Peter Kent-Baguley

CHAIRMAN OF ENGLISH HERITAGE HOSTS HERITAGE CHAMPIONS AT CHATTERLEY WHITFIELD

The Chatterley Whitfield colliery, just inside the north-eastern boundary of Stoke-on-Trent is the most complete coal mining complex in the country. It closed in 1977 but later operated as an underground mine museum for a number of years until 1993. English Heritage has protected the site by making it a Scheduled Ancient Monument. Also a number of the buildings are individually Listed. English Heritage chairman, Sir Neil Cossons has a particular experience and expertise in the field of industrial archaeology and has a long involvement with Chatterley Whitfield. Together with the City Council, English Heritage are driving the preservation of the site so that it becomes a lasting educational site for generations of people to come. Also, and equally important, appropriate buildings are being refurbished to provide office and light manufacturing spaces for small companies. This has already started with four companies occupying units.   

Preservation and regeneration are going forward in tandem. Given a few more years, the symbolism of closure and tracks going nowhere in my picture will be part of the historical record. New photographs will surely reveal a hive of activity and well restored buildings. Historic Environment Champions from Burton-on-Trent, Utoxeter and Newcastle-under-Lyme were viewing the site for the first time and because of on-going works as well as safety issues not all of the buildings were open. On my visit several years ago when the renewal project was little more than an aspiration I had a full tour of the whole site and all of the buildings. It will be a magnificent achievement when all the buildings once again are either in use or open to the public on guided tours.

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NORTH STAFFS PENSIONERS' CONVENTION'S NEW OFFICE OFFICALLY OPENED BY THE LORD MAYOR

All smiles with the Lord Mayor, Cllr Jean Edwards, shortly after she had peformed the official unveiling of the brass name plaque at the Bagnall Street front door of the Pensioner's group's new office in a corner of the magnificent nineteenth century Hanley Town Hall. The well designed, well produced brass plaque is a quality addition to the Flemmish brick bonding, rusticated stone quoins and the delightfully patterned cast-iron ventilation grid.

The office of the North Staffs Pensioners' Convention (NSPC) had for several decades been a street away in the left hand ground floor room of the impressive double fronted brick and stone building, 4 Broad Street, Hanley. Almost two years ago, I initiated the proposal for 4 Broad Street to be fully refurbished to serve as a major focus for creativity, thus expanding and extending the range of the Cultural Quarter. The first task was to secure the support of the Pensioners' group for the move and then to seek appropriate alternative office space for them. Having finally found a space, several months were needed for its major refurbishment, carried out to a very high standard by City Works.

photograph courtesy Cllr Alan Joynson

I am really pleased that the Executive Committee members and the staff of the NSPC are so happy with their new home. It has been a long journey with not a few tense moments, but with the mutual will to succeed, that we indeed have done. They deserve a well planned, smartly decorated and thoroughly congenial office for the valuable work they do on behalf of all pensioners in North Staffordshire. I am grateful, too, for their willingness to embrace the change, since that has unlocked the potential for 4 Broad Street to be a thoroughly vibrant centre for a hugely broad spectrum of creativity. I am quite sure, one day, not too far away, 4 Broad Street will be the talk of creative circles throughout the country. 

INTERNATIONAL DESIGN COMPETITION FOR STOKE-ON-TRENT CITY CENTRE

Last October, the Council decided to follow the successful paths taken by such cities as Coventry, Birmingham and Manchester and launched an International Design Competition to attract the very best to accept the challenge to substantially lift the appearance and appeal of the City centre. From the initial responses, Six Design Teams were shortlisted to produce more detailed design ideas for the City centre by 22nd March. Councillors were invited to the first exhibition and consultation event, at the Stoke Town Hall today. Lesley Walker, the City Council's Principal Regeneration Officer said: "I am keen to get as many people's views as possible, as we have this major opportunity to transform the City centre and we need to 'get it right' - so all input is very welcome." Some 30 of the 60 City Councillors responded to the invitation to pop in bteween 11am and 5.30pm.

As the City Council's Historic Environment & Design Champion I have been supporting all moves which will hopefully lead to a more appealing and congenial City streetscape. We all expect our rural landscapes, particularly villages, to be attractive and interesting, and certainly free of clutter and litter. We should expect no less of our major urban landscapes. Certainly, our City centre demands urgent attention. The quality of streetscape materials needs to be substantially better - the pervasive red brick paving is well past it's acceptability date (if indeed it ever had one!). Most of the six design submissions had points of interest as you will see for yourself if you are able to visit the exhibition at the Victoria Hall, Hanley on Thursday 12th April: noon-6pm or Friday 13th April: 10am-4pm or at the Potteries Shopping Centre on Saturday 14th April: 10am-4pm.

I was very impressed with the possibilities presented by the City's indigenous architectural structure, the bottle oven. Interestingly, one of Lesley Walker's colleagues wasn't at all keen on the bottle oven ideas but I was not surprised because so many of the City's indigenous population have not shown a great affection for the real thing! But the design team's submission opens up the possibilities of such a vast array of uses for such a designed structure, built in a wide range of materials and colours in an infinite number of sizes and fine variations in shape.

What about a glazed, twenty storey retail centre bottle oven, with restaurants and cafes on various upper floors? Or a more modest bottle oven of steel and mesh could make a splendid aviary and relatively tiny ones for street shelters or vending kiosks?    

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DESIGN IN ACTION

As the Council's HISTORIC ENVIRONMENT & DESIGN CHAMPION, I joined a score or so of both planning and design officers from the City Council, Newcastle and Lichfield District Councils and sundry other organizations at the Burslem School of Art for the first event of Urban Vision's new programme: DESIGN IN ACTION. This was all about the characterisation of buildings - a six-point ranking of the architectural/social merit of buildings from worthy of listing to of no value. Urban Vision's manager, Mick Downs, and the new urban design advisor, Dr Darren Price along with Gary Corbett and Mike Taylor from English Heritage explained how the characterisation process had merged in other cities and how it had been developed and used in the Potteries. Thanks to the influence of both English Heritage and Urban Vision the value of the character of buildings is now an important factor in the regeneration/redevelopment programmes gathering momentum across the City. Without this timely intervention, unrestrained wholesale demolition would have obliterated many properties worthy of preservation and redevelopment.  

When I get a few spare moments, I am sure that this kind of discussion and practical exercise (where we discussed in small groups how we would rank the value of half a dozen City centre buildings) would be both interesting and valuable in various communities. Members of Residents' Associations and/or youth groups, for example, could be encouraged to rank a series of buildings in their neighbourhoods AND discuss how the visual value of the area could be improved. The more each of us feels ( and actually IS) involved in our neighbourhood, the greater will be our self esteem and communal pride in the area. 

FAIRTRADE RESEARCH PROJECT

Professor Janet Dine invited me to join the One-Day  Round Table Discussion on: THE FAIR TRADE MOVEMENT, LEGAL SUPPORT AND SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS, held in London today. It was an initial kick-start event of the £350,000 three year research project prof Dine is leading, funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council. Based at Queen Mary College, University of London, the research objectives are to: i) evaluate the value of Fair-Trade to producing and importing countries; ii) assess whether a legal framework is necessary; iii) evaluate how far Fair-Trade succeeds in strengthening the capabilities of disadvantaged groups.

The five papers presented and the ensuing discussion covered a broad range of issues, and the overall outcome of the day was very much a roving around and a light sketching of many major issues. The knowledge of the actual work of the FAIRTRADE Foundation was itself somewhat sketchy and sooner rather than later the researchers need to settle on the working defintion of what it is they are researching; ie exclusively FAIRTRADE as exemplified by the Fairtrade Foundation's Mark or some wider, more nebulous form of Fair-Trade, as the project literature calls it. If it is more than the Fairtrade Mark then precisely "what more" will need to be carefully defined if the objectives are to be remotely approached.

I hope to be increasingly involved as the project gains momentum. It has the potential to yield significant insights into international trade. That potential rests very much on the political underpinnings of the research being increasingly articulated as the debate and data develop.

PROJECTING STOKE

I was asked to say a few words by way of the Welcome Address at the Projecting Stoke Awards event at the Victoria Hall, Hanley, this afternoon. I could, of course, have said a great deal, but hopefully, in just a few minutes, managed to congratulate and celebrate all of the 130 or more people who had been involved in making 21 short films during the past eighteen months. The afternoon was packed with the screening of all or clips from the entire output which ranged from the documentary to the comedy. The quality and creativity were impressive.

What was also impressive, was the creative, collaborative relationships that all these people developed as they came to film making for the first time. They had clearly found the whole experience exciting, challenging, interesting and, above all, fulfilling. PROJECTING STOKE was sponsored and supported by Hi8tus West Midlands, Staffordshire University (yes, particularly the ubiquitous professor of film and long-time local doyen of the arts, Ray Johnson), Meir Resource Centre, the City Council's Cultural Development Officers and two professional film makers, Darren Teale and Chris Stone. 

The project has been an ideal example of just how important a role the City Council can play in both promoting and producing the arts within local communities throughout the City. It is not just about money, though a little more of that would be helpful, but as crucially it is about openingly proclaiming the centrality of the arts for the well-being of all of us who live in Stoke-on-Trent. Creativity, at a utilitarian level, is vital for the City's regeneration. Fundamentally, creatively is a deep urge within us all and however it is expressed, in music, paint, words, film or whatever, we all need support along the road of expression. My fervent aim is that the City Council is more and more pro-active in the support if provides.

Spot the non-film maker! (photos courtesy Mark Bunyan)

NAMES FOR THE TUNSTALL WAR MEMORIAL

Some two dozen people attended this evening's meeting at the Sneyd Arms Hotel Tower Square, Tunstall. At our last meeting on 15th February we agreed that we needed more time to think about how the names of the fallen heroes of the First World War should be recorded. Ray Cope City resident and a Life Member of the national War Memorials Trust charity has been researching and verifying the names of the people from Tunstall and the immediate area who joined the forces and lost their lives in the Great War. Ray works full time so it is not surprising that he has been working on the project for a number of years, spending a very large part of his leisure time on the pursuit. Ray believes there will be some 400 names in total but he thinks it will take him at least another year before he has completed the research.

Most war memorials carry the names of those who lost their lives. It is rarer but not uncommon to have the names of those who fought and returned home alive also inscribed on the monument. No names have ever been inscribed on the Tunstall War Memorial sandstone obelisk and plinth. On each opposite face of the plinth, north and south, are bronze wreaths and on the east and west faces, rectangular bronze plaques, inscribed with the words: TO THE GLORIOUS MEMORY OF THE MEN OF TUNSTALL WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES DURING THE GREAT WAR 1914-1918. 

A Committee was formed so that different ways of displaying the names can be looked into and sketch drawings produced so that an exhibition of the various ideas can be displayed in Tunstall in the near future so that everyone has the opportunity to voice their view. 

MEMBER DEVELOPMENT STEERING GROUP

Apologies to my world-wide readership for the past month's silence. What can I say? Lack of self-discipline, being overtaken by too many meetings and issues and for some of the time, feeling below par, are some of the reasons for lack of updates.

I chair the Member Development Steering Group (MDSG) - all Councils in the West Midlands have signed up to the regional Members' Development Charter. I am very enthusiastic about keeping up to date and learning new skills, particularly computer skills. On that, a week ago a fellow Councillor very kindly took time to teach me how to use Microsoft Mail Merge. Ever since I've been feeling on top of the world!! Silly isn't it since I dare say the majority of under fifteens can do it in their sleep! Even if they can, we older ones, well certainly this older one, feels a sense of real achievement with the smallest of IT advancements!

Anyway, back to the point. Three members of the MDSG met with regional reps as part of their "inspection" to see how well our MDSG is progressing. At the end  of the hour, I left feeling more and more that we are moving too far towards bureaucratising the process rather than concentrating on specific, concrete needs of Councillors. After all, Councillors are there "to do a job" not to be involved with endless "training initiatives". As one of the interviewers put it, they wanted to see how our training was helping us with our "councillor's role and responsibilities." Of course, that really is the interesting question. What is the role and what are the responsibiltiies? I shall be trying to address that in a Ward newsletter shortly.

Oh yes, regarding my world-wide readership. I received an email from a Stoke-on-Trent resident from Australia where he is working currently seeking assurance that the person walking along High Lane, Burslem, offering householders new windows and doors for FREE was not a confidence trickster. Having doubled checked with Staffordshire Housing, acting as agent for the RENEW Housing Pathfinder Programme, I was able to reassure the correspondent that his son living at the house could safely accept all offers. A neat example of the computer enabling the local councillor to act globally!