Run by Richard Sharland and Barry Gillespie
If you went –
what went well?
what went poorly?
what was discussed?
what ideas struck you as useful
anything else you’d like to say.
Email mcmonthly@gmail.com, letting us know whether you want your name and/or email address used. If you do not specify, your comments will be published anonymously. Please keep it concise, non-libellous and crtical but constructively so.
Comment One, Laurence Menhinick
Living – Our homes, our lifestyles, our communities Facilitated by Richard Sharland (Head of Environmental Strategy at Manchester City Council ) & Barry Gillespie (employed by NHS Manchester working as a Consultant in Public Health)
This group was about 25 strong and we were also asked to work in smaller groups on specific tasks. We introduced ourselves with a set of positive actions we had taken personally and in our organization in the past 6-12 months regarding the “living” agenda, then worked on actions we wanted the steering group to promote. A good variety was presented: to encourage local food production, networks for re-use, social enterprise and low-carbon leisure for instance. Also retrofitting and carbon literacy training, promoting cycling and responsible journeys, reducing “stuff” and (food) waste.
Still this would be too much for the steering group to deal with so we so we kept on “refining” the priority.
In the end, we were asked to vote for the priority (but you were allowed to vote twice):
– Maintaining pressure and supporting the City Council, ( 7 votes)*
– Providing mandatory cyclists awareness training for road professionals, (5 votes)
– Understanding the second-hand market/re-use sector, (9 votes)
– Lobbying the government (2 votes)
– Engaging the “hard to reach” communities ( 16 votes)
So altogether a better workshop, with a clear result, but I couldn’t help wondering if one priority wasn’t a bit thin…
Laurence Menhinick
* I hope I got those right from memory!
manchester climate monthly 