Wednesday, 7 January 2009

This morning we had a staff trip to the Holywell Community Centre – a possible new home for Watford CVS at some stage in 2010.

After this visit, I drove over to Rickmansworth (in my capacity as Chair of the Hertfordshire Compact Working Group) to meet Adam Huntley and discuss how Three Rivers District Council can catch up with ten years of Compact developments. After this, I stayed in Rickmansworth for a meeting of the Local Emergency Planning Forum.

Back at the office, I learned that I had been appointed to the Regional Empowerment Network. This didn’t come completely out of the blue (I had expressed an interest) but only today did I learn that their first meeting is during my planned week’s leave at the end of January: my five day’s leave now includes three days of meetings.

I had several discussions with CVS members and supporters about our membership structure. Our new category of “affiliate” seems to be producing the desired results, but we need to put a lot more work into building up the number of affiliates and making a clearer offer to full members.

Watford’s Community Arts Network met in the evening. I am absolutely astonished at how far this network has come: it seems only two months ago that its future hung in the balance. But tonight there was a really great meeting with excellent discussions and lots of really talented people putting in their ideas and agreeing to work to move things forward. Most helpfully, Lesley Palumbo attended from Watford Borough Council and clarified what support the Council is able to provide for the festival. The meeting took some important decisions: they agreed the dates for the festival (6 June to 20 June), a working title Watford Live!, who would lead on each activity and two further meeting dates before the end of January. After the meeting, I stayed on to write up notes of the meeting; I must find some help for this!