. Or at least, it should be. 

On a more specific level I also helped at a small consultation event we did at HAT for the next artist commission for the Indies project - creating beautiful wayfaring artworks along the independent shopping streets of Colchester. This time it was Ben Coode-Adams presenting a sort of Saxon-medieval village sign for the 21st century. I'm so excited to see his piece, and Nicola Burrell's at the other end of the route, come to fruition. Alongside these we are working on a number of public realm projects in Colchester and I'm so excited to see what the cumulative impact will be in a year or two. There are wonderful spaces just crying out for a little love and attention, and I hope we do them justice. 

We did a great walkaround with the head of the Planning team and some colleagues and it was just so good to be in physical space looking at things together. I love the ability to work quietly at home sometimes, but I am just so glad to get back to in person meetings. You build dialogue and relationships in a completely different way. The old adage that the most important parts of the meeting are the bit before and the bit after the meeting, not the meeting itself, is so true. The ability to share a quick joke, to draw someone aside for a quiet word, to just be fully human together, makes the work so much smoother and easier. We had a one new project over lockdown where we ended up presenting week after week to endless 'camera off' names on a screen, from which disembodied comments would issue seemingly at random. Needless to say those relationships became really difficult and conversations which should have been fun became painful. A walk around the park together would probably have sorted it but they refused to leave their desks. After a couple of weeks where nearly every day has had some kind of in person meeting or event, I feel wholly more optimistic and energised.

I've recently, belatedly, got onto the podcast wagon because I finally caved into another overdue activity and started running. I hate running but the pods make it bearable, and I've even found some of my nighttime runs under a starry sky (the only time I can fit them in midweek) surprisingly not as awful as they might be recently. I've been really enjoying A is for Architecture (yes, I know I should have caught up on all the episodes before I recorded mine!) as well as my friend Ben Yeoh's pod and also Ruth Beale and Amy Fennick's True Currency podcast made last year as part of their Alternative School of Economics. Not enough space here to go into all the good stuff but have a listen.

I'm somewhat glad to say that the lack of weeknotes last weekend was not due to overwork and collapse but to having a houseful of good friends descend on Friday and spending the entire weekend cooking, walking and dressing up. I was recently given Claudia Roden's new cookbook, Med, and tried out some recipes on the assembled masses. A glorious Moroccan Moorish spiced chicken smothered in vermicelli, with cinnamon and flaked almonds alongside saffron and ginger in a rich fragrant sauce, was a revelation. It triggered an unexpected resonance with the staple chicken noodle dishes of Central Europe and the Ashkenazi Jewish tradition (something of course that Roden is the expert on), as well as the chicken noodle dishes of the far East, which also combine sweet and savoury. It made me think about the strange journeys of noodle dishes across the world and the absolute comfort food they represent everywhere.