What has Look! St Albans achieved in this last year:
Seen the outcome of our first design charrette actually being built and
Host our first Placemaking event planned for the early autumn. I am delighted to announce Dr Susan Parham, Head of Urbanism and Planning at The University of Hertfordshire will be our first speaker. Her work is known locally in Hertfordshire but also nationally and internationally.
Therefore if you know of people locally who don’t know about us, our design codes co created by the community and endorsed by the community, we are all ambassadors of Look! engage with them, tell them what we collectively do and how we do it. Offer them a warm welcome.
I do carefully explain Team Look! are all unpaid volunteers, a number work full time with families and yet still find the time to keep Look! running.
However with our growing reputation and now beginning seriously to fulfil our remit of learning and sharing, together with our readiness to host design charrettes, the workload on a few shoulders has become unsustainable. Hence our recent posting on our website ‘Love St Albans? can you give commit up to four hours of your time a month to join Team Look!’.
Thankfully within a couple of hours of Tweeting this request Efa (who is taking the minutes tonight) means they will be available sooner than before. As many hands make lighter work.
I refer often to our reputation and further to reinforce the importance to us of that reputation during the year we have produced our Ethical Collaboration Policy to be found on our website and of course as required have our Privacy Policy. These two documents were in the main part thanks to Dan Fletcher, who is quite irreplaceable on the Team.
As you heard earlier Chris has stepped down as Treasurer due to health issues which required his full attention. Thankfully he is remaining on The Reps Group as I greatly value his knowledge and understand of the workings of Look! his wit and encouragement. In fact I would like to thank the entire Reps Group for their support and encouragement shown to me in the last year.
Turning to funds to keep our work going, we are entirely reliant on grants and donations, as we don’t have any membership fees. We do not have any grants from the council as this would compromise our independence as we continue to work with them. We are always most grateful to County Councillors grants from their locality budgets and most recently to former county councillor Charlotte Hogg.
We are helping locally and nationally to put local design and placemaking on the map.
Locality now offer those who are producing a neighbourhood plan £8,000 extra funding if they include design codes for new homes in their neighbourhood.
When I am asked to speak about Look! St Albans I always start by saying I am not the story I am the messenger. Which is the truth, without you, the community in the district and beyond who care about our city a few members on a Reps Group would be meaningless. Look St Albans IS the Community, it is nothing without you!
Thank you.