Mayor of Worcester Blog

One of the great privileges of being the Mayor is to nominate a charity. My chosen charity is Age UK Worcester and Malvern Hills.

Future mayors take note – you are very likely to be lobbied by a number of charities to get your seal of approval. I didn’t find it easy and gave quite a bit of thought to my choice. I wanted to do something for the environment and social justice.

Last year I chaired a cross-party city council group looking at ways we could, as a council, help to support residents in the cost-of-living crisis. With massively increased energy costs I know that many people last winter were living in fuel poverty having to choose between heating and eating. Fuel poverty is defined as any household that is paying more than 10% of their income on energy costs. Money for the gas or electricity meter is vital right now but British homes are often very poorly insulated – what are we doing to reduce heating bills in the first place? Social landlords have been gradually upgrading homes with better boilers, double glazing and wall insulation. And organisations such as Act on Energy have helped many low-income owner occupiers upgrade their homes too. But there is still a gap. There are very many, often older, owner-occupiers living in draughty homes with a letter box falling off or in need of very low-cost sealing strips around their front door or windows. It’s a disgrace that heat and therefore money is disappearing through the cracks.

Step forward Age UK. Age UK provide a trusted service where they visit a resident’s home to provide a free energy assessment and give them advice on how they can reduce their costs but most importantly they will often install things like low energy bulbs and draught excluding strips right there and then. There are so many other reasons to support Age UK from the work they do to tackle loneliness, digital exclusion and money and debit advice. Please take a look at their city centre charity shops. Can you help me spread the word about the great work they do? If you are in a position to do so, would you consider making a donation via the Mayor’s charity page?

https://www.worcestermayor.org.uk/mayors-charity

 

 

On Monday I joined staff and pupils of Perry Wood Primary School in unveiling a brand-new bug hotel in the walkway between The Hive and Crowngate Shopping Centre. A bug hotel is a human-made outdoor structure that attracts insects and smaller animals, to provide them with shelter and a safe place to live.

We live in a busy, changing and often increasingly urban and nature depleted world. We often hear about biodiversity loss, but we are also losing bio abundance. Quite simply if we don’t have enough insects for birds to eat, we’ll continue to see a decline in nature and we’ll all be the losers.

Yes, bug hotels are good for insects, but bug hotels are good for us too. They allow us to get closer to nature and learn about how balanced ecosystems and biodiversity work. They teach us not to be afraid of insects and give us a better understanding of their role in our ecosystem and what they bring to our gardens. Creatures such as ladybirds help to control aphids in our gardens and farmland. Other types of beneficial bugs are the pollinators. Solitary bees pollinate plants from ornamental flowers to food crops.

Very small children often have a fascination with tiny bugs, beetles and worms. But as we get older that childhood fascination sometimes gets extinguished and replaced with feelings of revulsion and a desire to stamp on and destroy the insects around us. Following the lead of Perry Wood Primary School, I now hope to better appreciate and remember the rich tapestry of life including worms, woodlice, centipedes, flies, silverfish, wasps, beetles, mice, shrews, earwigs, bees, lacewings and hoverflies and many, many more, quietly living often unseen just a few steps away.

Last weekend I visited the Repair Café who were celebrating their seventh year. Organised by Transition Worcester they meet at 11am on the second Saturday of the month at Unity House on Stanley Road. The Repair Café is supported by the Duckworth Trust.

Repair Cafes are volunteer-run initiatives where people bring their broken items for repair instead of discarding them. These cafes operate in shared community spaces and offer regular events where skilled volunteers assist individuals in fixing a variety of items, encouraging a DIY approach and fostering skill-sharing.

Repair Cafes are a little bit like what you may have seen on the TV show ‘The Repair Shop’. The main difference being that with Worcester’s Repair Café anyone can rock up with just about anything that is broken with no need for the object having a back story or it being a family heirloom.

Do you remember the days when you could buy a new heating element for a kettle, or we actually made repairs to clothes rather than throwing them away in what we now call fast fashion?

Our Repair Café takes on everything from sharpening secateurs to a stopped clock, to a laptop not turning on, to a broken zip, to a vacuum cleaner needing a new drive belt. Repair Cafes help reduce waste by extending the lifespan of items that would otherwise end up in landfills. They promote repair, reuse, and repurposing, challenging the throwaway culture.

Repair Cafes are friendly places. They serve tea and cake and are a safe space for community members to connect, share skills, and engage in meaningful interactions. Participants not only get their items repaired but also forge relationships, strengthening the social fabric of their community.

So, take a bow everyone leading Transition Worcester. Transition Worcester recognises that on a finite planet with eight billion largely very poor people we can’t expect to continue to use and abuse the resources we have in countries like ours. As well as Repair Café Transition Worcester also promotes energy conservation, has created a community teaching garden and rescues at least some of the tonnes of perfectly good food routinely thrown away by the big supermarkets every day. Thank you.

For more information: www.transitionworcester.org.uk

Changing Face of Worcester Carnival

The Worcester Carnival stretches back at least a hundred years. The carnival was for many years the highlight of the city’s calendar until it came to an end in the 1990s. I know those carnivals are warmly remembered by many. Who can forget the Ronkswood Girl’s ‘Bouzouki’ Band?

After several attempts to resurrect the carnival, the current team finally oversaw a successful return in 2017, and I’m pleased to see it grow every year since.  Despite a hiatus in 2020 and 2021 due to COVID, the last two year’s events have seen thousands of residents and visitors turn out to make the most successful carnivals yet.

At the official opening last Saturday, it was an honour as Mayor to thank the organisers – they do a massive amount of work that often goes unseen.

Worcester Carnival has been changing. It’s great to see the thought and values that the organisers have applied to the planning of this modernised event. They’ve embraced inclusion by ensuring the carnival involves the breadth of Worcester community and I’m pleased to see a much bigger environmental theme by including lots of walking, dancing and cycling into the carnival.

It’s also great to see the traditional role of “Carnival Monarch” being developed. Gone is the outdated 1970s style beauty Queen. Instead, we now have two people chosen. They chose for themselves between being the Carnival Ambassador, the Queen or Carnival King. Rhianna Levi and Danny Taylor-Edwards will be this year’s Carnival Queen and King for the coming year promoting good causes.

The team behind the Worcester Carnival are pioneers in creating a platform for diverse community voices. In a herculean feat of cooperation, they created three hand-propelled vehicles that were constructed for the Carnival by 101 Creation Space, decorated by Spare Room Arts, working with The Monday Night Club, the Worcester Afro-Caribbean Association and Honeywell Primary School.

Thank you to the organisers, everyone doing the stalls and everyone taking part in the parade – you were amazing!