A nice little poster for you to write some great stuff about you or your shop. From what’s produced locally, to what you do that’s unique, to what’s your favourite shop to where you like to go on holiday! Anything that engages with your customer. Check a few of these ones out or go to http://totallylocallyteddington.co.uk/did-you-know/  and see what they did.

It was added to the Kit by Totally Locally Teddington, because they wanted to share it with all the other towns. A really simple, but great idea.

Click here to download  PDF  >>  Did_you_know

This is what we want!

A bit like that bit at the end of News At 10, but without the shuffling of papers, just before the bit about the panda or the skateboarding duck.

 

With their impending launch day set (this Saturday, 20th April), they’ve got a right old celebration planned- as well as having a local pipe band in the town (well they are Scottish after all!!) they have a street magician, a samba band from the local high school, dance troops, panto actors and lots of buskers from local bands. A few days ago they even secured a celebrity to open the launch day and she is International Singer Songwriter called Horse McDonald who has toured with Tina Turner and BB King and she is also a local Lanark lass too. She is about to release her 9th album entitled “Home” and how appropriate to ask her to come back “home” for a day to help launch the regeneration of her home town which we also hope will help her to promote her new album and upcoming concert in the town. They’ve got some great publicity on BBC1 Scotlands Sunday Politics Show and have had press coverage in the Scotsman Newspapers on-line version and  great feature in the Scottish Grocer magazine which is a trade mag for grocers. Wowzer- these guys mean business!

For anyone out there dithering about whether to get going with the town kit or not, worrying that it won’t work or what not… Totally Locally Lanark are hopefully going to be a shining example of how it WILL work if you make it work. Here’s one of the first emails Jim sent to Totally Loally Chris and Nigel. We think it’s worth a read because we love what Lanark have done so far, what they’re doing right now and what they’re sure to go on to do…

Hi Nigel & Chris

Jim from Lanark here. Just thought I would let you know how we have been getting on since we started promoting the Totally Locally campaign in our town of Lanark. In the four weeks since we started in earnest, we now have over 70 local independent businesses who have signed up to be part of Totally Locally. We also have our own Facebook page which has attracted 218 followers in just 4 weeks http://www.facebook.com/TotallyLocallyLanark. We have also set up our website now which you can see at www.totally-locally-lanark.co.uk.

We have set our official launch day as Saturday 20th April where will will launch the first Fiver Fest, have street entertainment plus a small market of local businesses who either work from home or do not have their own retail premises and we hope to give them maximum exposure to a whole new audience. We are also currently looking at some of the vacant shop units on the high street and we aim to see if we can operate our own pop up shops to help these businesses further. We have already been filmed & interviewed by BBC Scotland for the Scottish section of the Politics Sunday show and we expect this to be broadcast this Sunday.

The response from local businesses has been fantastic and there is a real buzz around town about it. We have also attractd the attention of one of the biggest employers in the town called Borders Biscuits. They are a locally owned company who have a global
customer base and their community support charity has kindly donated £2000 to help with the cost of launch materials, banners and stickers etc so that has been a huge help. They also have their own community based website which has 2000 hits per week and they have also got right behind the campaign.

We hope to get further TV coverage either in the run up to the launch or actually on the day but we are still working on this. It would be great if you were able to announce on your website that Lanark are the second town in Scotland to go Totally Locally and on behalf of the local businesses of Lanark, I want to say a huge thanks for giving us a platform for something that we all hope will make a huge difference to the town.

All the best

Jim

By Marc Briand

Totally Locally Leek Champion, local busuiness owner (Colloco, Leek) and all round nice guy!

Totally Locally started in Leek in September 2011, one of the first towns outside of Calderdale to go Totally Locally. So from that point of view we’ve gone through the time frame from the Totally Locally Kit, learnt our lessons, made some mistakes and had a huge impact on our town along the way – and we’ve had a load of fun and made plenty of new friends.

As the lead of Totally Locally in Leek I’ve had plenty of personal visits to our shop, phone calls, emails asking about Totally Locally; does it actually work, what’s involved, is it true that it can have the effect they say it will etc, is it free – will it cost me anything, do they do everything for you?

So after much badgering to write something down for Totally Locally here it is: What is free?

Totally Locally is free in the sense that you have the freedom to use a first class, professional marketing kit that, with time and a bit of dedication, will do great things in your town – it isn’t free in the sense that there is no cost to setting up Totally Locally for your town and that seems to confuse some people.

Where there is a cost is in the implementation of Totally Locally for your town – printing flyers, bags, banners, stickers, badges and so on and your own time but you do not pay to use Totally Locally’s branding, ideas, promotions and the other great things that come with it. Download the kit, get a local designer or someone with InDesign to slot your logo in, follow the plan and you’re ready to go.

The average cost for a town launch is around £800 – so if you enthused your fellow shopkeepers and independent businesses they could all contribute to the launch – say 40 businesses putting in £20 each and you’ve got a very affordable, first class (and trendy, lets be honest) self help campaign for your town – now if anyone says this isn’t free please go back to point 1 – it is free to use not free as in a free beer!

Then there’s your time, now that’s the really expensive bit. How much time have you and your mates got? Walking around the other shops, talking to the shopkeepers, explaining what it’s all about, popping back at a time that’s convenient for them, organising a get together (pubs are really good for this). Having or making time is the real secret to Totally Locally, it won’t run itself and it’s not a magic wand to fix your town.

There’s also the time of the people who created Totally Locally and the Town Champions who have since made it work for their town – volunteering countless hours and sometimes using their own money because they love their town and can see the difference they are making. They’ve also had new ideas that all feed back into Totally Locally, contributing to its future success and growth.Now I’ve been asked to go to a few towns and talk about Totally Locally in Leek and I’ve only been offered some money to cover expenses of fuel by one town and this made me think – I’m more than happy volunteering to help my own town, but how does this extend to other towns? Is it expected that because Totally Locally is free (free to use don’t forget) every aspect of support is seen to be free as well or is it reasonable to charge as a consultant for my time and expertise?  After all I’m sharing the success of Totally Locally in Leek, in my own time, with another town so that they can launch Totally Locally as smoothly as possible, without hiccups and without having to take as much of their own time up figuring out the best way to do it. And exactly the same applies to the founders of Totally Locally, Chris and Nigel have shared a great thing with towns worldwide, for free and very rarely have they been offered any contribution for their time or expenses – and as really nice chaps they never ask either.

When you read about Portas Pilot towns complaining that £10,000 isn’t enough to achieve anything I would love to refer them back to what we’ve done in Leek with little over £2,000 – started up a new Sunday market, run 2 Christmas map trails, an Easter egg trail, 2 Christmas light switch on markets, 2 Jubilee markets, a big birthday bash at the local arts centre and enthused so many people about their town I think it’s pretty good value for money.

Everything has a cost, what we don’t always see is the value – can you really put a price on revitalising your town? If you could it would surely be a lot more than a couple of thousand pounds, wouldn’t it?

Being selfish for a moment, if I was to think of the old way of doing things, I’d refuse to go and visit another neighbouring town and tell them the story of our success – after all they are only going to go and do the same thing, without having to go through the process of finding their way, learning what does and doesn’t work and potentially taking some of our towns trade with it – but that’s the point, it is the old way and if we can get over the competition in our own town and work together the town will be stronger, have some neighbouring towns who are Totally Locally and the region will be stronger – more money in the local economy, better facilities and nicer places to live.

So, in summary, Totally Locally is free to use and the cost is actually in the doing but please don’t forget all of the great people behind it who have created this, in their own time, because they are passionate about towns and the future of towns – they have the expertise to make this work and they are happy to let you take it up and run with it. They are volunteering in their own time in the same way that you will be – if you don’t get an instant answer to an email or the graphic isn’t quite what you would personally like, just think, they may actually be doing the day job that pays their wages, allowing them to volunteer with Totally Locally.

If you’re following the kit which is proven to work, just go with the flow, it all works really well, there’s no need to change it.

I’m so excited! This weekend I attended a Flower Farming course with the fab Georgie Newberry of Common Farm Flowers all the way down in Somerset. The reason? Because this year I plan to grow many more of my own flowers and herbs.

I “met” Georgie through twitter, where she is the brains behind #britishflowers hour, aimed at promoting the increased use of British grown flowers.  She is very lovely and knows her stuff, having run her own flower farm since 2010.

So I drove down on Friday afternoon (straight after a wedding!) and stayed at a lovely B&B Oak House in Bruton.  After a lovely breakfast of local produce I arrived at Georgie’s all ready to absorb everything she was about to tell me like a sponge.

We hopped over raised growing beds, ventured into her polytunnel and greenhouses, had a gorgeous lunch and generally had a rather spiffing time 

I now have to translate everything Georgie has put into practice on her lovely FLAT five-acre site, to my very steep Yorkshire hillside and in much less space (I’m not jealous in any way!). These are pics of my plot:

Potting shed

Rosemary and Lavender

Possibly the thing I am most happy about is that I will get to spend some time “in the garden”. I have become so busy with weddings over the spring and summer that I haven’t had time for my passion of gardening.  This way I will have to make time (maybe at the expense of sleep!!)

Me, hard at work!

So, why am I doing this?  There are LOTS of advantages:

I will have total control over the freshness of the flowers as I will be picking them myself

Honeysuckle in the Yorkshire sunshine

I can use so many more gorgeous and unusual flowers and foliage (including wildflowers) that just aren’t available commercially meaning the wedding flowers I provide will always be different

Clematis in our existing beds

Because I won’t be using horrible chemicals to force/stunt the flowers’ growth the bees and pollenating insects will LOVE me, thereby improving the environment and biodiversity

A great tit nestling leaving his terracotta nest

I can legally use wildflowers in my wedding designs (picking wildflowers/hedgerow flowers is illegal!)

aquilegia

I will always have to buy in flowers, including the beautiful scented, garden roses that I use regularly, as I just don’t have the time or space to grow those to wedding standard, but I will be able to use my own sweet peas, corncockles, larkspur, scabious, nigella, cosmos, nigella, viola etc etc etc. I bought a lot of seeds from Higgeldy Garden

It all starts with the seeds

So all I have to do now is get some flower beds built…… this is how the new cutting garden looks now – yikes!!!

So, a busy year ahead I think, but I can’t wait.

Huge thanks to Laura Calderwood Photography who is helping me document the year ahead (Laura was one of my brides several years ago  )

Fiona x

http://www.firenzafloraldesign.co.uk

Image courtesy of thisisbristol.co.uk

By Tom Crane

The nice guy behind the Lucid FS Blog, he’s got wise words about keeping it local!

There are many websites, articles and community organisations encouraging all of us to shop locally with independent businesses, and rightly so if I may add! But how do you define a local independent business? Where do you draw the line? Are there rules to adhere to when deciding where to part with your cash?

It may seem easy at first – I think pretty much all of us would agree that Tesco, Starbucks, Pizza Hut and Lloyds TSB are not local independent businesses. However during the recent Bristol Pound meeting I attended a debate was started that could not possibly have been concluded that evening, the same debate we have started here.

For those who have not heard of it yet, the Bristol Pound is, as you might have guessed, a local currency launched in 2012 with the objective of keeping more of the money people spend within the local community. During the aforementioned meeting this subject was brought up, along with a few scenarios.

What if a bookshop or butchers for example, has two branches – one in Bristol and one in London, and their head office is in London? If you live in Bristol would you consider your local branch a local trader? What if there is a chain of cafes across the south west, some in Bristol, would you consider them independents?

How about franchises, there are a few Bristolian Subway franchisees employing many Bristolians, so perhaps they should be counted as independents and allowed to take part in the Bristol Pound scheme?

One solution suggested was to look at the supply chain, to scrutinise whether the business in question uses local independent traders to supply their goods and services. This may be suitable for a restaurant but a local courier could get his van from Germany, fuel from Saudi Arabia via a petroleum multinational, and bank with the Spanish owned Santander. Does this mean he is no more local than FedEx?

The 350project website (based in the USA) offers their opinion on what an “independent” means, with some very good reasoning. I have to disagree with one of their stipulations though:

“The business operates out of a physical storefront or similar and is the only business residing at that specific doorway’s address (not a kiosk, home based business, etc.)”

Image courtesy of epigram.co.uk

Of course I am biased because this would exclude my Bristol Will Writing business, Lucid FS. We are based at my home but visit our clients for appointments at any time of day, at their homes in Bristol and the surrounding area. This would also exclude mobile hairdressers and personal trainers, or home based graphic designers and architects. Surely we can be justifiably counted as local independent businesses?!

The first feeling I had at the meeting was that we could be debating this for a very long time, and the truth is the organisers of the Bristol Pound only had a very small percentage of difficult decisions to make. But if it was hard for the members to debate at the meeting where does this leave us consumers?

If you have decided that you want to support your local economy by shopping locally how do you know which businesses are the true local independents?

My opinion is that most importantly there should be no rules. More often than not, if it feels right, it probably is. Every local independent business has its own identity and this will usually transcend into the goods and services it produces, each one proving in its own way why it is a true local independent worthy of your support and custom.

For example the independent butcher’s local supply chain is tantamount to the quality of the produce sold in the shop, the local deli’s commitment to sourcing the best produce from near and afar is their unique selling point, and the service based businesses such as ours or the personal trainer are willing to bend over backwards to accommodate the needs of the community.

Go with what feels right and the true local independents will eventually identify themselves.

How about you, what do you think? How would you describe a true local independent? Where would you draw the line if you were organiser of the Bristol Pound? Do you agree with my opinion? Please share your thoughts and comments here below or on our Facebook or Twitter pages. They will be very much appreciated.

Thank you for reading,

Tom Crane

www.lucidfs.com  

These are all people we have worked with, been introduced to through a-friend-of-a-friend, or that we’ve followed through the realms of that there internet and just generally admire and love the stuff they do. First up it’s…

The Teenage Market

Joe and Tom Barratt set up this amazing initiative when their hometown of Stockport was, like many towns in the UK, had been through some tough times and had a town centre with around a third of it’s shops empty.

The Teenage market is an event, online TV show and initiative dedicated to supporting young creative talent. They organise free markets where young young creatives, painters, fashion designers, jewellery makers, graffiti artists, photographers, graphic designers, bakers, poets, comedians, musicians, singers, dancers, performers (and the rest!) can find a free platform to allow them to try, develop and succeed with their ventures and talents.

With national support from the likes of Mary Portas, John Amaechi and Hilary DeVey The Teenage Market is going from strength to strength, and 2013 is set to be an exciting year- these guys are definitely worth your support!

http://www.theteenagemarket.co.uk

https://twitter.com/teenage_market

http://www.facebook.com/theteenagemarket

Incredible Edible

If we could bottle and sell the enthusiasm, drive and downright determination of Incredible Edible leaders Pam and Mary, the world might just be a better place (and we might be very rich indeed!) These ladies have got a seriously enviable get-up-and-go attitude.

Incredible Edible’s message – “If You Eat – You’re In!”. It’s that simple.

Incredible Edible is an inspiring community based campaign which brings a whole new meaning to food for thought! They aim to provide local food for all, through working together within towns and communities, providing learning- from field to classroom to kitchen, and through supporting local businesses.

And It’s Now Gone Worldwide!

From their humble beginnings of guerrilla planting herb gardens and vegetables around their home town of Todmorden, their passion and insight have inspired the whole town and beyond- from the local police station who began their own veg patch (with a nice touch of healthy-competitive growing amongst the police), to the rest of the country sitting up and taking notice to this amazingly simple why-didn’t-I-think-of-this way of encouraging local produce and community spirit.

There is now Incredible Edible towns working their magic the world over. And with such an feel-good and effective campaign- things can only get bigger, better and where the foods concerned- tastier!

http://www.incredible-edible-todmorden.co.uk/home

https://twitter.com/incredibledible

See Pam Talk on Ted.com

(Oh & yes, it’s where we stole the idea name Totally Locally from! But we asked first & they said “Of course you can luv!”.

You may have guessed, we’re a bit in awe of them!)