We can kick like a mule it's a real mean team

Rose, our volunteer organiser, will apreciate our lyric reference today which is from the thin white duke (Mr Bowie). Rose is a real fan and not without justification. Here he is playing a live version of a song more associated with Mott the Hoople and also, as it happens, the first single I ever bought when I was 11 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7uwbjYSaYY.

Anyway, the team in question is the HVA team and we had an awayday which looked at performance and measuring impact. Jill and Fran have done a good job to facilitate the day which starts with a warm up quiz about HVA and its staff. My score is both worrying for me (and perhaps even more so for the team!). At this rate I may lose my place on the HVA inter-agency quiz squad. According to performance on the quiz Jan should be director of HVA and I should be making the tea!!


The day is a bit weird in that, as ever, I was chasing my tail and had to go, dash away, and then dash back for the end. It was also the day I presented my alternative view of the community engagement world to the meeting of the public service chiefs execs at which I argue for concerted partner activity to save the best of what we have in Hastings. The comprehensive spending review is occupying a lot of thought but I achieve a primary objective which is to stimulate partners into thinking about this issue and ask the right questions which they start to do. It is then back to the Awayday and a pleasant lunch with James and Fran where we talk running, giving up smoking and I feed back on my meeting. On the way back into Town I brief the vice chair of the LSP about moving this onto the agenda. Then it is a quick trip back home to walk the dog before dashing again back to the office.

Today is also a deadline day for a funding bid I am making to secure some funding to support BME activity and the better coordination of hate crime reporting and to secure money to support a key role on the team. Despite promises and assurances, the application is not in the shape I want it to be so there are a series of phone calls to get further information from our County colleagues before I am happy to sign off by 5pm.

Onwards to a Community Assets Transfer meeting. As I arrive, I am greeted by a member of the Council's staff who also is involved with a local arts group. She was really grateful for a small thing I did to help expedite some funding which seemed blocked at one stage. To be honest, I had forgotten the work I did on this - which only amounted to an e-mail putting words in the right ear - but it was really nice to get some feedback that this was appreciated.

At the Community Assets transfer meeting a genuine breakthrough is made. After what seems like years of talk the Council seems fully signed up to the principle of transferring a building into the ownership of HVA together with mounting a bid to refurbish it. Lots of hoops to jump through, of course, but there is some real purpose to our discussion and we begin to shape up what will become the business plan. Of course, there is a down side insofar as the Local Authority have taken so long to get this far that we are only days away from a substantial deadline. A fully costed business plan and project profile is required but there is partner support for this to happen. I have a feeling that despite the odds we could just pull this one off which is a good thing as a wrecking ball comes through the wall of my office in 2009!

I also meet briefly with Alan from SEASPACE who is coordinating the legal work being done to create an educational trust within a very tight deadline (see previous postings). This is critical to secure £100,000 funding and we have been supporting the group who have more grey hairs now than when the process began. Fingers are still very much crossed but it looks like we are on track to have the trust in place by 19th November and secure the prize!!

It is now 7.00pm and I am taking a short break from reviewing a dissertation outline for my student Jaan who is seeking to apply "labelling theory" to an analysis of Anti Social Behaviour and the criminal justice system. Strange and perverse as this may seem this I am actually enjoying my role as his supervisor which I am taking on for the first time this year at the University. It forces me to re-read and rethink some academic material and keep up to date which is no bad thing.

Anyway that was Wednesday and on it goes.