Everyday Voices Will Meet Decision Makers As Major Northern Convention Arrives In Scarborough

Hundreds of residents and regional leaders will gather at Scarborough Spa on Tuesday for the annual 'This is the North' convention to shape the future of northern communities.

Everyday residents will share their lived experiences directly with regional decision-makers tomorrow as a major northern convention takes over Scarborough Spa.

The 'This is the North' event will run for twelve hours on Tuesday, September 15. Community network People's Powerhouse will host the convention, bringing together more than fifty speakers and facilitators across twenty-two workshops.

Organisers aim to answer what a North that is great for everyone looks like. Rail links from Leeds, York, Hull and Manchester will transport delegates to the coast for a programme divided into three acts.

Rima Bailey, managing director of People's Powerhouse, said:

"We are aware that coastal communities contain some of our best assets around this country. We've got fantastic holiday destinations, wonderful people, proud histories, and it's really important that people's Powerhouse reaches lots of places that aren't perhaps obvious in the minds of a lot of decision makers.

So we deliberately chose Scarborough as one of our proudest coastal towns and holiday destinations in England. And we're very keen to reach out to all of the communities who are in and around Scarborough, who want to be part of a big get-together to discuss what does it take to create a north that's great for everyone."

The venue will host fifteen concurrent workshops in the afternoon, including sessions on how the holiday activities and food programme is delivered across North Yorkshire.

James Armstrong, connection and impact manager for People's Powerhouse, said:

"we've made relationships with people from the community level all the way up to government, and the idea is that this is an opportunity for them to basically have a platform where they can celebrate the great work that they do.

So, the day has over 60 people who are either speaking or delivering a workshop. We have about 25 different workshops across the venue. We've got the entire Scarborough Spa booked out for this very purpose. And it really is an opportunity to bring everyone together to ensure that it's something that everyone can get something out of."

The convention's agenda has been directly shaped by the 'Coast to Coast' project. Local listeners recorded everyday conversations with residents across Yorkshire and the Humber, the North East, and the North West to understand how national policy impacts northern communities.

James Armstrong added:

"one of our biggest projects we do is called coast to coast. It's a listening conversation that we do across the north. We speak to thousands of people across the north every year. We have an army of paid local listeners who are already embedded in the local community. So it's having conversations with everyday people about their everyday lives with friendly faces and with known entities from each of the individual communities.

So what we could then get, we get an authentic understanding of what's happening in people's lives on the ground across the entire North. So we are very grateful to the guys at CAVCA, so they did over 200 listing conversations for us in Scarborough alone. So the whole day is literally created by the people of Scarborough because everything that we're doing is a direct response to what the people of Scarborough told us through their own conversations and so that's what we're doing here.

It's all about platforming people's understanding and voices giving everyone a voice to be heard and making sure that in the room you have everyday people, you have politicians, you have decision-makers, and you have ministers there as well. So we're looking to ensure that we get it for everybody."

Two national community initiatives will launch at midday. The 'Do:With' movement, introduced by Adam Lent from The King's Fund, will launch a charter asking governments and public services to work alongside people as equal partners. The Asset-based Workforce Development approach will also be unveiled by founders including Brendan Martin and Cormac Russell.

High-profile speakers scheduled to appear include former Chief Crown Prosecutor Nazir Afzal OBE and Jessica Allen, deputy director of the Institute of Health Equity.

Rima Bailey said:

"We bring together people from ordinary everyday situations together with high level decision makers, people with different types of power, people who can actually influence change.

Andy Burnham was part of our first People's Powerhouse Convention. He continues to talk about bringing people into the centre of decision making and having communities have a say in what the new government is going to look like and doing politics differently. And I'm very pleased to say that we are still in very close contact with his office.

We are non-party political, we're non-partisan. We work to get the voices of ordinary people to the centre of decision making and we think that's quite a unique offer."

Delegates will also have the chance to participate in activities beyond the traditional panel discussions, concluding with an evening of food, live jazz, and playback theatre.

James Armstrong said:

"It's not a conference. It's a convention and we do things a bit differently at People's Powerhouse, so we invite people to join Kathy Foreman and the sea pool swimmers in the North Sea. We invite people to join Sam Allen to do the yellow coastal walk. We have legislative theatre, we have an opportunity for people to get on the stage and actually act out their everyday lives and how it might look to them.

We have national launches of a do with movement, which were introduced by Adam Lent from The King's Fund. We also have a couple of others which you can find out on our website all about. We've basically tried to make it a day for everybody, by everyone and with everybody."

There are more details about the event at https://www.peoplespowerhouse.app/convention