THE HIGH STREET AND BEYOND
Objective: To create a vibrant and sustainable high street. This means a thriving heart of the village, as well as businesses working together on many green issues including reducing waste, carbon dependency and maybe even moving towards a local circular economy
Contact: helena.perry@gmail.com
Successes: greening the High Street with planters, taking over empty shop windows with artwork displays, temporarily taking over the empty Les Ward shop for community and local business use, forming a HisImp traders Group and meeting regularly to foster working together.
Issues: Generating enough support and encouragement for traders to take more radical collaborative action. We began wanting a local currency, to keep our money cycling around our community benefiting us all, rather than being siphoned away from our village into tax havens. After much research and discussions with other places operating their own currency, we decided to try and get £ sterling to perform in the same way as a local £ with a cross business marketing scheme Totally Locally designed and made free by award winning designer Chris Sands. We are trying to get our local shops to realise their collaborative potential.
How can you help? There are so many areas! From the practical plant care to help with the pavement pounding to communicate with retailers. Even discussing some of the above issues with shop owners and others would help raise awareness. Get in touch to find out what our most pressing need are right now.
