5.0 Previous Experience within the Group

All of these skills are available to the Community Group, fourteen of whom regularly contribute to meetings, although the outer supportive email body stands at thirty-one, and a further twenty are offering to refresh the Steering Group as soon as we can fit them in the Pub!:

Lawyer, Structural Engineer (ex-Ove Arup), Architect, Local Authority Employees, Trustee Treasurer, several Business Partners, Two Accountants, retired Headmistress, Teachers, Lecturer, Theatre Restaurateur, Estate Agency, Landscape Gardener, Theatre Manager, Media Analyst, Special Needs Welfare Assistant, Systems Team Leader, Computer Operator, Systems Developer, Computing Student, Office Temp, Gift-ware Sales Agent, Progress Chaser, Process Creator, Delicatessen Proprietor, Receptionist, Outside Caterer, IT System Builder and Trainer, Magazine Editor, PC Trainer, Magazine Designer, Writer, Shop-keeper, Artist, Drama Therapist, Designer, Theatre Director, Trained Dancer, Jewelry Sales, Exercise Specialist, Café Manager, Chef.

Members of the Group have been instrumental in reminding the County of the loyalty and need for a Village Library – first of all saving it almost twenty years ago and then recently supporting it becoming the Community Library.

Our Group Chair is typical of many who live in a small rural village as she has some relevant track record within this same village over the past thirty years – she has assisted bringing a playgroup to Ivinghoe and Pitstone which has endured, eventually morphing into the Windmill Pre-School Playgroup; ran a Playscheme for 130 children daily over several summers, liaising with Jonathan Page Play-Centre; impressed by that, the Younger Teenagers asked her to start and run a Youth Club; when voted onto Parish Council (two terms), started Beacon Magazine to improve Parish to Village communication; with the then village post-master, initiated the plans for Ivinghoe Entertainments – a twice yearly Community-led gathering around a wintry bon-fire and a summer festival – helping village societies with funding from any profits made – lasting now over twenty years. She is a Founder Partner in Corn Tarrant Partnership, a design practice now running for almost thirty years, and Chair of Aylesbury Amnesty International Group.

We are a newly formed group, so have no track record as an organisation but have already received praise from ‘Locality’ for displaying to them the acumen for the relevant and diverse issues involved in a Community Asset Transfer.