10,500 Local Voices Heard

New Campaigns Announced after listening to 10,500 people

On 21st February, 135 delegates gathered to represent our 19 member institutions in a Delegates' Assembly. Since November, each of our institutions have been running listening events in various formats with their members: from tutor time discussions in schools to Khadijah Mosque's 'Prophetic Leadership and Social Justice Day'. We heard the results from each institution's listening campaign, and celebrated hitting our collective target by listening to 10,561 people across Peterborough about the issues that matter to them. That's 5.5% of the total population of our city!

Each Institution presented the top 3 most common issues from their listening. Topics raised included: Drugs and gangs; Crime and safety; Things to do in the city; Public transport/ road safety; the Cost of living Crisis; NHS access; Racism; Homelessness; Environmental issues/litter; Mental health.

These results were collated and numbers crunched to reveal the top 3 umbrella issues up for vote by our Delegates:

Homelessness and Housing

Crime and Safety

Environment: Public Transport

Delegates voted and a joint winner was announced: we will now begin working on Homelessness and Housing, and Crime and Safety. In order to officially launch these issues as campaigns, our membership will need to show we have enough passionate leaders ready to commit to campaign teams on these topics. We aim to finalise our new campaigns by April 26th.

But this wasn't the end of the excitement at the Assembly. Taking on board some learning from our last listening cycle, and with our dedicated Diversity, Equity and Inclusion strategy in mind, we decided to bring together our institutions representing marginalised communities to form a campaign group led by and for people of colour.

The group - led by Gladca, Khadijah Mosque and H.E.L.P - gathered to discuss the results of their listening events and decide on a campaign based on the testimonies of people of colour. The result was a decision to launch a campaign on Racism In Schools. The group - newly named as Peterborough Citizens' No Small Voice campaign group - committed to fulfilling the criteria for launching a campaign, and called on other institutions to join them.

All in all, the evening was a great celebration of the work done by all our member institutions to include the voices of so many Peterborough citizens. But, as one of our co-chairs reminded us, the work has only just begun:

'This is the start of the next 2 years of work. The start of some real change to improve the lives of people in our city. This is our chance to work together - across different backgrounds, institutions, beliefs and experiences - as a community, to make things better.' - Eliza, NPA student.

Want to join one of our new campaigns? email our Associate Organiser with your Name, Institution and the campaign you're interested in: edie.turner@citizensuk.org