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Annual Community Conference
The Local Strategic Partnership host a Community Conference each year which aims to inform representatives from the wider community and residents of progress against the Community Strategy and to challenge them to engage with the theme of the year.
The conference explains the previous year’s progress, encourages delegates to participate in workshop activities looking at local solutions to local issues and provides an opportunity for individuals and groups to give their views on whether the strategy is still focusing on the right areas of priority for the District.
"Inspire and Involve - something for everybody"
Inspire and Involve was the theme of this years' Annual Community Conference. Participants were given the opportunity to listen to emerging issues from communities across the District, celebrate achievements against the Sustainable Community Strategy over the last 12 months and inspire residents and organisations to 'get involved' in decisions and projects at a local level.
"Targeting Change – local solutions to local issues"
The 2010 Targeting Change - 'Local Solutions to Local Issues' Conference was our most successful yet with over 170 delegates attending from around the District.
Please read our Community Conference reprt for more information and feedback from the event.
You can also take a look at our 2009/10 Annual Report DVD, which showcases some of the projects, resourced by the Targeting Change Fund, currently being delivered across the District and provides a snapshot of these local projects and the work that has taken place over the past year.
Please follow the link to view the video (opens windows media player)
You can also download the video by right clicking on the link and selecting 'save target as' (file size: 472MB)
"Aiming High – caring for our future"
The Aiming High conference was attended by 130 delegates from the public, private and voluntary sectors working across the District. The days programme focused on how all of these groups and organisations can work together to make the aspirations set out in the Community Strategy for the District a reality.
After a short film produced by media students at Oaklands College (Shake It Films) which provided an overview of LSPs achievements and progress over the last year, Andrew Cawthorpe from the Prince’s Trust spoke to the audience about helping young people across the District to achieve their own high aspirations.
After formally launching the revised Community Strategy the Chair of the LSP, Councillor Robert Donald also announced a new fund called ‘Targeting Change’ aimed at addressing the priorities and gap areas identified in the updated strategy. This fund will give the opportunity for delivery partners from all sectors including voluntary groups, local charities and community groups to bid for funds between £2,000 and £10,000. Please see the Targeting Change page for more details.
"Big Foot – tackling our ecological footprint"
In October 2007 a WWF report on British cities says that St Albans has the second worst ecological footprint. How are we going to improve?
Speaking at the annual conference of the Local Strategic Partnership, environmentalist Joanna Yarrow challenged the community to take action on the main causes of carbon emission including food miles, car use and energy consumption and show cased a number of national and international examples of good practice that could be adapted for local use.
First Community Conference – launching the strategy
Around 100 people, including residents and local groups, attended the LSP's First Annual Community Conference on 14 September 2007 at Rothamsted Research Centre in Harpenden. The conference marked the launch of the new Community Strategy and delegates took part in workshops to identify the key actions for the LSP to take forward to improve the District. The conference also included thought-provoking keynote speeches from Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive of the RSA and Stephen Joseph, Executive Director of Transport 2000.