Welcome to your April Eden Local !

Many of you have picked up on the fact that the March Eden Local was out early in March; in fact we started the delivery around 18th- 19th February, and here we have the April delivery arriving through your door in March, ready for those clocks going forward on 29th of the month.

Whilst it is snowing as I write this, there is an amber warning for snow. A few days previously to starting the content and design of the magazine, as I was finishing my part in posting the Eden Local through doors, close to my own door, I saw a beautiful pink blossom on the tree not far from my house. I thought to myself, I must get a picture of it tomorrow, as it was getting dark, before it falls. The next day the frost arrived, and from pink to brown it turned - I’d missed my opportunity.

The plan is to get the April Eden Local out by Sunday 2nd April, subject to the weather of course; April Fool’s Day of course being on the Saturday. By some strange coincidence, it is also the day that as residents, we say goodbye to our Eden District Council and Cumbria County Council. As the Penrith Town Elections are on 4th May, requests are already coming in for enquiries to assist with the distribution of election leaflets.

Leaflets are something we don’t normally do, on the basis that it’s usually a lot cheaper to have a page placement in the magazine, but why? Well, in over 20 years of being involved in print and distribution, I have seen and witnessed first-hand, so many people and local groups that call me when they have thousands of leaflets, with no idea of the costs or the time it takes to distribute them.

For those of you reading this who are contemplating a leaflet campaign for whatever reason, an election, a menu, promotional activity and so on, please try to imagine the time it takes for the Eden Local team to empty a box of 125 magazines, then insert a leaflet into 125 magazines and then re-box them. Based on the delivery target of the Eden Local, we are posting the equivalent of 200,000 A5 leaflets a month. This month we are posting the equivalent of close to 240,000 A5 pages.

I am very pleased to say thank you to the 106 Partnership, Communities in support of our local buses team. They have asked the Eden Local to assist with the distribution of their brochure along the A6 areas that the Eden Local covers, and its areas across Penrith. If you are in this area and you have not received a 106-bus brochure and timetable, please give me call on the number over this page and I’ll make sure you get one.

Moving on, we are already a quarter of the way through 2023 or thereabouts, depending on when you are reading this. In this next 12-month period, your Eden Local returns to being posted through your door every month, after it changed during 2020 and 2021, due the circumstances we all faced.

Meanwhile, I have been settling the new studio in with the Eden FM Team, at its new studio now based on the old Newton Rigg Campus. Moving a radio station unfortunately isn’t like moving home; it is quite complex based on the authorities it is governed by and licensing it has.

Like many voluntary organisations, it needs more volunteers, but not just for Penrith, as it’s ‘Connecting the Community’ plan linking towns, villages and hamlets across Eden is presented in this issue on pages 7 and 13.

Also featured is the Penrith Lions 40th May Day Carnival update on pages 8 and 9, and there are details of a meeting which is an invitation for people to come forward if they can help now, during and after the May Day event, even if it’s just for a few hours. The President of the Penrith Lions details’, John Rogerson, are included with this article.

If you are a local business or organisation and you would like to sell the May Day programme which the Eden Local and Eden FM team is putting together on behalf of the Penrith Lions, please drop me a line or give me a call.

Much of what I am writing is about pure communication, focused on volunteers, voluntary groups and not for profit organisations, and how, for many years, they have been relied on for key tasks, many through small groups in delivering key strategies.

Communication is essential, and fundamentally at the base of everything we do. It still remains a two-way process. I illustrated this with an image of two tin cans and a piece of string connected to the bottom of each, with the open end of the tin used for speaking or listening. A few decades later, the tins were replaced with plastic and paper cups. A few decades later still, they were replaced by mobile phones.

Communication requires two key elements, via a number of channels. It can be verbal, visual, or some form of sound or written. Communication, for it to happen, requires a message to be sent. For communication to work, it requires acknowledgement that it has been received at the very least, and ideally a response.

What do you think happens when you send a text, but the reply comes back via another channel? For example, via one of five social media channels. I could say welcome to my life, but like food, everyone has their favourite, and communication is the same, but with so many ways of communicating, it’s become fragmented through so many channels. We can generally only watch one channel at a time on TV, but how many lines of communication do we have open?

On 1st April, Eden District Council will stop functioning. We have got key changes presented on pages 20 – 21 from Penrith Town Council about this. For those still not sure of why we have a town council in Penrith, I could say wait and see. However, what I would say since it was set up, is that Eden District Council never followed the process of devolution and never released key assets that generate income to support the community of Penrith and many of the villages around it.

The next six to twelve months are very important in the future of Penrith and those around it that depend on it. It starts with the first Penrith town election, without a District Council election on 4th May 2023.

I’ll be back getting you ready for May as early as 12th April, and if everything goes to plan, I’ll be out with the Penrith Lions promoting the 40th Carnival with other members of Eden FM.

Take care out there

Lee

Phone: 01768 862394

Email: lee@cumbrianlocal.co.uk www.cumbrianlocal.co.uk

Cumbrian Local Publications Ltd

Home based business, Penrith CA11 8