Bristol's Enterprise Zone features on live Ujima radio show

Preparation for the live discussion

After an intense scripting and production session with Roger Griffith last Thursday 9th May, the team refined the shows they've been working on and decided to distill the content into three programmes. Next week (Thursday 23rd May) there will be two half hour shows on Ujima, back to back from 16:00 - 16.30 and 16.30 - 17.00; the theme of the first will be citizen journalism and democracy in Bristol, followed by Transport in Bristol and the Bristol Bus boycott of 1963. 

Presenters Miss Divine and Sib with two of the Ujima show guests Nick Sturge and Alun Owen

But the first live programme in this CJII series went out last night when key team members of the Bristol Temple Quarter Enterprise Zone came to the studio for a an hour-long live programme. Our two presenters were from both the first CJ workshop from last year - a welcome return by Miss Divine - and Sib from our current course. The Enterprise Zone guests were Catherine Frankpitt - Senior Communications Officer; Alun Owen - Service Director of the Enterprise Zone; Alison Retter - Bristol City Council Regeneration Officer for the Zone and Nick Sturge - Managing Director of Bristol's Set Squared, an enterprise collaboration between several universities including the University of Bristol.

The presenters had devised questions covering a wide range of topics to ask the guests that included 'what is the Enterprise Zone?' 'What will it do?' 'How will inner city and disadvantaged communities get to hear about opportunities and become involved?' The citizen journalists did an excellent job - a few confusions over guests' names were minor mistakes and easily compensated for with their confidence in asking some searching questions and their deft allocation of fair time to each guest. 

All this was overseen and supported by Paul Hassan and Roger Griffith in the studio - interesting to witness the scribbling and passing of notes and sign language that enable the smooth running of a live discussion show like this that listeners don't get to see! The show was recorded and a podcast will be available soon - the link will be posted here. 

Another of the CJ team, Nas, was tasked with filming the show and some additional interviews with the guests after the show. This is a continuation of her volunteer work with Firstborn Creatives and the films also will be uploaded to the Ujima website and links posted here as soon as they're available.

The crew and guests

At University of Bristol's School of Social Policy

Back at Bristol University's School of Social Policy again (see post about the first part of Bristol Mayor Watch project ) with Professor Alex Marsh and Dr David Sweeting to learn about how Bristol is run - the mayor, the council, the councillors. 

Pleased to see some homework has been done before the session by our citizen journalist team (they'd been sent links to profiles of Alex and Dave and to their blogs and areas of research - see links below) so there are some good questions about elections, housing and social policy in general - the responses noted and Tweeted to @BSmayorwatch.

Alex Marsh and Dave Sweeting

Now there's an elected Mayor the relationship between the Mayor and councillors will make a difference so the outcomes of the forthcoming election (next week) is a topic under scrutiny from both within and outside Bristol.

Transport is one issue that the academics have focused on for this session as it's such a hot topic in Bristol but perhaps the most revealing information was a graph known as The Jaws of Death, that clearly illustrates the huge cuts in the city's expenditure that the Mayor will have to make in the near future.

Some of the team aren't familiar with the British political system and found it a really interesting session and they'd all learned something new about Bristol's governance - the election process, what councils are and aren't responsible for, the structure of the council - one person felt the information would 'help me to develop myself more'

New insights into the hierarchies of the city were also discovered - one team member felt the amount of power the elected Mayor holds is underestimated by many, and no-one yet knows how much impact the council will have over the decisions he makes. Another of our trainees had come to understand during this session what an important role influence has within the process of implementing policy; who will have the most influence once the new councillors are elected? Well it may take some time for this to become evident but we'll be reporting on the elections from the City Hall later this week with further Tweets and blog posts by the team on the Bristol Mayor Watch blog.

These are links to information on or blogs by our excellent hosts at University of Bristol this evening, Professor Alex Marsh and Dr David Sweeting

http://www.alexsarchives.org/about/

http://alex-marsh.net/index.php/about-my-research

http://www.bristol.ac.uk/sps/people/alex-d-marsh/overview.html

http://www.bristol.ac.uk/sps/people/david-w-sweeting/index.html

http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/Elected-mayor-role-bring-stability/story-15968038-detail/story.html#axzz2SG4gJpRy

http://bristolcivicleadership.net/