Hello to Make your Mark

[Bridget McKenzie]

I'm not quite sure what Make your Mark is, where it comes from, how it grew, where it spreads and so on, but it sounds interesting. I like networks. With others last year, I set up a local network of freelancers and small businesses, most in the creative side of things, in my area of Telegraph Hill. It's called Hill Business, and since then we've been working with the community centre and local groups to raise funds and develop a 'Creative Community Vision for Telegraph Hill'. This summer, there will be a work to develop our local cafe, a community survey (done creatively), a skills sharing event and an arts party on the hill on July 21st to celebate views and visions of the area. I could go on, about this, and a host of other virtual and real networks I'm part of. I would like to come to the meetings in April, but both clash with important events (my daughter's birthday is one). I'd like to keep in touch.

[Jo Hill]

Hi Bridget

Thanks for your post. Hill Business sounds great - I'm keen to find out more about your creative community survey. One of the projects I would like to develop in Brockley involves a community survey - based on the Plugging the Leaks work done by nef - http://www.pluggingtheleaks.org. It's a way to find out how much money is spent locally in a community and how much leaks away. For example, I reckon I only spend about £15- £30 a month locally in Brockley - in the corner shop on a weekend and sometimes in Toads Mouth Too. I used to spend in the Homeview video store but sadly that has just closed down to be replaced by another Betting Shop chain! There aren't many other shops on Brockley high street that I spend my money in - and I would love this to change! I think there is a potentially untapped market in Brockley and I would like to spark some more local businesses to keep the money circulating back into the community.

nef are also starting a campaign called High Street UK - http://www.malverncivicsociety.co.uk/newsletters/autumn06/nl-7.html which aims to regenerate high streets. So I'm following this closely to see if we can try it out in Brockley.

Anyway, those are just some of my ideas - the purpose of the Make Your Mark meetups is to bring together a mix of people to share ideas, inspiration, support, contacts etc to help each other move our ideas forward. It's an experiment but hopefully each meetup will grow into an active group of interesting people - in the long term I would like to see meetups like this happening in local communities all over the country. I'm about to launch a website that maps all kinds of networking groups and provides a listing service to promote networking events so I'll let you know when that goes live. I'd love to pick your brains about how Hill Business developed because it sounds like it is really thriving.

Hope to see you at the meetup next month - the Brockley meetup is on 13th May at 6pm.

Jo