The Vision's end of year stakeholder meeting was held at St Mary’s Church with over 40 stakeholders in attendance.

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The event began with the opportunity for the room to reflect on all the successes and resilience shown by everybody over the past year. Although he was unable to be with us on the evening, Chair of the Vision partnership, Cllr Phil North, shared his thoughts and reflections in writing, stating that it had been a ‘really successful year for the Vision in light of the adversities that all partners have faced’.

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We then had updates from our stakeholders, who told us about what they have in plan for the year ahead:

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Community campaigner Manuela Wahnon kicked off the evening with an entertaining yet thought-provoking performance with Test Valley Borough Council Councillor David Drew on focusing on the positives of our great town. Many thanks to Manuela for setting the event off with such a positive start, which was felt all the way throughout the evening!

 

Dmitrijs Meiksans MYP, spoke about the Andover Youth Assembly, a new and exciting project run jointly by Andover Vision and Unity Youth, into the town centre. The Andover Youth Assembly will be a great opportunity for young people aged 11 – 18 to help shape Andover’s future by putting forward their ideas and thoughts forward to improve the different parts of their daily lives. The event will run over three days between January 18th and February 1st 2022, so get in touch with policy@testvalley.gov.uk for more information!

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Helen Coleman, from the Hampshire, Southampton and Isle of Wight CCG gave an update on the Andover Healthier communities project. The project continues to pick up the pace and there are now plenty of Vision partners who have are now playing an active role to work with communities in Andover to improve health. Various community engagement projects such as the Good Grub Club that took place in St Mary’s Church were on show on the evening.  Contact the Vision team on andovervision@testvalley.gov.uk if you want to find our more or wish to get involved!​

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Louisa Rice  provided a recap on the Andover Refill Project , a national scheme that is run by the charity City to Sea, which encourages businesses to enable residents and shoppers to refill their water bottles with free tap water at their premises. Partners are invited to help reinvigorate the project and keep Andover hydrated by helping relaunch the project! Contact Louisa on lrice@testvalley.gov.uk for more info!

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Much of the session then focused on the development of Andover's emerging place brand, which was led by Andrew Palmer from the place branding team at CT Consults, who are partnered with Hemingway Design  and have developed the masterplan for our town. Andrew used the platform to hear honest, valuable thoughts and opinions from stakeholders that will feed into the new brand for Andover. Would you like to contribute? email Andrew with your thoughts at andrew@ctconsults.com.

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For more information about any of our stakeholders' updates, or if you would like to get involved, email andovervision@testvalley.gov.uk. We look forward to seeing you again soon!

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