Two LGA associates worked with councillors, officers and board member partners during a total of six days. The associates read background documents, plans and research findings to establish a picture of Ashfield and the important elements to explore in relation to place narrative. Three workshops ran to explore the key themes: two internally, with councillors and officers; one with partners.
From this research, a narrative was created, as a starting point, to share internally. The aim was to refine the themes and later share the narrative with people who live and work in Ashfield, as well as visitors to the area.
Following research, the associates found that the key themes and the council’s ‘must haves’ in the narrative would be:
- the importance of the strong, friendly community
- the economic progress being made across the district
- major investment in towns, pleasant green spaces and parks
- the appetite for change and the ambition of organisations and partners
- people in the community living healthier and longer lives.
There was also acknowledgement of another story where some residents were struggling and some older people were looking to the past rather than to future aspiration. There was a feeling that some of the discontent was driven by stories in the media.
To ensure that the narrative would resonate with audiences, internal and external to the council, it needed to be adaptable. The council was keen to build on the ‘discovery’ theme, bring out the hidden gems in the district and invite staff, councillors, partners and residents to see themselves in Ashfield.
Workshops, to tease out the themes, used models and techniques to engage participants and inspire imaginative thinking. These models and resources can be found in the LGA narrative toolkit. Two exercises used successfully in the Ashfield workshop were:
- consideration of ‘natural thinking preferences’ and how we tend to communicate with others depending on our own preference (the Hermann Global LLC ‘whole brain graphic’ showing intellectual, intuitive, instinctive and rational thinking preferences was used during workshops in Ashfield to illustrate the need to make the narrative appealing to a range of communication preferences)
- the container approach to story was used to capture key objects and metaphors, which were important in making the narrative specific to Ashfield; for example, the telescope was an important object identified by participants for the following reasons:
- it is used to look at the stars and speaks to positive futures
- it has links to a popular mural of a young person using a telescope that the community is proud of
- Ashfield is home to the biggest observatory outside Greenwich; so, the reference fits well with the hidden gem theme.
The associates also chose to frame the story using ‘Ashfield Day’, which is an event that binds different towns and villages together. They were clear that the narrative also had to do some practical work including defining the geographical location as many people do not know where Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, is.