Community Conversations Update

Community Conversations Update

Since the connectors and I came into post in April we’ve gathered hundreds of conversations, 359 were logged between April and August for North Earlham.

The top 5 themes from the conversations analysed so far are:

• Community
• Health & wellbeing
• Environment
• Cost of Living
• Young people

Of conversations gathered, 72% have been from women and only 27% with men.

The trajectory of conversations regarding the cost of living has escalated as the months have passed, it will be interesting to look at this again once the conversations between August and January have also been analysed but it certainly points to being a concern for many people.

Some of the most talked about topics are:

• We need more provision for children’s activities particularly for older children and teenagers
• Community is spoken about in a very positive way, with people feeling there is a strong sense of community in this area
• Only 20% of the conversations we have gathered were with people who do not live in the area.
• 32% of our conversations with community members all talked about wanting to do more in the community

The whole project has been really interesting, we have discovered there are many assets, organisational and human across the wider NR5/6 area with lots of things evolving since we came into our roles in April, at first we noticed there was a lack of 0-5 provision, that has significantly improved since April and there are now 3 more 0-5 groups happening but attendance has been poor, so far we are unsure of the reasons for this but we are hoping to initiate some conversations with the community about this to find out why.

We know we are having a majority of conversations with people from the locality.

We have also noted that when Citywide organisations are planning outreach events and services the West is often forgotten about.

An important observation we made is that advertising of some groups and events could be better, i.e. more visible and advertising done with more notice, we are trying to help with this by producing an event timetable, signposting and word of mouth.

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