Supporters Update: 14 Working Groups, Major Media & Local Government Progress
Co-founder of Forest City and co-founder of the Looking For Growth campaign.
Co-founder of Forest City and former investigative journalist at The Guardian.
Five weeks since our public launch and it’s been another jam-packed fortnight. We’ve had dozens of meetings, set up 14 working groups with scores of expert volunteers staffing them, continued to get major coverage in the media, and made serious progress with stakeholders. The speed is breathless.
Shiv and I are massively proud of everyone’s efforts so far — we are abiding by our initial goal of moving at the speed of a startup.
Here are the highlights!
Working Groups
We have now set up 14 working groups tackling a whole host of core questions and managing specific stakeholder engagement. Each group has at least two other qualified volunteers. It’s remarkable not only that we’ve got these up and running (testament to our expert group leaders) but also to the profile and scale of the project that it has managed to attract so many well-qualified volunteers.
Public Engagement
Shiv had a 2.5-hour spot on the Anglofuturism podcast, and the project got:
- A full page spread in the Sunday Telegraph
- A feature from Time Out
- Another full page spread in the Saturday Guardian
- 2 hours discussing it on LBC
- Our first mentions in foreign press
- Further mentions in the trade press
A full list is available on the Media section of our website.
Notably, a poll in the Telegraph put us 39% for the city and 61% against with over 5,500 votes. That’s not bad for Telegraph readers! Those silent YIMBYs exist!
Pledge signatory numbers have risen to nearly 1,100. The quality remains very high including a former MHCLG economist and Michael Bhaskar from Microsoft Strategy. We’re considering a more direct approach focused on a waitlist for housing.
Oh, and US social media commentator Noah Smith, who has been famous for bashing Britain in the last year, even liked one of our tweets! That’s a win!
Design Competition
The design competition has been launched by Thomas Hogg. We’ve now received our first entries and the Cultural Tutor, who gets millions of views on YouTube and Twitter, agreed to be one of our judges!
Local Government
West Suffolk were in “listening mode” during our in-person 1.5-hour meeting two weeks ago. They are no doubt trying to ascertain whether we are a serious prospect. It went as well as it could at this early stage.
A massive thank you to Ray, from our experts group, for advising, attending the meeting, and doing all the driving.
Residents
Our work with local residents has kicked off with new board member Steve McAdam advising Tara Austin and Clare Delmar. We’ve still to work out a full engagement strategy and also fix a date to meet with current residents in “Zone 1” (the central villages). We are getting responses via our online residents feedback form.
Finally, we have in-person meetings with landowners coming up — so it’s getting as real as can be!
Finally...
We’ll try and send one more update before Christmas. Stay tuned!
Until next time,
Joe & Shiv