also participated in a fantastic multi-disciplinary team of health promotion specialists, learning about initiatives to reduce high teenage pregnancy rates, to programs about reducing sexually transmitted diseases. I was grateful to witness the exciting smoking cessation movement of fully trained Stop Smoking Advisors at the time being available to the public at no cost.
This era also provided an anchor for me in a rapidly changing world. By 2001, we had computers on our desks and had joined the twenty-first century! I revelled in being allowed to choose the colour of my office walls. I felt like a very modern professional. The joy of having my very own computer in my brightly painted office was tragically eclipsed by witnessing via my newly installed Internet, the collapse of the Twin Towers at the World Trade Centre in New York, on 11 September 2001.
That was the first I’d heard of Al-Qaeda. Sadly, it would not be the last. For our global community, that was a defining moment for me, as a young professional. Together, the global community witnessed an outpouring of love, support and camaraderie for America and beyond.
Conversation Starters
WHO could you be having a conversation with about something important: a person you haven’t yet had a conversation with?
WHAT fascinates you about communities? Is it the people? The infrastructure? The environment? Health needs? Housing? Or the whole ecosystem?
WHY is it important to put communities at the centre of everything we do? How can we do this better?
WHEN have you witnessed a community or communities demanding to be heard?
WHERE do you sit on the political spectrum? How does this affect your perception of communities and/or community engagement?
4. Form powerful partnerships
If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.
― African Proverb, source unknown
The Gloucester Leisure Centre was where I learned to swim as a child. I hated swimming lessons and have nothing but terrible memories of clinging onto the side for dear life, whilst my best friend Laura clung on for her dear life right alongside me.
That’s not to say my memories of the place are bad, however. The vending machines in the cafeteria stocked delicious little rainbow popcorn snacks. As a teenager, I took the pilgrimage to the Centre to have my ears pierced in the beauty salon, as well as countless visits to the now-illegal-in-many-countries tanning beds. The local nightclub, Fifth Avenue, was located under the same roof. I have some dubious memories of it. And in earlier years when the club was called Cinderella’s, I remember going along to watch my Mum and her friends doing their 1980s-style, lycra-clad, daytime aerobics in there.
In 1992, I spent a week at the Gloucester Leisure Centre doing my work experience for school, splitting my time hanging out with the lifeguards, on reception, and with the maintenance team. I was fascinated by the concept of a place that offered so many different leisure functions for community. By far my favourite job during that week was sitting in the key exchange booth by the swimming pool, swapping locker keys for rubber wristbands to be worn by swimmers. I enjoyed witnessing firsthand a building as a community of place, providing facilities for communities of interest, ranging from swimmers, to gymnasts, and everyone in-between.
During my time in the health promotion department, I’d heard murmurs that as part of the rebuilding of this city-based Leisure Centre during 2001, there would be a new exciting partnership between the owners of the Centre, the Gloucester City Council, my current employers, the West Gloucestershire Primary Care Trust and the University of Gloucestershire. And that the initiative, to be called the Living and Learning Centre, would need a manager.
The timeline for applying for the Living and Learning Centre Manager’s role wasn’t ideal. The advertisement went live in mid-December 2001, and I was in the midst of getting ready for my fast-approaching New Year’s Eve wedding. But I was so excited and intrigued by the potential of this role that I managed to get my application in by the end of January and won the job. Funny though, some of the criticism hurled at me by my now ex-husband during our marriage breakdown a couple of years later was that I’d spent time during our honeymoon (lying on a sun lounger in Phuket), writing my application for this job. Hey, a girl’s got to do what a girl’s got to do. Right? And I’m not the type to kick back with a copy of Hello magazine, whatever the occasion!
Despite the awkward timing of the application process, the timing of my recruitment was impeccable, as I was on board and ready to roll from before the Leisure Centre opened. The partners were keen to have me as an integral part of the Leisure Centre management team. Each week, we would visit the building-site Centre, wearing plastic coverings over our shoes to protect the immaculate flooring, to follow the progress on the build. I felt so proud and excited for Gloucester. It was a 15-million-pound investment in physical infrastructure, but it was also an investment in our health and leisure.
This place was a state-of-the-art Centre, with stunning features, such as a national short course 8-lane 25-metre competition pool (with an incredible moveable floor to alter its depth for different events); a separate 25-metre training pool, learner pool and children’s water play area; indoor bowls, a fully fitted out gymnastics training hall; a martial arts hall, a three-storey health and fitness centre; badminton courts; a major, eight-court sports hall with a capacity to be a 1,600 seater entertainment venue, plus a beauty salon, a bar, and a café. It was the ‘bee’s knees’ of leisure centres! I treasured the opportunity to work alongside the other managers, learning all about the operations of a huge Leisure Centre.
The Living and Learning Centre was on the ground floor, close to the main reception, opposite the café, and at the entrance to the Horizons health club area, where people would come for the gym, exercise classes, or to have a sauna. The Living and Learning Centre was a small space, probably no bigger than fifty square metres, and in those early days, I had great fun planning the furniture, with my tiny budget. I ended up creating zones within the small space so that, in the true spirit of the partnership, the Living and Learning Centre could be used for a multitude of offerings.
Cathy Daley was the overall manager of the Leisure Centre, now called GL1. She was my day-to-day line manager. I had a lot of respect for her because of her straight-talking ability to make things happen. Early on, I remember hearing her explain that, whilst this all-singing-all-dancing, state of the art Leisure Centre was in inner city Gloucester, surrounded by a low socioeconomic demographic of residents who probably most needed a healthier lifestyle, the majority of users of the Centre would be the more affluent residents of Gloucester (who would drive in from the outer suburbs of town to use our facilities). Whilst Cathy didn’t mind this from a business perspective, from a social perspective this didn’t sit well with her, particularly given this was a public leisure centre and not a private health club. She explained that her priority was to connect with the immediate local community.
From the perspective of the University, based in the neighbouring and much more upper-class town of Cheltenham, this was an opportunity to connect with the people of Gloucester. Using this unique setting, Jane, my manager from the University, was keen to promote a message of lifelong learning and to demystify some of the pomp and ceremony associated with University. Having recently studied there myself, and having spent plenty of my childhood attending lectures with my Mum as a mature-aged student, I had a strong connection with the organisation and was excited by the challenge.
The third partner, the West Gloucestershire Primary Care Trust, saw this
