Warminster Voices

Using community radio to deepen local participation in Warminster's Area Board is the subject of the first of a new series of case studies available through Empowering Communities.

Wiltshire Council's Warminster Community Area Manager initiated the idea of recording the voices of local people to be played back at the meetings.   Warminster's community-led radio station, WCR, welcomed the idea and carried out a year-long pilot project funded by the Area Board capturing and recording local people's views.

As Barry Mole, Director of  WCR, explains the basic idea:  "We aim for fifteen to twenty people to record. The recording is then edited and played at the Area Board meeting. Each recording shows where there is a trend or a consensus of opinion. The recording shows strength of consensus but also those that may have a different viewpoint or have an interesting solution."  The full recordings are also available to the Council.

The case study has been written by Zebra Collective as part of the Empowering Good Practice Programme of Empowering Communities, and has been funded by the SW Improvement & Efficiency Partnership and the Department for Communities & Local Government. Follow this link to the case study