Hythe Town Council Green Party Councillor, Penny Graham (above left, with fellow Green councillor, Jenni Hawkins), outlines the recent strides taken to encourage wider community engagement
It’s been a long haul through COVID for all communities and we councillors at HTC wanted to provide a low key, socially distanced focal point for our residents on coming out of lockdown.
We have had plans for a long while to provide a community hub, which would help to engage all sections of our community, give them a voice and encourage them to become involved with local projects. We were on the verge of identifying a shop to rent with the help of the High Street Fund when the Pandemic struck.
The shop would essentially have been an information exchange point about the climate and ecological emergency and would sell ethical and sustainable products as well as hosting repair, recycle and renew workshops.
Thankfully, we hadn’t committed ourselves to ongoing rent otherwise we’d indeed have been in an expensive hole. So we formed a Community Engagement Working Group to work on alternatives and decided to use the Undercroft as a starting point.
We now have collapsible screens so we can display posters and promote our message and these form a discrete room-like area in front of the Town Hall. These will also be available for community groups to use where appropriate.
Our first event was Earth Day on April 22nd when people could write their pledges for the planet on leaf shapes and attach them to a branch, followed by Garden Day, with photos of local gardens displayed with seeds and plants given away. To celebrate this earth, our precious planet, we have planted a young Hornbeam, a beautiful tree in Oaklands Park.
“Gnarled and mighty, the hornbeam is as tough as they come. It’s beautiful, useful, and its year-round leaf cover makes it a winter haven for wildlife.” (The Woodland Trust)
World Bee Day followed Earth Day with special guest Dr Nikki Gammans who was there to give vital information as well as small group talks about bees (did you know that there are 270 species?) and how to encourage them to our gardens.
Our latest event was to celebrate World Environment Day when we had a display of alternatives to plastics, hosted by our excellent volunteer, Chris, and local children received free activity packs.
In the medium term, we have plans for a quarterly Community Newsletter, which will be hand-delivered to every household and are also in the preliminary stages of constructing a Strategic Plan for Hythe with the first level of consultation completed.
We would like to have a Community High Street Art Gallery whereby children’s artwork is displayed for a month in shop windows. However, it’s a slow process to approach each shopkeeper so this might be a while coming; work in progress.
