REDP INVOLVEMENT EVENT: NOTTINGHAM

To Nottingham, for the first in a series of "Involvement Events", launching the Regional Equality and Diversity Partnership (REDP) into the wider world.

Train from Leicester Station at 0725 with Dennis Bradley, Community Development Officer at Leicester's LGBT Centre. Dennis is part of the Amplified Leicester project. I'm not often given to envy, but each time I speak with someone who's doing that, I can't help but wish I was on it! At Nottingham Station we meet Ian Robson, Director of the LGBT Centre and share a taxi to the venue, East Midlands Conference Centre at Nottingham University (photo above).

I'm chairing this event, Ian is leading the presentation on behalf of the Core Partners, with support from Iris Lightfoote from The Race Equality Centre (TREC). We have engaged the services of Judith and Karen, BSL interpreters. We have about a dozen people signed up for this event from the VCS sector in Nottingham, representing Nottingham Council for Voluntary Services, The Deaf Society, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham Refugee Council, and East Midlands Ambulance Service amongst others. Nice venue: food is good and plentiful but the room is really cold and seems resistant to all attempts to heat it. Even in the Gents, although the taps had that sign saying "Danger! Very Hot Water!" what came out was stone cold!

I'd like to keep to the schedule. After my general introduction and housekeeping announcements, Ian has half an hour to present a "beginners' guide" to REDP. He sprints through it and finishes in five minutes. Time to switch to decaf, Ian! We're not going to have 25 minutes of dead air, of course, and I'm not going to chuck out the timetable at this early point, so I fill - for 20 minutes. The attendees don't know that this isn't how we planned it, so as long as I can keep the ball rolling then all's well. We take a short break then go into the workshops on time. These include some very strong and positive contributions an take us through to lunchtime.

The afternoon session begins with our guest speaker: Rauf Mirza, one of some 200 ambassadors around the country promoting public appointments for the Government Equalities Office. For some little while now there's been a cross-departmental drive to increase the diversity of people sitting on boards of public bodies, with particular emphasis on women, members of ethnic minorities and disabled people. I found especially interesting the part of Rauf's talk when he focuses on the seven principles of public life as outlined by the Nolan Committee. These are: selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership.

Carolyn Pascoe, REDP's Researcher, presents her Regional Profile, looking at the facts, figures and stats illustrating various equality strands in Nottingham, and in comparison with the rest of the region and the country. I give the final presentation, which is on the Equality Bill - and we finish on the very stroke of 4 o'clock.

In summing up at the end of the day, I said that if we were a theatrical company on tour, this would have felt like a public dress rehearsal. There's a few bugs need ironing out, and many of those attending have given us helpful notes.