April 21–Ride!

CicLAvia to the Sea–Sun, surf, and 15 miles of open road will mark the first CicLAvia of 2013, transforming Venice Boulevard and downtown Los Angeles streets into a car-free, linear park for strolling, biking, playing, and exploring the city from a new perspective.

April 25–Eat!

New Farmer’s Market hits Marina del Rey in the parking lot at Marina “Mother’s” Beach on Admiralty Way just east of Via Marina, the market will offer fresh, healthy, locally grown organic and conventionally grown fruits and vegetables from certified California growers every Thursday, all year round, rain or shine, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.  The Marina del Rey Farmers’ Market will also offer prepared and packaged foods, hand-crafted products, cooking demonstrations, raffles and much more!

Anytime–Learn!

The 2012 LA County Annual Report–yeah, yeah, I know what you’re thinking, but it’s full of great info and it’s now an award winning multimedia report found exclusively online. At the worst it will help you sleep. Enjoy!

The Millionair Club Charity is more than just a single employee, volunteer or worker.

We’re an organization that thrives on the deeply rooted connections between everyone in our community: Program participants, employers, volunteers, donors, partners, staff, board members and everyone else who has contributed to our work in some way.

We are proud to share with you our 2012 Annual Report.

In it, you will read about some of these individuals who make up the Millionair Club Charity. You will learn about some of the lives we’ve changed, our accomplishments, financial information and ways you can become further involved with us.

We are grateful for your support of the Millionair Club Charity.

Thank you!

PBI presents its 2012 annual report.
Read the report here

It’s that time of the year again when we’re all starting to rev up for the annual report season.

1. How to choose a report team.
   Don’t worry – we’ve got this.We’ve been producing annual reports for nearly 20 years and have been part of IPAA award report teams in that time. In two decades we can proudly boast that we have not missed a key milestone or tabling date. We have an enviable record of accuracy and job tracking.

   Creative concepts with a conscience.
   We can follow branding guidelines as well as breathing new life into one with a refreshing new-look report! There’s a host of niceties that we can weave into a report to help functionality, aesthetics and to enhance the reader’s experience.

2. No problem with commitment.
   This is a biggie. When quotes are compared and concepts are finalised and the nitty gritty of getting a major document completed accurately and on time has to happen, it’s the commitment of your design team that really counts. We ensure timelines are plotted so all parties – you, SG and contractors, such as indexers and printers, are all on the same page. We make allowances for your approval processes and map these into a common timeline for all to follow. We keep you informed at all times on the report’s progress.

   Your very own Designer.
   You will deal directly with the one and the same designer from concept to delivery. NO account managers, NO ‘Art Directors’, NO sales staff…no one but the same designer who knows your material back to front. You have direct access at all times. You’re always welcome to pop into the studio and have a tete-a-tete with that designer throughout the report’s production.

3. A helping hand – Contractors.
   If you’d like us to manage the proofreader, indexer and printer we’re happy to do so. We will forewarn you of associated costs in a formal quote so there are no invoice surprises. Their time requirements will be plotted on the timeline you’ll have from us, and we’ll manage the deliverables to agreed deadlines. EASY! And just so you can relax even more – our contractors have intrinsic knowledge of the Embargo and Tabling procedures surrounding the production of annual reports. All their staff are security cleared by the Australian Security Vetting Service and also have strict internal security procedures in place.
4. Crossing finish line!
   Once your fabulous annual report is done and delivered on time and everyone, including the Minister, is happy, we will develop accessible PDFs and any other format requirements you may need.

   Crowd go wild!
   This is where all the kudos owing  is heaped upon you. The collective respond with plaudits beyond your imaginings and you join us for a celebratory morning tea of freshly made coffee and baked goods.

   The elephant in the room.
   Money, budget, blowouts, explanations and nasty surprises. You can relax about this too….we’ll quote you everything you’ve asked us for and possibly include things you may not have considered. We may also make suggestions on how to bring costs down. When the dust has cleared and we’re all still basking in the after glow of success, we will invoice you against quoted totals – so everything is cross-referenced and you’re still in the good books with everyone, especially with the number crunchers!

Please take some time to browse the 2012 Generosity Report to learn how Bridge Communities puts your donation to work for homeless families in DuPage County.  Get inspired by clients like Ann Marie, Tommy, Megan, and LaTasha.  Meet other supporters like Ted, Mark, Alicia & John, and Zed & Cheryl. 

Through the 2012 Generosity Report, we say “Thank You!” for your incredible generosity.  Thank you for believing in the families of Bridge Communities and for supporting our mission.

If you’d like us to mail you a copy of the 2012 Generosity Report, please email Heather.Wachter@bridgecommunities.org with your request and mailing address.

THANK YOU!

This final resource I found online highlights ways for non-profits to get started by getting grants & sponsorship. I would use technology for the following reason: Spreadsheets & databases with information concerning costs & goals of the organization will clearly state the needs & successes, as well as strengths & weaknesses of the organization. For example, I would use an excel worksheet to easily  create a chart for the number of volunteers, charitable donations given, etc. The key idea I gathered from  the article was to keep in contact by sending sponsors newsletters, annual reports & other publications to ensure that they have information about the organization’s accomplishments & therefore continue to support your cause or get so positively impacted by your effort of providing such information that they decide to take part in your cause.

This is the second post in a two part guide on annual reports. This post will identify six ways you can make your annual report award-winning.

Entering your organisation’s annual report for an award is an excellent way of benchmarking against peers. It will give you impetus to work to the highest standards and you will receive valuable feedback on your organisation’s reporting. Winning an award will enhance your organisation’s reputation for quality reporting and you will receive recognition for expert work.

Whether you are a company, government department or not-for-profit I hope the following tips will guide you in delivering an award-winning annual report. The awards listed are those available in Australia.

1.      Awards – benchmarking

The Australasian Reporting Awards (ARA) is the chief organisation in Australasia for reporting awards. The ARA was established to encourage effective communication of financial and business information. They have detailed criteria which can be a very beneficial guide when producing your report whether you actually submit it for an award or not. The ARA promotes quality reporting and offers resources to help. By entering the awards you will have the ability to benchmark against general and industry criteria, access to expert feedback, seminars, and workshops. Seminars cover topics such as current trends in reporting, design and content management.

The ARA Awards are a measure of a standard achieved – they are not a competition. There is a general award category, where reports can receive Gold, Silver or Bronze Awards. Also, special awards categories where annual reports are examined against specific criteria in the areas of sustainability, governance, occupational health and safety, integrated reporting, online reporting and communication.

Further Australian awards to consider include awards run by the Institute of Public Administration Australia. The states of Western Australia, Tasmania, South Australia and the ACT conduct annual awards to encourage excellence in annual report writing. Also, the PwC Australia Transparency Awards were introduced to Australia in 2007 to recognise the quality and transparency of reporting in the not-for-profit sector.

2.      Content

Awards give specific and detailed criteria for what they are looking for in an annual report. Pay attention to this and go back and check you have met the criteria and exceeded the requirements. Make sure proofreaders have a copy of the criteria so you have fresh eyes checking the content.

Ensure you document compliance, trends and achievements. Make content easy to find and read by using a table of contents, indexes, graphs and tables. Consider including a glossary. Ask yourself whether you are providing detail, accuracy and transparency? Are you communicating in a way that is open and effective for your stakeholders?

3.      Highlights – keep front and centre

Your organisation’s highlights include progress towards key objectives, important events from the year and the outlook. Highlights should be in the early pages of the report so that readers can get an immediate snapshot of where things are at. They should be succinct and unambiguous.

4.      Design

An awarding winning report is one that combines excellent content with superior design. Designers will be able to offer a wealth of advice and insight regarding the layout and how different information can be effectively represented. Good design will make your report standout; give it visual appeal and clarity. Design must adhere to the corporate style and promote your brand.

5.       Tell your story

It can be useful to think of your annual report as telling the story of your organisation, its successes and challenges. Make it a compelling and readable story by showing the human side as well as the financial reports. Include staff and client case studies and articles on interesting projects. Think of a theme for your report that can be reflected in written content and graphic design.

6.      Study winners

Take some time and research past award winners. Award winners are listed on the ARA website and most organisations have their reports available online. Look at past winners from your industry and examine how their report has met the ARA criteria.

Further websites of interest:

https://www.globalreporting.org

http://www.reportwatch.net/

http://www.mercommawards.com/arc.htm

Exactly 365 days ago I set out on my independent consulting adventure, complete with the de rigueur intent to document my progress in weeknotes.

Week one was an intense blur of 5am flights, meetings and bratwurst; it went un-noted. Weeks two and three likewise. For a while, I told myself there’d be “monthnotes” instead. By the end of month three, this clearly was not happening either.

They’d have been pretty opaque anyway: “Planned research interviews for $undisclosed-client$; Updated the sales pipeline I made for myself in Trello; Word of the week is ‘vestibule’” – stuff like that.

So consider this a yearnote, my annual report to anyone who is interested. This is what I’ve learned so far.

The need for service design

A year ago, I believed the time was right for my particular flavour of people-centred service design. 12 months on, even more so.

Organisations of all sizes are looking to go beyond web and mobile marketing to offer genuinely useful multi-touchpoint services. They are hungry for new ways to understand what customers want, to reinvent the way we do everyday things, and to free frontline staff to do their best work.

This expresses itself differently according to context:

• In our homes, shops and offices it’s often about people with computers in their hands that are more powerful and better connected than all the fixed infrastructure that weighs around them.
• In our towns and cities, it’s about optimising for the cacophony of people’s aspirations and everyday objectives, not imposing a blinkered view of efficiency from above.
• In our public life, it’s about reinventing simpler, clearer, faster services with citizens at the centre.

Thanks to my wonderful customers

Over the past year, I’ve had the chance to work with some great teams. There have been projects for a multi-national sportswear brand and a UK supermarket chain. I’m excited to be kicking off a thing right now with the Government Digital Service.

The lovely people at Made by Many have put some fascinating projects my way and are always a joy to work with.

Working direct for large organisations takes more time to line up, but has also proved to be time well spent. It helps me learn what customers really need and where my practice can add the greatest value.

I’m keen to keep that balance between different ways of engaging.

How long is a piece of string?

I’ve hit my targets for the year by doing fewer, larger engagements than I imagined.

Looking back, this is a good thing. I’ve finished every job feeling I delivered something of significant value to the client. I think they feel the same.

While I pride myself on being quick on the uptake, I reckon I add most value when a project gets down to a certain level of detail in terms of customer research and service design. Small, unexpected insights make a big difference, and those don’t always show themselves in the first few days.

Collaboration

Working with associates was always part of the plan. I had the chance to bring in a very talented service designer to work alongside me on one project, and pitched, ultimately unsuccessfully, with associates for another. Despite that miss, I believe this model is the future.

For the next year, I want to partner more with agencies and associates to tackle some big, worthwhile service challenges that none of us would be able to take on alone.

After experiencing the serendipity of co-working at Duke Studios, I wonder why anyone would be so dumb as to fill a big office block with people who all work for a single company.

Time to hear myself think

I promised myself that I’d make the time to keep thinking, blogging and speaking.

On this blog and in a series of talks, I’ve continued to circle around topics from service design to smart cities, with the odd diversion into local history. I gave lightning talks at Next Service Design in Berlin and Bettakultcha Leeds.

I’ve indulged myself with trips to London for The Story, Brighton for dConstruct and Manchester for Future Everything.

My search for a New Idea of the North remains a work in progress. And I’ve spent a little bit of time experimenting with print again, bundling some blog posts about places into a series of booklets over on Bookleteer.

You may notice this blog’s template is looking a bit long in the tooth – cobblers, children, shoes, etc..

Feeding the family

Those close to me at the time will know just how long I spent working up to the point where I could resign from my secure, well paid job at Orange to go it alone – so long in fact that by the time the moment came it didn’t feel scary at all.

I had some money put by to be sure that the kids wouldn’t starve if I went a few months without work. A year later, most of that money is still there, which is nice to know. Having that buffer allows me to smooth out the peaks and troughs that seem to be an inevitable feature of freelancing.

There’s a pleasing directness in the relationship between working and earning. But then I’ve been lucky that all my customers are prompt payers. Long may they continue to be so.

Xero makes wrangling receipts, invoices and VAT returns so much fun that I sometimes have to check myself from tumbling down a rabbit-hole of financial over-analysis and fantasy budgeting. I feel it’s important to keep this stuff simple and focus on doing good work.

Enduring values

Alongside my business plan, I wrote a manifesto. “Changeful” was the codename I used for my consulting practice and is now the name of my registered company.

At the time I wasn’t sure if these really were enduring values. They could so easily have been temporary hobby-horses born of my context at the time. But this evening I looked back over the list and thought, yeah, they’re enduring, so far.

I publish them here unaltered:

Changeful will be exciting and distinctive to work with because of some basic principles.

1. It’s more profitable to make stuff that people already want than to make them want stuff that’s already made. That’s why Changeful will follow a user-centred design process. It will never put lipstick on a pig.

2. Great products and services are grounded in a sense of place, and for Changeful that place is Leeds. It will work for clients and users all over the world, but where possible it will start with its fellow citizens.

3. Changeful aims to be part of an open network of suppliers and customers where the presumption is in favour of sharing skills, knowledge and tasks. The most natural habitat for this behaviour is the Web.

4. Sometimes Changeful’s work will be challenging, in order to be more rewarding – like John Ruskin’s six qualities of great Gothic stone-masonry: “Savageness, Changefulness, Naturalism, Grotesqueness, Rigidity and Redundance.”

5. Wherever possible Changeful will use freely available tools and materials that are open to anyone. People should be able to look at Changeful’s offer, be inspired, and say, “I could do that too”.

6. Changeful must enjoy keeping up stuff that already exists as much as making from scratch. Some days nobody will notice the difference Changeful makes, but we’ll all reap the benefits in the long run.

7. Changeful will stay focused on the things that will make the biggest difference to customers and clients. When we see a bottle that says “drink me” we will check the label on the back and most likely leave well alone.

So that was year one. Thanks to all the people – too numerous to name – who have helped me on the way.

Want to be part of year two? I’m at http://mattedgar.com

The Charity Commission, which regulates charities on how to prepare annual reports and accounts, not surprisingly seeks robustness, consistency and transparency in charity reporting. The aims are laudable and important – the Commission requires charities to articulate their aims, and to demonstrate how successfully they’ve gone about achieving them.

I am a believer in transparency and accountability – it’s completely consistent with a charitable ethos, and a non-negotiable element for any organisation that relies on philanthropy. People deserve – have a right – to know how their donations would be / have been spent. Charities need to demonstrate that they pay attention to figuring out the most impactful way they can use their resources to achieve their stated aims – and that they measure the difference they make.

As part of supporting a charity with its TAR for 2012/13, I’ve been re-reading the Charity Comission guidance – the infamous ‘SORP’. I completely agree with its advice that good reporting should ‘enable the reader to understand how the numerical part of the accounts relates to the organisational structure and activities of the charity’. However, the current SORP was published in 2005 and in my view, it is high time for a review and update. The section which acknowledges other ways that charities tell their story contains an interesting value judgement about the place of the TAR in the hierarchy of impact reporting. Eight years on, the text sounds old-fashioned, with no reference to reporting through film/video or social media, or greater use of non-literal comms methods like photos and images:

Charities may additionally use other means of providing information, outside of the accounting and reporting framework, about who they are and what they do. Such information is often tailored for the needs of particular audiences and presented through annual reviews, newsletters and websites. Whilst charity trustees might usefully refer to these other sources of information within their Trustees’ Annual Report, such additional information should not be seen as a substitute for good statutory annual reporting…

I agree that good statutory reporting is important. But if the Charity Commission fails to embrace alternative reporting methods then it risks the TAR becoming an esoteric and insignificant element of a charity’s brand armoury – tucked away on the website, only glanced at in AGM delegate packs. The need to report twice – once for compliance, once for engagement – creates an additional burden for those involved in communicating a charity’s brand story, a task that generally falls on communications, marketing and fundraising staff. Of course, there are times when only the TAR will do – grant-giving trusts and corporates quite rightly pay attention to statutory documents in determining a charity’s credibility, financial trustworthiness and resilience. But I wonder if in these cases the annual accounts and financial statements are more important than the accompanying narrative.

Rather than reinforcing a two-stage system of impact and annual reporting – the compliance part via the TAR and the engaging bit using a wider range of comms tools – it would be great to see Charity Commission guidance that encourages the use of newer forms of reporting as part of its statutory guidance, not in addition.

What do you think?

Feltron 2012 is the eight edition of the project (all images courtesy of Nicholas Felton)

Data is life crunched up, it cannot exist unless it has first been lived. Be it statistics on languages spoken or the cost of someone’s funeral, the numbers on the page don’t float in a vacuum. The best examples of this I’ve come across are Nicholas Felton’s Annual Reports, an on-going project in which the American graphic designer produces a book each and every year charting different aspects of his life down to a minutiae. Narcissistic I hear you shout? Maybe. More a celebration of process and design than anything useful in itself? Probably. But it’s a good starting point for a runaway train of thought about how everything can be data-ised – plus they are also just undeniably cool.

I’ve come to discover that all nifty things can be traced back to the Knight Foundation – the Kevin Bacon of data journalism as it were – and this is no different. I first heard about Nicholas Felton in this video about all the exciting prospects and projects in the world of data journalism (circa 2010) which is well worth a watch if you have a spare hour and a half.

The first thing I think the annual reports show is that you can’t underestimate the importance of good design and visualisations with data. I’ve spoken on this blog before about Francesco Franchi before and how his graphic work with IL magazine interacts with the journalism to make the stories more revealing and easier to engage with. Felton’s work here is no different, it’s are a masterclass in how information can be displayed – what would be mundane facts about someone else’s everyday life suddenly becomes fascinating.

It taps into the whole craze of life-hacking, the idea that if you can quantify yourself, if you can take a peak under the metaphorical hood, then you can tinker and tailor yourself to be that little bit better, to be your best possible version. Without wanting to sound too arch or preachy, the same can be said about society as a whole. The more we know about the world we inhabit, the more data we can crunch and analyse, the better chance we have of ironing out the problems and dusting away the concerns. I struggle to think of much data too small to be of use if taken from a wide enough pool.

If you break down what exactly the annual reports are telling us – where Nicholas Felton has been, what type of transport he has taken, who he has spent time with, how many photographs he has taken, what clothes he has worn and so on and so on and so on…. none of these are areas of life which people would immediately consider as data producing.

This is a mind-frame that people, and especially journalists, need to get out of; to realise that everything we see and do is a potential data set and to think constantly about what stories it may contain and what other data it could be joined, compared or contrasted with. If you take it one step beyond the specific life of Nicholas Felton and consider how this level and type of data on a society-wide basis is a) full of important insights – not only journalistically but also sociologically, commercially and environmentally etc and b) that in some cases this data is collected already – it’s all a question of how it’s recorded, how accessible it is and who holds the keys to it.

The problem is tracking down the data in the first place, if we take types of transport used for example – public transport is easy, records are kept of tickets sold on all forms of public transport and there are certainly educated estimates by transport companies and authorities of how many people successfully evade fares each year. Personal transport is a lot tricker – cars are the easiest, the DVLA holds data on how many qualified drivers there are in the country, from road tax payments we can work out how many cars are on the road, but how far are cars driven on average? The data for that exists – all cars over three years old need to undergo a MOT annually, that figure of how far that car has gone will be taken down and recorded somewhere but this information is currently entirely inaccessible to anyone else.

What about bikes? Shops will know how many bicycles they have sold but even if this was centrally accessible as data it wouldn’t come close to being an accurate account of the number of bikes on our roads. Walking is harder still, the essence of the data is being created by people simply partaking in these activities but currently no one is recording it. Perhaps someone should. Maybe the whole quantified self movement which started off more as a quirky craze more than anything else, actually holds some larger lessons.

The often manic cries lambasting the Big Brother state are not too far off the mark, it’s not necessarily the state doing the collecting but, whether it is us ourselves inputting information onto websites or companies recording our commercial tendencies, we live in a world where most of what we do leaves a trail of ones and zeros. This isn’t going to change so why not embrace it and use the system to improve society by making this data more accessible? Maybe by making more disclosure of anonymised information compulsory or extending the jurisdiction of the FOI Act. Whatever can be done probably should, because as the annual reports show that data is just life quantified and so it follows, wasted data is wasted lives and we wouldn’t want any of them now would we?

We aimed to create a strong visual consistency throughout, linking each page through the bold red colour, and unintrusive typeface.

Here are a few pages from it…

Size of Book: 11 inches x 16  inch (size of each page); 22 inches x 32 inch spread

2011-2012 Annual Report

 Goals for 2011-12:

• Provide opportunities for professional growth
• Support Norfolk Public Library’s Literature Festival
• Support Plum Creek Literacy Festival
• Update the webpage
• Collaborate with YART
• Promote opportunities for SCYP members
• Increase opportunities for cooperation between public and school libraries

Accomplishments

• Free admission to Norfolk Public Library’s Literature Festival
• Reduced admission to Plum Creek Literacy Festival
• Sponsoring sessions at the annual conference
• Collaborating with YART to support a spring meeting
• Co-hosting a booth with YART at the annual conference
• Sponsoring the Golden Sower program
• Providing funding for Plum Creek, the Literature Festival, RAN Nebraska, and the Para section
• Making a new web page

Conference Programs

Sally Snyder, Chair-Elect arranged for the following programs for the NLA/NSLA/MPLA conference held in Omaha, Nebraska Oct. 1-18:

• Dig Into Reading
• The Collaborative summer Library Program
• One Book, Many Librarians
• Curating a Topic with Pinterest and Scoop It
• Dr. Seuss On the Loose: Read Across America Day
• Google Apps You Can’t Live Without
• Storytelling Tips and Techniques
• Golden Sower Sessions
• Best New Children’s Books of 2012
• Kids’ Grief Kits in Your Library
• Best New Teen books of 2012
• Building Deeper Knowledge through Enrichment
• Where Am I Going? Where Am I Now?  How Can I Close the Gap?

Committee Reports

Golden Sower

Kathy Schultz and her committee announced the Golden Sower winners for 2011-12 on May 1.  The number of voters this year surpassed last year, so the contest continues to encourage new readers. The winners are:

Primary Winner: There’s a Cat in the Library by

Intermediate winner: Closed for the Season by Mary Downing Hahn

Young Adult: The Compound  by Stephanie A. Bodeen

Mary Downing Hahn and Stephanie A. Bodeen were able to attend the Golden Sower sessions to receive their awards.

The Department for Transport (DfT) announced this week (wb 25/03) that it has signed a contract with Bristow Helicopters Ltd to provide search and rescue helicopter services in the UK.  In his written statement to the House Transport Secretary, Patrick McLoughlin MP said that the new £1.6 billion contract for search and rescue helicopter services will see the UK benefit from improved flying times and better coverage of high-risk areas.

Helicopters will be able to reach a larger area of the UK search and rescue region within one hour of take-off than is currently possible, and based on historic incident data it is estimated that there will be an overall improvement in flying times to incidents of around 20% (from 23 to 19 minutes).

Presently, approximately 70% of high and very high risk areas within the UK search and rescue region are reachable by helicopter within 30 minutes. Under the new contract, approximately 85% of the same area would be reached within this timeframe.

The full statement from DFT can be found here.

Via RYA news.

Corporate manslaughter charge over death of 11-year-old girl

A watersports club in Middlesex has been charged with corporate manslaughter in relation to an incident in which an 11-year-old girl died after falling from a banana boat ride. Prince’s Sporting Club in Bedfont, Middlesex, has also been charged with an offence under section 3 of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. Section 3 requires all employers to conduct their business in a way that ensures, so far as is reasonably practicable, that others are not exposed to risk.

Mari-Simon Cronje died during a birthday celebration at the club on September 11, 2010, after falling from the banana boat and being struck by the boat that had been towing it. Elizabeth Joslin, specialist prosecutor in the Special Crime Division of the Crown Prosecution Service said: “I have carefully reviewed all of the evidence gathered by the Metropolitan Police and the Hounslow Environmental Health Department during their investigation into the tragic death of Mari-Simon Cronje. “I have concluded that there is sufficient evidence to charge the Prince’s Sporting Club Ltd with both corporate manslaughter and an offence under section 3 of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.”

A director of the Prince’s Sporting Club Ltd has been charged under section 37 of the Health and Safety at Work Act. An initial hearing took place at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on February 19. The case has been referred to Southwark Crown Court for a plea and case management hearing on April 26. Via RoSPA journals

Merlin Attractions loses appeal following fall death conviction

Merlin Attractions Operations — a subsidiary of Madame Tussaud’s — was convicted of two healthy and safety offences in April this year following a seven-day trial, and was fined £350,000 plus £145,000 in costs.

The case followed the death of George Townley in December 2007, who suffered fatal head injuries after falling 14 feet from the castle’s Bear and Clarence Bridge.

Via HSW.

2011 WAID water related fatalities report released

Drowning and immersion deaths from accidents or natural causes across the UK in 2011 remained static with over 400 deaths.

The report from the National Water Safety Forum (NWSF) identified 407 water-related fatalities throughout 2011 with the majority – 219 (54 per cent) – taking place in inland waters including rivers, canals, lakes, streams, lochs, ponds and reservoirs. Data from the NWSF’s Water Incident Database (WAID) also shows that just over a quarter of deaths – 105 (26%) – happened at the coast or harbour, such as at beaches, marinas or docks.

You can read the blog, and access the report in full here.

Solar energy is the main business of our client Austria Solar. That´s why we thought about how we could put this energy to paper. The result: the first annual report powered by the sun. Its content remains invisible until sunlight falls on its pages.
“The Solar Annual Report 2011 – powered by the sun”

more on behance

http://www.behance.net/gallery/The-Solar-Annual-Report-powered-by-the-sun/2986075

That report was published at the time as part of Cabinet papers, and indeed was reported to a great extent in the Exmouth Journal.

We didn’t cover it at the time on Exmouth Vision, so here’s the full text of the report included below…

Since the time of writing, Premier Inn has submitted their formal planning application for the Elizabeth Hall site, and Cabinet members agreed to give officers the green light to work further on an amended ‘Exmouth Splash’ proposal with a view to preparing a separate outline planning application.

‘Briefing for Exmouth Councillors’

 The Exmouth Regeneration Project Executive will be taking a report to Cabinet on the 6^th March outlining the progress made for the regeneration of Exmouth (‘Exmouth Vision’) during 2012 and an update of proposed actions in 2013.  This report is intended to be a narrative update on major activity rather than a formal report or technical appraisal.

Major landmarks in 2012

• We have just concluded a period of full public consultation on proposals for the new ‘Exmouth Splash’ waterfront recreation and leisure zone.  Results are being analysed at time of writing.  Proposals went on display around the town and at venues such as the Exmouth Christmas Cracker and the Exmouth Pavilion.  Details, including on how to give views, were sent to 1,000 households across the town selected at random.
• We discussed early drawings and ideas with existing tenants on Exmouth Seafront to help inform the public consultation.  Architects plans were drawn up and specialist surveys (such as environmental and flood risk) took place.
• Open marketing of the Elizabeth Hall Site took place during the summer and autumn, leading to an eventual sale, subject to detailed planning permission, to Premier Inn plc.
• EDDC began and continued detailed discussions with Directors of Exmouth Rugby Club about possible re-location to the former Rolle College playing fields adjacent to Douglas Avenue.  The Club has declared support in principle for the move and further work is continuing to establish technical and financial viability.
• We have provided Exmouth Sea Cadets and Exmouth Sea Scouts with initial proposals for re-location to new purpose-built facilities next to Imperial Recreation Ground and the existing Rugby Club site.
• EDDC undertook to pursue a single regeneration scheme at Mamhead/Pierhead.  This has now been adopted as a priority within the Exmouth Vision programme following the need to close the current Mamhead slipway for safety reasons.

Priority Projects in more detail: Estuaryside

2013 will be a crucial year in making detailed preparations for development at Estuaryside to fulfil the ambitions of the Exmouth Masterplan.  This is what we expect to see firming up in 2013 as the approved way forward:

• Depending on further work and studies, ERFC will confirm their move to the playing fields accessed from Douglas Avenue.  This remains subject to approval from the club membership.
• If this goes ahead it would allow proposals for a new supermarket, along with associated car parking and delivery areas, to move forward and become formally established.  There remains significant interest from supermarket chains in the estuaryside location and we would expect to see open market tendering to secure preferred bidder status taking place during early 2014.
• Such supermarket investment would also bring significant financial contributions towards delivering other aspects of the Masterplan regarding the estuaryside, such as…
• A re-designed and aligned transport interchange that works for the town – i.e new pick-up/drop-off points, new bus facilities, improved rail/bus/taxi/pedestrian connections and removal of current barriers.
• Improved pedestrian links with the town centre.
• New provision for the Exmouth Sea Cadets and Sea Scouts.
• Enhanced yet protected open public access at Imperial Recreation Ground.
• A new and improved public library and community hub building.
• A new sports pitch, using some of the remaining land area from the former ERFC site.  This would need to be provided to meet Sport England requirements for public access to sports facilities across towns such as Exmouth.
• Newly-designed and laid out public spaces, and links between the town centre and the harbour.
• Improvements and renovation to the Leisure Centre
• Some new small business and residential units
• The possibility of a new Windsurfing Centre.

These developments accord closely with the ambition set out in the Exmouth Town Centre and Seafront Masterplan.  Following discussions and some early technical assessments in 2012, this range of improvements is what East Devon District Council believes is possible and what it would like to see happen.  We should be bold and confident about saying as much publicly during 2013 on behalf of residents and visitors to the town, now and in years to come.

It is only the significant investment likely from a new supermarket provider that will make any of these wider benefits and improvements to the town possible.  The only other land use which would raise the sums necessary would be high-end residential developments – clearly not anticipated by the Masterplan.  A new supermarket on this site rather than at another out-of-town location underpins the future economic sustainability of the town by, among other things, increasing the number of shoppers and potential customers for existing traders in the town.

With no supermarket provided on this EDDC-owned land, no wider improvements for the town would be forthcoming.

This is the Council’s intention and its clear sense of direction, but obviously there are no detailed plans in place yet and certainly no decisions taken which set any of these developments in train.  EDDC is committed to these developments in principle and Members have a key role to play if progress is to be made, of course, further full and detailed public consultation will be essential.

What’s expected in 2013?

• We will carry out further work and consultation to explore the viability of ERFC re-location to their preferred alternative site adjacent to Douglas Avenue.
• We expect to see options regarding the Masterplan ambitions for Estuaryside shaping up early in 2013.  This would represent the largest single aspect of development in the Exmouth Vision programme. 
• We will carry out and complete maintenance and improvements to the Imperial Recreation Ground, including revetments (to provide greater and more sustainable resistance against sea erosion of the land).

 Queen’s Drive/’Exmouth Splash’

Public consultation on initial proposals for the new ‘Exmouth Splash’ development closed on 14 January 2013 having run since November 2012.

Key aspects of the proposed Exmouth Splash development include:

• A large privately-run play and recreation area, including both indoor and outdoor facilities
• A water sports hub, to be the centrepiece of the other main leisure area located on the seafront
• Retail areas, an amusement arcade and also a public square
• A hotel or holiday accommodation scheme
• A new two-storey café and/or restaurant
• A new 200 space-plus car parking area
• Re-aligning the existing road away from the seafront to make way for these changes.

Throughout this early phase of drawing up proposals for Exmouth Splash, EDDC has been mindful of the interests of existing tenants running leisure- and recreation-based businesses on the site at present.  Tenants were invited to two consultation meetings earlier in 2012 and initial drawings were shared with tenants to help shape the detail of the final public consultation.

It is important to emphasise that the public consultation concerned the principles of land uses and buildings in various locations, not necessarily the final detail for each part of the site.  For example, none of the buildings shown in the architect’s perspective represent approved – or even intended – designs.  They simply represented the principles of what generic activity would go where.

What’s expected in 2013?

• Council members will review and analyse all responses to the public consultation on the Exmouth Splash proposals.  Depending on that analysis and review, the current intention is to submit a formal planning application during the Spring of 2013.

 Elizabeth Hall site

Premier Inn, part of the Whitbread PLC, has now bought the Elizabeth Hall site on Exmouth’s seafront, subject to detailed planning permission being granted.  A Premier Inn hotel with a new-style café/restaurant on the ground floor could now be built and open for business by as early as Spring 2014.

Premier Inn scored highest against a range of set criteria which included economic impact (such as jobs and attracting new spend), design quality and regeneration potential, as well as financial offer.

Premier Inn is now refining their proposal and is due to bring forward a detailed planning application shortly.  If planning permission is secured, they are set to begin work on site by September 2013.

The other bidders for the Elizabeth Hall site were a major retirement home provider and the Friends of Elizabeth Hall.

The Premier Inn proposal, which went on public display in December 2012, is for a three-storey building, rising to four stories in one corner as part of the design, with 60 rooms.

On the ground floor there will be a licensed café/restaurant called ‘The Kitchen’ open to residents and non-residents alike offering food and drink from 6am to 11pm, a vital boost to Exmouth’s night-time economy.  In addition meeting rooms and small scale conference facilities have been included in the design with an entrance onto Bath Road offering greater links to the town centre.

What’s expected in 2013?

• Following their own pubic consultation in December 2012, we anticipate that Premier Inn will refine their proposals further before submitting a formal planning application.  Depending on outcome of that application, re-development work could start on site as early as September 2013.

Mamhead/Pierhead

EDDC resolved in the autumn of 2012 to pursue a single regeneration scheme at Mamhead/Pierhead.  This will provide not just a new slipway but also improvements to the surrounding area.

Our commissioned research of 2011 and 2012 (before Mamhead’s current closure was enforced) demonstrated clearly that, of all the current and potential slipway venues in Exmouth, Mamhead should be the preferred focus for future activity and potential investment. We accept and agree that any new Slipway should be realigned if design and funding allow.

Clearly a number of landowners will need to be involved in such a scheme so one of our most pressing tasks is to continue discussions and see what mutual agreements and arrangements may be possible.  These include the Crown Estate, Eagle One, Devon County Council (Highways) and Greendale.

One of the adjacent landowners, Greendale, has already implemented a planning permission for the construction of a café/restaurant to the western side of the existing Mamhead slipway.  EDDC hopes to agree with Greendale to defer any immediate development in order to allow us to pursue a single scheme of mutual benefit.

EDDC has now appointed a dedicated Project Manager to run the project.

What’s expected in 2013?

• Following discussion with landowners and initial technical assessments, we expect to publish a single scheme for the regeneration of the Mamhead/Pierhead area.
• We will build on the two workshops already held in 2012 and continue working with the Slipway Users’ Group to help inform the development of this single scheme.
• We are taking steps to enable the Stuart Lines temporary building kiosk to remain on the Mamhead Gardens for a further season.

 Other Exmouth Regeneration

• Work to improve the welcome for visitors to the Jurassic Heritage Coast will be completed at Orcombe Point.
• Final touches, including tree planting and a new bus shelter, will be made to The Strand.

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去年は、Shibaura House で、子供たちと一緒に種爆弾を作る教室、フィールドワークの散歩、そして、食べられる緑を植えるイベントをさせていただきました。

Thanks to Shibaura House for including me in their annual report. Last year, I organized a kids’ seed bomb workshop, a fieldwork walking and mapping event, and vegetable planting at Shibaura House.

5月から7月にかけ、都会で生活しながら気軽に緑に親しむことをテーマにした緑化プロジェクト「たべるみどり みるみどり」を実施し、様々なイベントを通して緑の楽しみ方を提案しました。ジャレドさんは、芝浦地域を探索するフィールドワーク、子ども向けのワークショップ等の講師を担当。

Jared Braiterman［デザイン人類学者／東京農業大学研究員］

身近なところにある自然をじっくり観察してみよう。

デザイン人類学者としてIT業界の仕事をする一方、東京農業大学の研究員として、

東京の緑地空間について研究しています。最近では「海外の日本庭園［＊1］」という、海外にある日本庭園をまとめたウェブサイトの制作にかかわりました。私自身が運営しているブログ「Tokyo Green Space［＊2］」では、東京の自然を観察し、写真とエッセイで紹介しています。

「たべるみどり みるみどり」では、3つのイベントを担当しました。シバウラ・フィールドワークでは、三田の「芝の家」からSHIBAURA HOUSEまで、街なかの緑を記録しながら散策し、参加者のスケッチや写真を集めて、グリーンマップ（緑の地図）をつくリました。 道端の草花を観察したり、通ったことのない細い道を歩くことで、芝浦という地域が参加者の皆さんにとって少し身近な存在になったのではないかと思います。残念ながら雨が降る中での散策になってしまったけれど、皆さん積極的に楽しんでくれたことが印象に残っています。子ども向けワークショップでは、泥だんごの中に植物の種を入れた、タネだんごづくりをしました。子どもを対象に、しかも日本語で講師をするのは初めてでした。とても緊張しましたが、子どもたちが泥を触ることを楽しんでくれてうれしかったですね。片山陽介さん（植物自由区代表）と対談したトークイベントで、都会で緑を楽しむ方法や、海外と日本の緑の比較などについてお話しできたのも楽しかったです。さて、今年はどんな緑を植えましょうか？

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デザイン人類学者。東京農業大学研究員。ブログ「Tokyo Green Space」では、東京の小さな緑が「都会の森」へとつながる可能性を探求している。 ＊1：nodaigarden.jp ＊2：tokyogreenspace.com