Early in 2008 Cumbria partners wanted to energise their focus on delivering Cumbria's new Community Strategy and Local Area Agreement. They shared an ambition, variously expressed to;

• connect better, together, with people across Cumbria's diverse communities, through common public access points
• do a better, more integrated and more efficient job for them through service redesign across organisational boundaries
• share a common understanding about priorities through a shared intelligence base or hub

With support from the Leadership Centre for Local Government, a revolutionary set of interventions - collectively branded 'Calling Cumbria' has helped us to begin to challenge and reinvent what effective leadership of place means here. 

The journey so far

Calling Cumbria began with a series of one-to-one interviews, facilitated by the Leadership Centre, taking stock of relationships, ambitions and opportunities, setting a context and baseline against which to evaluate action. 

Then came a series of Inquiries, bringing a deliberately eclectic mix of public, private and voluntary sector activists together to confront different dimensions of reality - of real life issues facing partners and people in the county, each of which sets a stark challenge for how we deliver on the sometimes sterile world of strategies, action plans and programmes. 

They visited places and people as diverse as burgeoning micro-businesses grappling with bureaucracy, ambitious young people anxious about the chances of a prosperous future in the county and older people living independent lives but seeking a more supportive community setting.  

Visits were followed up by reflection on what had been learned and how to connect and support better outcomes for local people. Unusually for the too often dispassionate and acronym ridden world of Local Strategic Partnerships this provoked some real personal, emotional responses for participants - a sense of the potential, opportunity and responsibility to work differently and more effectively to benefit lives in Cumbria. 

Finally a large scale participation event - Calling Cumbria brought together 200 local people representing diverse organisations and gave Cumbria the chance to begin action planning a new way forward and a collective commitment to try a different approach to accelerate action and maximise its impact.

Below is the summary of the desired and suggested strands of work that were debated on the 11 July.

Calling Cumbria 11 July 08 - Where Next?

If you follow the links below you will be taken to a letter which has been sent to everyone involved in the Calling Cumbria events. The letter proposes several strands of possible activity and some initial changes to the way the CSP operates which will be trailed in the coming months by the CSP team and partners.

The proposal letter was sent to Government Office North West and below is their positive response to the proposals.

• View the letter sent to all partners proposing the new ways of working for the CSP
• View the letter received from GONW supporting the proposals

If you have any ideas, comments or views on any of the Calling Cumbria activity or the early proposals detailed above please let us know by using the feedback form below: