REDP INVOLVEMENT EVENT: NORTHAMPTON

To Northampton, for the seventh in the series of "Involvement Events" hosted across the East Midlands by the Regional Equality and Diversity Partnership. Dee (from LCIL) drives Taherah (from TREC), Dennis (from Leicester LGBT Centre) and me down from Leicester. We're getting on familiar terms with Dee's SatNav and now all talk back to it.


The meeting is held in the King's Park Centre. When we arrive, a group is setting up in the smaller room next to ours. Before long, they start singing - in tongues. First time we've encountered anything like that on one of our days out and about.


It takes a while for our attendees to begin showing up and there are a few moments of anxiety about our support today. One East Midlands is running a health equality event in Northampton today, which has drawn away some of the people who'd said they'd be joining us. REDP has a good working relationship with One East Midlands and we'd normally have been able to avoid this sort of clash, but it was the health sector which set the date, time and place.


I chair the first part, Dee does the "Beginner's Guide to REDP". She describes the current lineup of REDP as being a "catalyst". Nice analogy, but only partly true. A catalyst promotes change, but remains unchanged itself in the process: the four core partners are certainly changing and learning as we go along.


On the floor, there's general assent that the reason why previous attempts to establish a regional partnership on equalities have come to grief is because they have been "top down" operations rather than "bottom up".


Guest speakers this afternoon are Patrick Devine and Jagdish Singh Shemare, from the Equality and Human Rights Commission. They're both Regional Advisers for EHRC - Patrick for the East Midlands, Jagdish for the West. They give a deep and knowledgeable presentation about the Equality Bill and the Non-Statutory Guidance that will accompany it (as you'd expect). The photo at the top of this entry was taken during their joint presentation.


I have the last half hour or so to present Carolyn's statistical profile of Northampton and Northamptonshire. I haveen't done this before, but have seen Carolyn do it at the six previous events. Mind you, that's a bit like having been to the circus half a dozen times and thinking you can have a go on the flying trapeze. I seem to carry it off alright - with a smattering of trapeze-themed jokes as I go along.