This is a piece on the arrival of spring that I wrote for community magazine, The Local Look
Looking back through the pages of my diary from the last few years, the arrival of spring in Charlcombe Valley is characterised by first encounters and new arrivals.
After the relative quietness and limited colour palettes of the long winter months I can feel a palpable sense of anticipation in the changing of the seasonal guard. With the lengthening of the days and the temperatures rising, the natural world is readying itself for a riot of colour and a wall of sound.
It’s not always plain sailing with the potential for an unexpected cold snap or the intensity of an April shower. But as writer Laurie Lee captures beautifully, it is a time of ‘false starts, expectations, deferred hopes, and final showers of glory’.
Walking along Charlcombe Lane, or meandering across the fields, on a fine spring day, you feel as though you are miles from anywhere. These are the moments that you realise how important being in nature is for your well-being, whether taking the time to notice a robin sing or a zig-zagging bumblebee.
Hearing my first chiffchaff of the year with its unmistakeable ‘chiffchaff, chiffchaff’ call will always stop me in my tracks. I’ll try to make out this small bird, that has travelled thousands of miles to its spring and summer residency, in the canopy of a tree. Swifts, swallows and house martins will follow shortly as the clocks change and we head into April.
The delicate white flowers of the blackthorn and hawthorn will add a wonderful fragility to hedgerows as though dabbed in by an impressionist painter. Songbirds, including blue tits and wrens, will dart between these linear habitats, looking for a desirable spot for a nest, anxious to avoid the unwanted gaze of a hovering sparrowhawk. Gaps in drystone walls or an old alarm on the side of a building can also be an attractive spot to bring up a family.
My seasonal highlight is the first sighting of butterflies, brimstones and small tortoiseshells, orange tips and red admirals. Their arrival is a symbol of the welcome warmer days to come.
In my second of four pieces for community magazine, The Local Look, I explore winter in Charlcombe Valley.
Winter can often feel like the quietest time of the year – bookended by the busyness of autumn and spring. It is when the natural world seems to be at its most vulnerable without the abundance of the other seasons.
Yet this season, with its later dawns and early dusks, can make you look that little bit harder for signs of nature and spot things that you have never noticed before.
I like to stand under a majestic oak in St Mary’s quiet garden, imagining those that have come before me, rooted to the same spot in wonder. Taking the time to look up into its canopy with the gravity defying branches revealing an astonishing architecture normally hidden by leaves. Moss and lichen create a patchwork effect on the bark of a tree that thousands of species throughout the year call home.
Walking along Charlcombe Lane as the sun rises or sets is when this valley comes alive with the shorter days. On a crystal clear frosty morning, or with mist hanging mysteriously over the meadows, it is likely that you’ll see a robin singing its sweet and soulful tune, or a charm of goldfinches flittering in a hurry towards their destination.
As daylight slowly begins to fade a torchlit walk will transport you into the world of nocturnal wildlife. The call of an owl can stop you in your tracks as you try to pinpoint its location and you might see a fox in search of its prey.
On a cloudless night looking up will reveal a sky full of stars creating a night-time treat only a short distance from the artificial glow of city lights.
From mid-February onwards on an evening wander it is likely that you’ll encounter toad patrol volunteers heading your way with torches, buckets and high-viz jackets. For six weeks they will be helping thousands of amphibians cross the road as they journey towards their breeding grounds.
Venturing into Charlcombe in the heart of winter is special. Helping to provide some much needed wild time as we and nature ready ourselves for the arrival of spring.
Earlier this year I noticed that we were throwing away a lot of plastic wrapping that would end up in landfill. Surely there had to be a better way in terms of disposing it.
So, I started to check the packaging to see what options we had and how easily it could be recycled? There are basically three options: that it could be recycled via regular kerbside collections, that it could be recycled by taking it to large supermarkets during the weekly shop or that it couldn’t be recycled at all and would end up in landfill.
This is when we decided to spend a month – we choose February – logging all the plastic wrapping that our household used to work out how much of it could be potentially recycled.
Every time we had finished with plastic wrapping, we would check on the packaging to see whether it could be recycled or not. We then recorded what we had found on an A4 sheet of paper that was popped on the fridge door using a magnet. This information included what the wrapping was from, for example, the packaging for dishwasher tablets, pasta or toilet rolls. And then whether it could be recycled or not.
At the start I was not sure what to expect in terms of the volume of plastic wrapping that we used across a month. It did, however, feel important that because of this project that we could potentially reduce the amount ending up in landfill.
Our household has two adults and two children. After we had filled three sides of A4 paper, which has itself been recycled, across the month we had recorded 150 items of plastic wrapping. This equated to an average of 5.35 items per day or if extrapolated across a calendar year 2,000 pieces of plastic wrapping.
Or looked at another way it worked out at an average of 500 pieces of plastic wrapping per person. According to the latest data from the ONS (2022) there are 28.2 million households in the UK with an average of 2.36 people living in a household. Based on our very small sample of one house that means that the average household in the UK (and this doesn’t include people buying food outside of the home) has 1,180 pieces of plastic wrapping each year (2.36 people in each household x our household’s average of 500 items per year) and that equates to an astonishing 33 billion items of plastic wrapping across the UK if you times that figure by the number of households. That is an awful lot of plastic and potentially a lot of that is ending up in landfill.
Interestingly based on our little bit of citizen science 52% of the plastic wrapping in our house was recyclable – 3% could be put out with the weekly kerbside recycling and 49% could only be recycled at larger supermarkets. It felt positive that more than 50% could be recycled but I am not sure how much awareness there is among households across the UK that this plastic wrapping can be recycled.
That still leaves, however, 48% of the wrapping that we had recorded as not being recyclable. Frustratingly you would often find that packaging from one supermarket, if own brand, was recyclable, whereas the packaging for the same product, such as pasta or brioche, from another supermarket was not. It would be good to see much greater consistency so that more packaging can be recycled.
There is also the potentially huge challenge around a lack of awareness among consumers that you can recycle the plastic wrapping and that it does not need to end up in landfill. The writing with the information saying that it can be recycled at supermarkets is often pretty small and sometimes difficult to find. And not every large supermarket has a recycling point for people to drop off any wrapping that they have collected during the week.
Supermarkets should be helping to build much greater awareness of how and where plastic packaging can be recycled. This could be done via in store promotions or any loyalty card apps; reminding customers to check out the packaging, which would benefit from being more visible, and where they could recycle it. This would play a potentially major role in meanings that billions of items of plastic wrapping don’t end up in landfill.
I’ve just written my first of four pieces for local community magazine, The Local Look, about the changing seasons in Charlcombe, a valley on the north-eastern edge of Bath.
Tucked away on the north-eastern edge of Bath is Charlcombe. This horseshoe shaped valley between Lansdown and Larkhall has the feel of a secret oasis, far away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life.
For the last few years, in the new normal of working from home, I’ve been walking through this valley pretty much every day, Monday to Friday. Over time, I’ve come to feel a deep connection to this special place and love to see the richness and busyness of its landscape as the seasons change.
The arrival of autumn brings in the changing of the guard. There is the autumnal bounty of eating and cooking apples and sweet juicy blackberries – destined for a tasty homemade crumble or the beaks of hungry blackbirds or song thrushes.
A short section of Charlcombe Lane – the main route that hugs the contours of the valley – is enveloped by tree canopy, mainly beech and horse chestnut. Lush green leaves that feel ethereal in the long halcyon summer days begin to slowly shift along the colour spectrum to rust or flame red.
Conkers line the lane like natural jewels waiting expectantly for collection. These prickly bright green cases create a real contrast to the glistening grey tarmac after an autumnal downpour.
Hedgerows are such an important part of the cultural and natural history of Charlcombe. They provide sculpted field boundaries made up of blackthorn, hazel and ash, helping separate farmer’s fields.
Peer into a hedgerow and you’ve entered a magical kingdom, home to an array of wildlife from hedgehogs to blue tits. I always associate these precious habitats on a fresh and misty autumn morning with the stunning architecture of a glistening spiders web and the wonderful world of fungi.
If we get an Indian summer, you’ll still be able to spot butterflies on the wing. Over the last six months I’ve recorded twenty-one species of butterfly along the lane, in the meadows and quiet garden at St Mary’s. Watching a red admiral gently gliding or catching a splash of orange as a comma rests on brambles, is a real treat.
Every weekday, usually twice a day, I follow a now very familiar route into a green oasis that I can see from the loft window in our house. Charlcombe Valley, as the crow flies, is about half a mile away from the outskirts of Bath, but once you are there it feels like your own private paradise, a million miles away from the trials and tribulations of daily life and the new normal of working from home.
My journey deep into this Valley starts along a footpath surrounded by the lushness of hawthorn, blackthorn, hazel and ash. In spring it’s like travelling through a tunnel of birdsong – an immersive experience without any technology in sight, made by our feathered friends. Goldfinches flit between hedges, a chiffchaff stands its ground on its perch and tiny wrens dart about, suspicious of my movements. A few months ago, before the daylight hours began so early, the tapping of woodpeckers would be a familiar and reassuring sound.
Blossom adds colour and texture as winter becomes spring
Emerging from this path I join a quiet lane. It was the first to receive such a designation in Somerset and feels so right for this place as I walk along the road that hugs the contours of the Valley. As winter gives way to spring this half a mile of tarmac becomes the stage for the drama of a mass migration of toads, frogs and newts. Last year, for the first time, I joined a fifty strong group of volunteers, whose daily night walks helped the amphibians safely cross the road to their breeding grounds in a large pond.
Volunteers help frogs, newts and toads cross the road
The lane now meanders downhill, protected by trees on either side, as though they are standing guard. Looking up I see the beautiful lime green leaves of beech trees, lit like paintings in a gallery by the morning sun, and on the slopes below the roots the last of the bluebells slowly fade away. The faint sound of sheep bleating gently fills the air and there is the hustle and bustle of a grey squirrel scrambling up a tree, always looking as though they have somewhere important to go.
A family of blue tits has moved into a snug new home, made in the gap left in the mortar of a recently repaired stone wall that used to be a cow shed. The chicks cheep noisily and I pause for a moment to watch the parents flying in and out, feeding those constantly hungry mouths. Occasionally they stop, as though catching their breath for a moment on a branch, before hurrying back to work.
On a strip of grass that has thankfully escaped the attention of a lawn mower in the quiet garden of St Marys, an 11th century church, orchids are coming into flower. The common spotted, bee and pyramidal orchids look like a magical kingdom; flowering for the first time in over a decade last summer. While looking at these beauties of the plant world two buzzards circle gracefully above like airplanes waiting to land.
Common spotted orchid starting to bloom
As the road begins to slowly climb, I spot a common blue butterfly at rest, adding a splash of colour to the green canvass of a hedgerow. With the warmer days this stretch of my walk becomes a haven for gatekeepers, small tortoiseshell and meadow brown butterflies basking in the welcome warmth of a sunny day. I am now at the spot where I take a picture every time I pass through, capturing the changes in this special place that means so much to me.
Looking back into Charlcombe
Taking a slight detour, I reach a gate that opens out from the seclusion of the Valley into a lovely haymeadow. A sea of grasses dance in the breeze with buttercups, daisies and clover providing a kaleidoscope of colour. I stand looking eastwards at the re-assuring sight of Little Solsbury Hill as swallows duck and dive across the field and I can just make out a skylark ascending as it sings its sweet melody.
I am at my journeys end and it’s time to retrace my steps. Every time I walk this route I am reminded of the words of one time Bath resident, Jane Austen, whose footsteps I am following, “We took a charming walk to Charlcombe, sweetly situated in a little green valley.” It is a place that has become an important part of my life and where the natural world gives me the freedom to tune out and recharge.
I’m looking at a black and white image (image above – credit: Kentish Town City Farm). It looks like a busy stable yard on a farm deep in the countryside. The heart of the photograph shows horses and ponies surrounded by children on a glorious summer’s day. You can see a palpable sense of excitement on their faces. Zoom out from the centre of the image and the perspective changes. There is a terrace of Victorian houses and on closer inspection this looks like a builder’s yard. In fact, this isn’t a picture of a rural idyll but a snapshot in time taken in the 1970s at Kentish Town City Farm, barely a few miles, as the crow flies, from the centre of London.
If you’re exploring the family tree of the City Farm movement, which has branches that spread across the UK, all the roots would lead back to where this image was taken. Fifty years ago, a derelict site, sandwiched in between two railway lines, would become Kentish Town City Farm. It began a quiet revolution that would sweep across the UK inspiring a new movement that is still going strong.
The early City Farms didn’t really open with any great fanfare and it’s difficult to pin down an exact day when most of the farm gates were flung open. In fact, there was often no ribbon cutting, mayors in their ceremonial chains or photo opportunities for the local paper. Instead, they quietly went about their business, opening their doors to welcome the local community into these places that had often lain neglected for decades and gone through a renaissance.
But this doesn’t mean that local people didn’t value these important new amenities. Five years after Kentish Town City Farm opened one of the young volunteers told the local paper, Ham and High, in 1977, “before we went to the farm we were hanging about street corners, smashing windows and picking fights.” Gary Layton, a volunteer in the early days of the Farm, told a National Lottery Heritage Fund project to celebrate the Farm’s 40th anniversary in 2012, “I must have spent maybe around 5 years or so as a regular there. I was part of the close-knit group of around 15 or so regulars that went there. It was like a youth club for our group…mucking out the stables and just generally helping out.”
Interaction, a small arts and drama based social enterprise, called the Borough of Kentish Town home. In the early 1970s it was looking for a site to keep its fleet of vehicles that it used for educational and community events in West London. “When we took over the old builder’s yard there wasn’t a grand plan to turn it into a City Farm. It’s an idea that grew organically as we discovered the old Victorian stables, spotted an opportunity to use some of the railway embankment to create allotments and saw this space as a place for young people to come together and hang out”, said David Powell, one of the founders of Kentish Town City Farm, who also lived on the site with his young family.
Having farm animals, such as goats and sheep, or growing food, was the means to the end of creating newly connected communities that would thrive and feel a sense of togetherness. There was a real passion among the founders of City Farms to turn these unloved and unused spaces into hubs for the community.
City Farms would rise from the rubble through a combination of blood, sweat and tears as people came together to make things happen often with little or no money but a steely sense of determination. “The idea of a City Farm was a simple one,” says Ian Egginton-Metters, who was involved in helping some of the early City Farms and was a driving force behind the National Federation of City Farms that was born in 1980. “It was about taking a parcel of land, often very small, and creating spaces that allowed people to flourish and find themselves. In many ways they have always been unique; welcoming everyone, wherever they are from in open and non-judgemental ways.”
Camden became a hotbed for an underground movement and sub-culture based around squatting in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The area had been bombed badly in World War Two with the network of railway lines in this part of London a target and in the 30 years afterwards parts of the Borough had been neglected. People that moved into the run-down Terrace housing were buzzing with creativity and new ideas: Kentish Town City Farm became a place to put them into practice.
At the same time the first edition of The Ecologist Magazine hit the newsstands in 1970 helping to put into print the latest thinking for people and communities interested in creating more sustainable and greener cities. The founding of Shelter and the Child Poverty Action Group gave a voice to those living with the daily challenges of poverty that universal provisional via the welfare state hadn’t.
This all fed into the rise of community activism which sought to tackle the multiple deprivation affecting many inner-city areas across the UK. It was a movement that wanted to support the left behind and City Farms in effect became a conduit to bring these ideas together and create places that were accessible, didn’t form any prejudicial judgements and helped people to grow their confidences
According to Professor Simon Gunn, an expert in urban history at the University of Leicester, “City Farms provided a blank canvas for the emerging movements of the 1960s and 1970s to put their ideas and thinking into practice.
“They became places at the frontline of efforts to support people and communities that had slipped through the safety net of the welfare state, giving them new opportunities to transform their lives and flourish.”
During the 1970s and into the 1980s, inspired by Kentish Town City Farm, originally known as City Farm 1, the movement began to grow. A pivotal point in the early City Farm story was the setting up of the Farms Advisory Service in 1976, thanks to funding from the Department of the Environment. It gave a real impetus and focus through practical guidance and support to the establishment of new City Farms across the UK.
City Farms became a powerful symbol of optimism in communities that often felt they’d been forgotten. Ahead of Heeley City Farm opening in the south of the Sheffield, the local Residents and Tenants Association newsletter, proclaimed in November 1980, that “the idea of an urban farm is to bring a bit of the countryside into our busy cities,” and there was a sense of excitement that “it is likely that the first urban farm in South Yorkshire will go ahead in Heeley.” Sheffield Star columnist Pat Ledger could also see the wider benefits of this new farm “with its sheep, cattle and hens, as well as trees and flowers to encourage birds and butterflies” to a place feeling the effects of de-industralisation. She went on to explaining that there would be “a whole range of activities [that would be] beneficial to all sections of the community” under the title of “Healing Heeley’s Scars”.
In Liverpool Rice Lane City Farm breathed new life into an abandoned cemetery when the farm opened its doors in 1980. Byker Farm, now known as Ouseburn Farm, in the centre of Newcastle, turned a landscape once dominated by the sounds and smells of heavy industry, into a place where kids could have access to nature and learn about growing food and looking after animals. And in the Scottish Capital, a disused site that had been abandoned for decades, was saved by local people and thanks to five years of hard work by volunteers, Gorgie City Farm opened its doors in 1982.
Back in London, Surrey Docks City Farm, was founded in 1975 amongst what at the time was a working-class local community in Bermondsey, a dockland area that had seen jobs and hope vanish. The farm moved to a new site 11 years later as part of urban regeneration.
Founder, Hilary Peters, told the Weekly News in April 1977: “Local people became very interested and we cut the land up into allotments. Then we brought some goats and poultry in and the local children came to help look after them. Suddenly all the vandalism in the area stopped: people were too busy helping us. And Southwark Council were so pleased they gave us the land free, because they consider the farm a local amenity.”
Veronica Barry, who worked at the farm and is now a researcher on food policy at Birmingham City University, remembers how much the year-round activities at the farm meant to those who visited. “We’d let the children run the farm for the day. By 7.30am they’d be gathering at the gates, eager to get started. They’d let out the chickens, milk the goats and plan the feeding and animal care for the day.”
And a schoolteacher told The Times newspaper in November 1977, “When they [local schoolchildren] first come here [Surrey Docks City Farm] they have never had any contact with animals, and they are frightened. But they gradually overcome their fear, and a whole new world opens up for them.”
Movements come and go but those with deep roots survive and thrive. For five decades City Farms have helped people and communities grow; something that deserves much greater recognition. They remain as relevant, as ever, to the communities that they serve; and will play a central role in supporting people’s mental health and well-being and tackling the climate emergency.
This is a longer version of an article that I wrote for BBC History Magazine (www.historyextra.com) that appeared in the March 2023 issue
As March becomes April and the calendars are turned over I start to think about the arrival of the swifts. I tap deep into my memory bank thinking about the day that they might arrive. Will they be early or late; or will they not return.
The three or four months that the swifts return to where I live are really precious. They provide the soundtrack for my summer. Their aerial gymnastics is a welcome way to start or finish the day and I often just sit in the garden watching and listening.
Its feels as though my love of swifts is growing year on year. The two swift seasons of 2020 and 2021, as I like to call them, have had a special resonance, given the impact of the pandemic on all of our lives. Last year they arrived in the midst of the first lockdown and departed as things eased. There was a comfort – like a big warm blanket or a welcoming mug of coffee – when they arrived. Little did they know about how the human world had been turned upside and how much their return mattered.
Seeing the tweets and Facebook posts each spring clocking the arrival of the swifts along the south coast of England always quickens my heartbeat. I scroll through the timelines to see where they might be and feel a pang of nervousness if there has been sightings north of Bath.
I look up into the sky each morning. Opening the loft window, straining to see if I can see them. On my daily walk – pretty much the same route each day – I keep an eye out. Then I spot a solitary swallow. It feels as though its only a matter of time before the swifts come home (though this is one of two homes that they have).
Then it happens. Usually I hear them before I see them. They’re back. The world is still turning and the swifts have flown their epic journeys from south to north. Its such a relief. A tonic. My love for these birds and the incredible life that they lead is a constant. Even before the pandemic took hold over our collective lives my connection to the seasons had become heightened and the swifts symbolise this more than anything.
As we near the end of our swift time I will continue to smile as I see them in flight. Yes they will be gone soon but as they travel south countless people will look up and tune in to see this astonishing bird journey back to its other homeland. These are birds that light up so many lives.
Times, they are changing. With so many more channels to get stories out, journalists are more time pressed than ever. Gone are the days of just writing copy for the paper or producing a package for the 10 O’Clock News on ITV or the BBC. There are so many other constant demands on time around producing content for digital channels and being active on social media.
This potentially cuts down available time for journalists or producers to meet face to face. And yet this is fundamentally important to building a relationship with media contacts and something that I have always strongly believed in and has delivered for me in spades in terms of generating media impact. Yes emails can help develop a rapport as can direct messaging on twitter or even, dare I say it, phoning people. But there is something so useful about having that one to one contact over a cuppa or bite to eat.
At a number of conferences and workshops that I have been to over the last few years the common theme emerging from time-pressed journalists is that PR’s are only really left with email as the best way to develop contacts. Yes email as a communication tool is important and if a press officer can supply great stories or release that is a good foundation for being seen as a reliable source.
But, and it’s a big but, I still think that it’s worth investing the time and effort to carve out a relationship with journalists that is a deeper level of human interaction. You will need to go the extra mile and be patient: going to where the journalist is based (for freelancers it could be a local cafe not far from where they are based) and you’ll need a hook to get them interested rather than saying ‘wouldn’t-it-be-nice-to-chat’. To entice people into meeting there needs to be a reason – for staffers they have to justify the time to a boss and for freelancers time equals money.
And this is where the research bit matters. Read, watch or listen to what they have produced, check out profiles on Linked-in; all very helpful to build a rapport and keep the conversation flowing and show that you have done your homework.
For any meeting to work and the flowering of a good working relationship there needs to be mutual benefits for both parties. For the journalist they need to come away from that meeting thinking that you know your stuff and have a good grasp of the media outlet they work for. And all importantly, that you have given them a good story. For you as the PR you want to be inked into their contact book and for the journalist to seek out your emails amongst the hundreds of press releases they get everything week.
The one health warning, and it’s worth remembering, getting to know a journalist well is not going to stop them writing or producing packages that criticise your organisation. That is a fact of life but this should never deter from opening open lines of conversation and meetings across all of the media.
So do the research, identify the journalists that you want to target and invest time and effort in getting those face to face conversations up and running.
Over the next six weeks I’m going to take a deeper dive into some of the principles that I feel are at the heart of PR and communications. They have remained a constant in more than two decades of working in press offices, large and small, across different sectors.
I’m starting with an essential and pretty fundamental ingredient to becoming a good and effective communicator – the fact that research really does matters.
Every day communicators should be consuming broadcast, print, digital and social media. I’m always amazed how this isn’t the bread and butter of everyone working in PR and communications. It is so easy to focus on social and digital where you can feel a buzz but you forget broadcast and print at your peril.
It is vital to get the mix right: understanding the look and feel of newspapers, magazines, TV and radio is really important. How can you hope to pitch ideas to media outlets if you don’t know how they are structured and what the deadlines are for placing stories?
When planning a PR campaign or thinking about placing a story build in the time to absorb the media that you want to target. Nothing annoys a journalist or producer more than a poorly pitched or timed story. You need to get it right because you only have one chance.
Make sure that you understand what makes specialist correspondents tick or the fact that news programmes can be very last minute or plan weeks ahead matter. Get it right and give a journalist, editor or producer a good story and you can be laying the foundation for another one of my fundamental principles – good relationships.
I remember a producer who worked on the Sunday night staple – Countryfile on BBC1 – telling me that a PR got in touch the week before transmission with an idea for that week, when programmes can be planned months ahead.
You might think that print media, with dwindling circulations, and what is perceived to be traditional broadcast media in the age of Netlfix and the march of podcasts, are losing their place at the top table of influential communication channels. You’d be wrong. The new kids on the block do matter and provide so many more opportunities to get your story out there. But the daily papers and flagship news programmes still shape the days agenda and create the mood music for social media conversation. Get your story or organisation on to a prime slot on a news programme or a nice spread in a national or regional newspaper and it could generate extra interest.
Another useful piece of research is looking at the long- term trends of how people get their news or consume content. Following organisations such as the Reuters Institute or OFCOM on twitter can be a rich source of insight that will help you sharpen your knowledge of a rapidly evolving sector.
My proudest moments in communications have all been built on the foundation of research – getting to know what makes the journalists and programmes that you want to reach tick and how you can create stories that they’ll want to cover.
This month I have now racked up twenty one years of working in PR and communications. I have certainly lived through a revolution in the way that we communicate but many of the core principles of PR remain the same despite the disruptive and game-changing influences of the rise of digital and social media, the turbulence in the world of TV and the slow steady decline of print media while remaining influential.
When I started in my first job as a press assistant at the fab Bristol-based charity Sustrans back in September 1997 we used to fax and post out press releases and we had to use the phone (yes that is right we had to talk to people) to get pick up for our stories. This was also in the days before email (they do exist) when you had time to think and you didn’t spend your time with pot-noddle productivity, i.e. responding to the latest email to ping into your in box, instantly.
Now seems a good time to reflect on some of what I think still rings true for impactful and effective PR and Communications.
Research matters –listening to the radio, reading a paper or checking-in on twitter should be how everyone working in communications starts every working day (and also keeps across things at the weekend too). It is vital that you understand the media – the way papers are put together, what works for live news programmes and the structure of TV programmes that you might want to target. Our life is so dominated by digital-on-the-move-communications that you can forget that it is still worth reading a physical paper (and I mean all papers) and listening and watching the TV and radio. My proudest moments in communications have been built on the foundation of getting to know what makes the journalists and programmes that you want to reach tick and how you can create stories that they’ll want to cover.
Coffee and chats – developing good relationships with the media is a vital part of being a good press officer (this doesn’t mean that they won’t cover challenging stories about your organisation). This takes time and patience and is built on the foundation of research (see above) and understanding what people write about. You ideally want to be seen as a good source of stories and also the first person they think of for those more fallow periods of the year (August and Christmas) when the news agenda goes a bit quieter.
Pictures remain at the heart of communications – planning ahead to get the right picture is really important. We all know how a strong picture can make or break a story and it can be a great frustration for press officers when the images that are sent to support a story are just too poor to use. Pictures can be sourced from photo libraries but commissioning your own photography can add an extra dimension to a story that excites the picture desk and can help the story fly on twitter and Instagram.
Telling stories – storytelling is at the heart of what it means to be human and how we share information (and have been for thousands of years). For all of the planning in the world, communications will only work if you have a strong story to tell that will connect with people and be understood by them. I’ve worked on enough projects and campaigns that are awash with jargon, where you have to be honest with people and say that stripped back and accessible prose is the only way forward. You also have to be proactive: don’t wait for stories to fall into your lap, otherwise you’ll be waiting a long time. Building good internal relationships with people that get the value of communications is so important.
The release is dead, long live the release – every so often a comment piece will appear in PR Week or a blog as an obituary for the humble press release. I still believe in the press release as an important tool in the communications toolbox. Yes you need a range of content and a key messaging document but the writing of a straight down the line press release will help craft a compelling story and journalists still need them (together with exclusives and more placed pieces). Releases are seen as documents of record and in my mind being able to get a complex story across in one or two sides of A4 is a key communications skill.
Data-driven PR – we live in a world awash with data. Seeing the real-time impact of your communications activity via google analytics and social media tools has made life easier compared to the days of waiting for press cuttings to arrive in the post. However, the big challenge now is using the data to understand what our audiences want and how to reach them all with the right message through the most appropriate channel. This level of sosphication means that some of the measureable rigour of marketing can be brought to PR and communications. It also means that the onus is now on us as communications professionals to actually use the data that we can access to improve the way that we communicate.
bathmic 