Coverage of event was disappointing

This letter appears in today's Leicester Mercury (though not on its website):

Coverage of event was disappointing

Catching up with back issues of the Mercury after the Easter break, I was looking forward to reading some good coverage of the recent Choice Unlimited event at Leicester Tigers on Thursday 5 April.

Imagine my disappointment, then, to see the short article, “Ex-tigers hero roars approval for fair” (Mercury, April 7). There are several aspects of the piece that are disappointing: it was unclear what it was all about, but mostly credit was not given where it’s due.

It was reported that Choice Unlimited had the support of Leicester City Council, Leicestershire County Council and Voluntary Action LeicesterShire.

That’s true and they all contributed to preparations and to the success on the day itself, helping showcase products, services, information and guidance available to disabled people and their carers. But Choice Unlimited didn’t spring fully-formed out of thin air.

Someone had to come up with the idea, get it off the ground, enlist support, gather momentum and bring it all to a successful conclusion. And that “someone” was the Regional Equality and Diversity Partnership (REDP).

REDP is a collective of Voluntary and Community Sector organisations working together to promote equality and celebrate diversity.

At its core are four Leicester organisations with a track record of collaborating across different equalities for as long as ten years now. Our influence and engagement has extended in the past few years to embrace the whole East Midlands . The four city-based founder members of REDP are Leicester Council of Faiths; Leicester and Leicestershire Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Centre; The Race Equality Centre and Leicestershire Centre for Integrated Living (which took the lead role in Choice Unlimited).

The coverage failed to mention the ground-breaking nature of Choice Unlimited (it was the first of its kind anywhere in the East Midlands) nor was there any indication of the tremendous success of the event. More than 160 exhibitors participated and an estimated 2,500-3,000 service users came through the door – every one of them a potential customer in this new era of personal budgets for care services and products.

REDP is already in advanced discussions to present Choice Unlimited in other parts of the East Midlands. We’d still like it to be known that Leicester was the birthplace of this trail-blazing first presentation.

You might wonder why this matters, two weeks after the event and ten days after the Mercury’s coverage. Choice Unlimited signalled the birth of a new way of doing things for disabled people in the city, county and Rutland – kicking off a new era of choice and control. And at REDP our phone lines and inboxes are still red hot with those keen for information and asking when we’ll be doing it again. And they show no sign of cooling down!

George M Ballentyne

Stoneygate

Preparations proceed apace!

Preparations proceed apace for our two upcoming events: the regional Human Rights and Equality event in Derby a week today and Choice Unlimited at Leicester Tigers two weeks later.

First task this morning, writing a press release for the Derby date. This is for print media in Derby and Derbyshire as well as BBC Radio Derby. From the insider's point of view, the big draw in Derby is our securing Shami Chakrarbarti as keynote speaker. We need to be able to highlight that, while acknowledging that she's not so well know to the general reader. As a compromise, we're putting at the foot of the press release that this is a bit of a coup for us, that it's a bit of a coup for Derby and that media outlets would do well to turn up and cover the event and try to get an interview with her.

Kelly and I spend an hour or so working on the seminar that we'll be presenting at Derby next week, looking at the current debate initiated by the Coalition government about withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rgihts and the creation of a UK Bill of Rights.

I've a meeting with Jo Tallack, General manager at Highcross Leicester this lunchtime, to discuss how their Multi-Faith Prayer Room has fared since it was opened for public use at the end of November last year. While there, I show her the posters and fliers for Choice Unlimited. WE also review the exhibition in Highcross during Inter Faith Week 2011 and discuss the possibility of introducing some new elements for the same event later this year. Jo takes a poster for the community and charities notice board and a clutch of fliers to put on the information desk. Canon Barry Naylor and Julie-Ann Heath are in that meeting and I tell them that I'll be bringing down posters and fliers to St martin's House in the next couple of days. Just before that meeting,we bump into Sarah Harrison, Director of the LE1 city centre team, give her a flier and say I'll email her an electronic version of the flier ASAP.

I've given Jo the fliers that I was intending to take to the SACRE meeting at Soar Valley Community College later this afternoon so I make my way back to LCIL for more. while I'm there, we get a call from Harish Mandalia at Leicester City Council's Social Inclusion Team, which leads to me visiting their base at the Mett Centre at Lee Circle half an hour later with fliers and posters for Choice Unlimited. I've met Harish at a  number of events over the years, but haven;t put the name with the face. Similarly, I've often heard of the Mett Centre but didn't know where it is until today.

After this, I'm off to SACRE, where I'm given a few minutes at the end of the meeting to speak about choice Unlimited and distribute fliers to attendees.