This month was a mixture of both the serious and more frivolous side of community engagement as BU continued to contact other community groups around our local area and also featured at a couple of the larger summer fairs. The role of coordinating much of what goes on behind the scenes at Griffin Park is now well established and all the various groups are now ensuring that BU know what they are doing, and as a result, there is a much greater sense of one common purpose.
We also did a little work with another trust club and so are passing on good practice, or at least our experience of running our trust, to others within Supporters’ Direct. There are few big wins in community engagement; it is, by its very nature, mostly small scale and supportive of bigger initiatives. However, July saw BU represent Brentford at the Hounslow Council’s major annual Local Strategic Partnership conference, where, along with Barratt’s PR agency, Four Communications, we were able to help present the plans for the new stadium and talk directly to many of the decision makers from the various council departments and their partners. We were also involved in a meeting with a potential club sponsor, where our unique constitution and the links we have in the community through the GPLZ and the Community Sports Trust, make us a very attractive proposition.
On July 4, I met with Hugh Picton, the acting Chairman of Grand Union Community Development, a local charity based in Brentford High Street. They describe their role as working collaboratively for inclusive regeneration in Brentford, which means they are working for the benefit of all those who live, work or learn in the local and neighbouring areas. They are naturally extremely well connected to all the other local groups and if we can contribute to Grand Union while at the same time extending our reach and getting our message to a wider community, the interests of both organisations will be well served. If anyone reading this bulletin is in need of a workspace in the centre of Brentford, Grand Union have a large unused office space that is available for rental, and Hugh will be only too glad to show you around.
On July 5th, BU pitched up at Chiswick Fair and shared a stall with the Lionel Road team in the centre of the green at Turnham Green. There was a 5-a-side football tournament for boys of all ages all afternoon and we were given a spot right beside the pitch, ensuring a steady stream of visitors throughout the event. The fact that we combined our efforts meant that the display for the stadium gave us a higher profile and lots of local people commended us for turning up and being a local football club prepared to get down to grass roots level. We had taken a load of last season’s shirts to the fair on the off chance that the youngsters might be interested and sold enough to make it worth our while. It was good to see a few more Brentford strips compete with the Chelsea and Arsenal ones (not much evidence of QPR support!). There was great interest in the stadium plans and we didn’t get a minute to ourselves.
The following Tuesday, July 8, the mood was completely different as we moved slightly upmarket and, along with Matt Davis, the BFC Commercial Manager, I attended the 10th birthday celebrations of the very glossy Richmond Magazine in the very nice surrounds of Petersham Nursery. All the great and the good of Richmond were there and we took advantage of our invitation to this rather select gathering to buttonhole the editor and suggest they ran some editorial about some aspect of life at BFC, their local professional football club. Matt followed this up the following day and their response was very encouraging. Again, a small victory, but another means of extending our reach to a new audience.
Thursday 10 saw BU arrive at GSK for the Hounslow Local Strategic Partnership Annual Stakeholder Conference, described in the invitation as “an opportunity for Hounslow organisations from the private, public, voluntary and community sectors to spend the day together reviewing progress made in Hounslow over the past year, and considering future priorities”. We were very privileged to have a stall at this event, one of only six stalls that the delegates could visit during the day between the various set speeches and workshops. We were also able to take part in the workshops alongside representatives from all the other organisations. All the local council representatives from departments such as planning, transport and the environment were in attendance, along with key personnel from the police and fire service, and so it was invaluable to talk to them directly and probe for their views on our early outline plans for Lionel Rd. While the stadium plans provoked a lot of discussion, as at the local fairs, most of the comments were positive and we left very encouraged by the day.
On Friday 11, I met Erik Samuelson, the CEO of AFC Wimbledon, who was particularly interested in our community engagement programme, and particularly the work done by the GPLZ and the CST. It was fascinating to talk to another trust owned club and to share thoughts on dealing with the problems facing both clubs. It was also another reminder of how much value is added to BFC’s reputation by the work of our internal partners, and how far ahead we are of most others in this respect. Erik will be visiting the GPLZ in the near future to see the set-up first hand.
The following day, 12 July, we attended St.Margarets Fair with our stall, once again in the centre of affairs, and perhaps rather too close to the loudspeakers of West Mid (Hospital) radio which shared centre stage with us. St Margarets is a much larger affair than Chiswick or most other local fairs and was celebrating its 30th birthday this year, with consequently much more publicity and a very high turnout in the ‘000’s. Brentford FC have sponsored the trophies for the 5-a-side football competition at this fair for the last 3 years and as a result get very good exposure in the publicity for the event and at the event. This year, I spent the morning alongside the football competition with the trophies talking to the youngsters about BFC and then moved into the main area for the afternoon. As at Chiswick, we were very busy all day answering questions about the stadium plans and talking football to the stall visitors. This is another area of west London that we should seek to attract and we were made very welcome by everyone. Lots of questions about how much it cost to take families to football, with an alarming number of mums and dads still thinking they would have to buy tickets in advance! If only that were true. Twice as many shirts sold as at Chiswick and so a small financial profit from our appearance too. Both Brian and I were interviewed and so able to broadcast not only our great family deals to the assembled masses but also the excitement we have about the new stadium.
Another benefit of being at the fair was the contact made with West Mid Radio who later contacted Peter Gilham to take his interviews with Andy Scott and any other club news and broadcast them to their patients each week. This is the sort of thing you can’t plan but it’s all positive.
On Sunday 13 I briefly popped into the Ivybridge Estate Fun Day which was a small but very lively affair and at which the Community Sports Trust were running a football area. They do a tremendous amount of unsung work like this in the local area and it is great to see the enjoyment the children get from their presence.
Monday 14 was the monthly liaison meeting on the stadium project and the agenda was chiefly about the plans for the stadium itself, with AFL, the stadium architects taking us through their latest designs.
On July 16, Matt Davis invited me to join a presentation to a potential sponsor, along with Lee Doyle, CEO of the CST and Chris Barrett from the GPLZ. Matt’s initial meeting with this company had suggested that they might be more likely to see Brentford as a partner in terms of their corporate and social responsibility activity rather than as a marketing vehicle and this appeared to be the case, as they were very interested in the work of both the Sports Trust and the Learning Zone. I played a very small part in the overall presentation, merely outlining our unique position as the only supporter owned league club in London and reinforcing the point that any investment in Brentford is in the whole club and its supporters rather than in an individual, as would be the case of our nearest neighbours, but this, together with our other community credentials, makes a very strong overall proposition. We await the outcome of this session but it was great to see the whole club unified in front of an outside party, and we all agreed it was a success in those terms.
Monday 21 was the monthly BU board meeting. The minutes of this meeting will be posted separately on the BU website.