Pie Poudre

Paul Bradburn, chairman of OMCA

Well, it has been pretty much a year since OMCA has been under ‘new management’ so it seems like a good time to let you all know what has been going on. As this is all new to us we had a lot of learning to do and we were on a pretty steep learning curve.

We started by trying to hold as many open meetings as we could with the aim of trying to establish what jobs we needed to tackle within Old Market. We gathered as many opinions from traders, residents and stakeholders as we could and also began working with Eva Stuetzenberger from Destination Bristol with the aim of trying to regenerate the ailing retail sector in the area. It soon became obvious that Old Market had many long running issues (the new word for problems) and it wasn’t going to be a simple task to tackle them.

We also knew that we needed to improve many elements within the organisation if we were going to influence the decision making of organisations such as the Council, prospective developers and the media. With help, a new website was constructed, our Facebook page was created and managed, a Twitter account is functioning – a tireless work to report all the good things that would otherwise remain hidden.

We began to contact and meet with other organisations that could give guidance to us as to the best approach to take with our new goal of improving Old Market. New faces and representatives of other organisations were actively encouraged to attend all our monthly meetings and give their input to our debates. We began forging better ties with members of the council, planning advisers, Bristol Civic Society, friendly architects, councillors, business owners, local MPs, the press, the Neighbourhood Partnership – the list goes on.

With the help of Eva, from Destination Bristol, we carried out several workshops with the traders and retailers to try and get the best approach to help kick-start the ailing shops and business, especially in West Street.

We carried out a special ‘deep clean’ in Old Market day. We guided several walkabouts through the area with issues such as traffic, policing, planning/conservation, environment, health, the state of the retail sector and the dreaded central bus stop system.

For Bristol Open Doors Day we opened the Barstaple Almshouses, which had one the highest single day attendances. Over 400 people turned up to see just one of Old Market’s valuable heritage buildings!

A heritage walk map has also been created and will be printed soon with the intention of promoting more people to come here just to experience the wealth of wonderful buildings and the rich history that goes with them.

We began working collaboratively with the Village Business and Residents Association (VBRA) who represent the gay community and businesses within Old Market. We now work more closely with Emma Harvey and her team from TheTrinity Centre – especially now that they have their wonderful building at 6 West Street. We collaborate with the Dings Community Association, we follow the work of the Somali Forum and have been in contact with many of the relevant charities and organisations that are in or have a foothold in Old Market.

I know this just sounds like one big long boring list but from our point of view it is working with all these people that will literally put us back on the map. We have tried from the beginning to have a positive and all inclusive approach to anything that we have done to help improve Old Market and we need as much help as we can get. This said, it was pretty obvious to us that we had so much to try and sort out that we needed some professional help, which we obtained through the Neighbourhood Planning Network and ESHA Architects, who advised us to ask The Prince’s Foundation For The Built Environment if they would consider aiding us in creating the basis for our neighbourhood plan.

This is something that, if the Localism Bill becomes law, will give communities such as ours the potential to have more say in how decisions are made in terms of the built environment around us. The more input we provide for the creation of our plan, the closer it will be to what we as a united group want the future of Old Market to be. Anyway they agreed (hooray!) and a three day workshop was organized and held at the Marriot hotel and in a room in Old Market. I have to say it was a really positive experience in many ways. We had invited all the people that had a bearing on what could be done for our part of Bristol. Tom Perry (from the Foundation) and his team held the workshop and lead us through the process of focusing all our woes and concerns into a workable set of solutions. This was then presented as a short report in the Marriot on the final day of the workshop. Everyone agreed that all the ideas would have a positive influence on Old Market if we could get them implemented over time.

I won’t go into detail about the report (you can read it at this link – it‘s worth it) but the biggest problem…sorry, I mean issue, was highlighted as the traffic system…no surprise there. There were many other elements that needed attention but we considered this as our Achilles Heel that is holding back the regeneration of Old Market.

So with this in mind we began seeing how best to get the road system changed for the better. We met with the manager of the Neighbourhood Partnership to find out how to allot some of the available section 106 money for Old Market specifically to the alterations to the roads. We also arranged to present our case to transport leaders for Bristol at the Council House. We did this only last week and it was a very positive outcome. We argued our case strongly and got the agreement that ‘Old Market needs some help’. This may not sound like much but none of our proposals received a negative response from the transport team and we now stand a much higher chance of something good actually happening to the traffic system in Old Market.

I wish I could tell you that from that one meeting they gave us £3,000,000 and said ‘get on with it’. However there is still much lobbying, e-mailing, meeting attending, door knocking and debating to do before we get a solid ‘yes’ to our proposed solutions.

I know that it seems that nothing is happening to improve Old Market, some of you are fed up with the lack of action from the council when you have been complaining about the state of things for years. I am on totally the same page, but over the past year as Chairman I have realised that Old Market has never really had a collective voice to represent the people who live and work here. Yes initially it fought the application for an extra lap dancing club and won but that was just the beginning. The hard work began when we decided to be less of a reactionary group and to try and be constructive about regenerating Old Market.

That really brings me to the point at which I write ‘so now it’s up to you’.

The OMCA annual general meeting is on the 6^th of February and we need more help. We can only do so much. We have many events and projects that need people to come forward and get involved with. We intend to have an Old Market Celebration/Festival in June where we close down the main Street and have a proper market and celebration of the arts. We want to have stalls, music in pubs, arts events and much more to show what our community has to offer Bristol.

This is a call out to all of you reading this that feel they want to get involved with something worth spending time and energy on. It can be hard work but it can also be very rewarding. If you are interested in helping in any way, even just coming to the meetings to meet some of your neighbours please try to come to the AGM or contact us through the website.

There is so much more I could tell you that has been going on but I think that is enough for now. We hope that all the hard work done in the past year will begin to show some results in the next but it would really help if you as the community could write, e-mail or even speak to our councillors or MP about any of the issues you have with Old Market. The more we get you the community to back us, the more the people in the positions of influence will pay attention and things will start to happen… honest.

As my Nan said ‘anything worth having is never easy to get’, Old Market has been waiting 50 years for its time, I believe that is now.

Good luck for 2012!

Paul Bradburn – Chairman (at present) of Old Market Community Association