Stayin Inside want to wish you well and hear your views

A lot can happen in a short space of time it seems. It’s only been a month since we were last in touch, since when all our lives have been dramatically impacted by the Coronavirus outbreak. We hope you are all looking after yourselves, your families, friends and neighbours during this difficult time. To reflect the changing context, we have temporarily re-branded our campaign as Stayin’ Inside.

Like us, we are sure you are very occupied with what’s going on at home, at work and in the country right now. This is also a time when we are also thinking about what is important to us and what sort of world we want to live in. The Stayin’ Inside project has been built on local people trying to take control and to create a better place for us to live. The lock down has slowed things down for us but our commitment to our original goals remains stronger than ever.

There may be a lot of uncertainty about the future, but we are confident that when this is over, people in Chorlton will want to meet again and enjoy each other’s company. We think that the spirit and commitment that got us this far can help propel us towards our goal of saving the historic building and creating a new venue that reflects the aspirations of local residents.

Since we last contacted you, we have been doing some further work developing our social value objectives. We held an initial workshop for members and have since been progressing that via email.

Despite the general slowdown we are continuing to work on the assumption that the Co-op will hold us their original timescale. This is to agree uses of the building, confirm an agreed purchase price, and exchange contracts by July.  As time is of the essence, we are keen to launch get your views on the sorts of things you would like to see at Stayin’ Inside.

We are planning a set of questionnaires for pledgers and local people to run alongside our member consultation on social value. The first survey is ready to go and online here. It should only take a couple of minutes to fill in.

This survey will run until the 2nd May and will be followed up later next month with some further questions on our proposed on the social value strategy developed by our members.