I knew today was going to be a long haul, so I arranged to arrive at work early and by 7:00 am I was already on my second cup of coffee. Most of the day, I devoted to preparations for the forthcoming Watford LIVE! community arts festival. Members of our Community Arts Network have planned lots of events, but the difficult work is co-ordinating, funding and promoting the festival. So much work! Only now (ten days before the opening events) have I received the final programme of activities. I’ve worked with a few volunteers to get the events posted on the watfordlive.org website but it is difficult to get everything posted and looking good.
In the afternoon, I met with Mayor Dorothy Thornhill to talk about the many areas where Watford CVS and WBC are currently working in partnership: the Watford LIVE! community arts festival, our planned relocation to the Holywell Community Centre, plans to create a Watford Community Assembly, and the Watford Compact.
I also raised the staff changes that both WBC and WCVS face in the coming month. OUr consultation period is drawing to a close and WCVS faces the very likely prospect of issuing two redundancy notices in the next week or so. As CEO I felt it was incumbent on me to alert our major strategic partners to this possibility and ask them to consider providing additional funding to allow us to retain staff and sustain services etc. But I was not sure this is the right and proper thing to do. After all, WBC is making redundancies among their own staff to trim costs. And a funding agreement is in place detailing what funding WCVS will receive from WBC and what we provide for this. And the redundancies are not in areas WBC has previously funded. So I knew with certainty what the answer must be. So in these circumstances, is it really helpful to ask the question? I asked anyway. And Mayor Dorothy responded as I knew she must. How many times has this scene been played out in Town Halls up and down the country? I feel that I’ve been through the motions of an arcane ritual the purpose of which is lost in some distant forgotten age.
Returning home, I was delighted to see that our neighbours are felling their horrid Eucalyptus tree. This 50-foot alien monster constantly sheds leathery leaves and strips of bark into our garden and blocks out the afternoon sun. After a brief celebratory drink, I worked late getting the watfordlive.org website into some presentable state.
