Report of the Friends of Levenshulme Open Meeting, held on Saturday 14th April at 2pm, at Levenshulme Library.

1. Forty-three people were signed on the attendance list.

2. Update on recent developments

(a) Petition
More than 2,100 signatures. A stall has been staffed on Stockport Road in recent weeks – though not today – but will continue from next week. See item below for more on petition.

(b) Media
The most consistent coverage is in the South Manchester Reporter, including a letter from David in the 12th April edition responding to the questions and answers feature with Richard Leese last week - we need to try again, as others have, to get the paper distributed to all Levenshulme. Our next concerted attempt to secure media coverage needs to be in early May. See below.

(c) Community event
Awareness raising and fun will be the focus for a local event on Bank Holiday Monday 7th May. The recent poster highlighted the date for the event. A small organising group is working on the plan for the day. More information to follow.

(d) Other local developments
Two brief reports:
- Planning permission has been given for the proposed Levenshulme Inspire development at the United Reformed Church site on Stockport Road, a mixed development of flats and community-based activities and businesses.
- Youth project YASP, also based nearby on Stockport Road, continues to have funding problems. Joe will keep us in touch with developments, including a petition he is organising.

3. Plans for Friday 18th May

We have a new mid-May target date as the focus for the next stage in our campaigning – Friday 18th May. Firstly, our MP Gerald Kaufman has secured the agreement of the Council Leader to receive the petition at the Town Hall on that afternoon. Secondly, a joint Urbis/British Council project called Future Cities have agreed to run a two day event for 20+ people based on designing a future vision for Levenshulme. It will run on 18th & 19th May, with the first day based at Urbis in the city centre, and allowing the participants to go along to join in at the Town Hall at the end of the afternoon session. See item 4 below.

We agreed that 3.00pm will be a good time to present the petition, and David will contact Gerald Kaufman to confirm that.

Next steps with the petition – in addition to the stall – will be petitioning at Chapel Street School (19th April), and possibly other local schools, co-ordinated by Charlotte, and some door-to-door petitioning (co-ordinated by David & Neil).

There was discussion about petitioning outside polling stations on 3rd May, the local election day. Concern was expressed about potential breaches of electoral law, and advice will be sought.

The deadline for return of all petition sheets will be midday Monday 14th May, to 12 Gloucester Avenue, M19 3WT.

On 18th May we want to combine the formal presentation of the petition with a presence of Levenshulme people outside the Town Hall with banners. Advance work will be needed to contact the media. It is essential that we write a short positive accompanying document summarising our case for what is needed in Levenshulme.

4. Future Cities game

The meeting agreed that this was a great idea to help to promote our campaign for the future of Levenshulme. It can feed into our other activity. And the timing is very helpful (see above).

Four people attended a briefing meeting with Debbie Measor of Urbis on 12th April. A small group including Mimi and Jenni will co-ordinate recruiting participants. We need to identify at least 20 people who can commit themselves to both the two days, the second of which will be in Levenshulme. On the Friday we will have the use of the top floor of Urbis, a great location which we hope will be attractive to potential participants, and lunch will be provided. Joe from YASP expressed interest in including some of their young people.

More information to follow via the mail circulation list.

5. Setting up campaign interest groups

Everyone agreed that we need to get more people involved in the work in the coming months, and that we should set up campaigning interest groups within Friends of Levenshulme. We had a good discussion of priorities. This resulted in the decision to set up five themed groups to take the campaign forward.

Three are based on issues:

- shopping, land use and planning & development;
- community facilities, including community centre;
- street environment.

The fourth is communications & media, including outreach to local people not currently involved.

The fifth is organisational structure and co-ordination.

We agreed that it would be difficult to sort out membership in this meeting, due to the large numbers of people present and the shortage of time left. People interested in particular groups need to make contact. The co-ordinating group will also identify individuals with evident relevant background and interests and approach them direct. These groups will be leading the core work of the campaign in the next stage.

6. Levenshulme Community Association Getting organised as Friends of Levenshulme also means sorting out our relationship to Levenshulme Community Association (LCA). The next LCA Community Forum meeting is this Saturday 21st April, Levenshulme Library at 2.00pm, and will be the chance to discuss this. LCA may be able to provide the formal structure within which Friends of Levenshulme could continue as an autonomous campaign.

7. Other business

A number of other ideas and issues were raised in the meeting. Points to remember for the future:

- We would like to use the mosque on Barlow Road for some of our meetings if possible.
- Another public meeting should be organised after 18th May.
- We will need to be ready to respond when the outcome of the South Manchester Strategic Regeneration Framework consultation is published. We think this might be late May.
- The A6 Single Regeneration Budget (SRB) project produced a very useful final report, which we should get hold of. - There is lots of scope for organising events to celebrate the diversity of Levenshulme people and to get local people together socially, but this is not part of the role of Friends of Levenshulme. We need to keep focused on our campaigning priorities.

Next meeting: date and venue to be decided.