I somehow became part of the Core Group

Faye and I continue to message each other each other and I was contributing to the Facebook page. I went out and walked along Whitchurch Lane, taking photos and video clips. I added them to the group for information.

I don’t know how it happened, because I initially said that I would not be able to help run the Facebook page, however the Facebook group had momentum and I was helping Faye!

Very quickly, there were lots messages going between Faye and myself, the poster campaign had started. A volunteer created a poster and we added to the group and encouraged people to print then off and put them in their window. Soon volunteers were printing batches of 10, 20, 50 posters and other volunteers were delivering them. I was co-ordinating the volunteers the best I could. Faye was in contact with a company who would print the large posters for us. This was fantastic! EVERYTHING so far had been done by volunteers on a zero budget.

The next big date was 9^th January, Mayor Marvin Rees’s Facebook Live. We suggested that the group members could ask Marvin questions about the plans for the area. You will see that we somewhat bombarded him with questions. It worked, he agreed to visit us on 17^th January https://www.facebook.com/MarvinJRees/videos/371655546901228/

I soon learned that two people called Steve and Martin wanted to put a drone video together. This would film the route of the proposed road form the A4, Hicks Gate roundabout to Whitchurch Lane. This was going to be SO useful because the main question being asked was WHERE IS THIS ROAD GOING?

Faye had also been contacted by David, he also was particularly keen to help. The messages between us continued. Before I knew it Faye was picking me up to go to a studio to put together the drone footage with the photos and videos with a voice over to explain what we knew about the plans. Again we were so grateful to the studio and the staff for volunteering their time and efforts to help. The video was released in the group. https://www.facebook.com/stevebhill/videos/10161398464195370/

The first meeting of some of the ‘core group’ was in first weeks of January. I quickly realised that the chap who took the drone footage was Steve, the Stockwood resident I had met in the Library at the beginning of December!

Things were snowballing! The core group physically meet for the first time just days before the meeting with Marvin, how on earth would these people, who didn’t even know each other pull this off? I can’t even quite remember what happened in what order, it was manic for all of us. We had a couple of meetings in the corner of the Maes Knoll. We just got on with what had to be done.

There was not time to consider anything else, not even the niceties of getting to know each other!

Everyone in the core group played their part, between us we hoped that we had covered all the elements. The Core Group was established!