June 2010
It’s been a busy first month of the project. The expression ‘in at the deep end’ has been wafted in my direction on a number of occasions! I had the opportunity to join the Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) working group meeting 1 hour into post, which was an excellent introduction to this important strand of work within the Chichester Pathfinder project.
Since then I have attended a number of meetings including a Manhood Peninsula Partnership meeting, an Environment Agency (EA) Medmerry realignment stakeholder workshop, a joint EA/ DEFRA stakeholder meeting in London which attempted to outline some of the possible emerging priorities under the new government in terms of Flooding and Coastal Risk Management as well as a Pathfinder research findings workshop in neighbouring Hastings.
At the end of June I visited the Coastnet Essex office and its Jaywick Reaching Communities project team. Pippa the project officer gave us a tour and it was interesting to see some of the challenges being faced by this community first hand. You can visit the Jaywick project blog by clicking HERE. I also had the opportunity to visit the Jaywick Martello Tower. An amazing bit of history and a valuable community resource.
Jaywick Martello Tower
I also visited the North Norfolk village of Happisburgh to see the problems of coastal erosion first hand and to meet with Malcolm Kerby of National Voice for Coastal Communities (NVCC) and Cllr Clive Stockton, Vice Chair of the LGA Coastal Issues Special Interest Group (SIG) and was able to benefit from their considerable knowledge and experience of coastal issues.
Coastal erosion Happisburgh
July 1 – Then followed a meeting with Go East and East of England Development Agency to hear about their Coastal Initiative project and to explore possible synergies with Coastal Literacy.
Chichester Youth Council – July 8
I ran a workshop with the Chichester Youth Council to find out what these young people think about the coast and how it is changing. Although I was prepared for 30 young people there were only 9 present on the day. That was actually a good number to test the format out on. After some discussion, the Council members were tasked with creating a collage about what they think about coastal change. Each of the 4 groups then presented their work to the whole group. I was quite impressed with the levels of knowledge of this group, whose average age was 13. I hope to do more work with local schools in the autumn term.
Researching coastal knowledge and awareness
July and August have been spent distributing the coastal survey, attending community groups meetings and undertaking face to face interviews with members of the public. 58 face to face interviews were carried out in Selsey, East and West Wittering.
September 2010
In total 100 completed surveys were gathered and the results are being collated and analysed and incorporated into a report which will be circulated widely once completed.
October 2010
October has been spent with further report writing, undertaking preparations for the series of 4 expert panels and producing the first Coastal Literacy film on the theme – Celebrating the Manhood Peninsula coastline.
November 2010
The 1st film was shown to the expert panel on November 17th. Following feedback the film underwent further editing and is now almost ready to be uploaded onto this project website along with the 1 minute films by 4 young people of the Manhood Peninsula about what they love about the local coastline.
December 2010 – January 2011
Planning and filming of the second and third films has been ongoing these couple of months. It was good to gain Andrew Tyrie MP’s agreement to be interviewed for these last two films.
The expert panel sessions have been well attended and the group has been invaluable in providing feedback on several of the outputs of the project including first cuts of the films.
