Building a European Green Capital Programme

Mark Leach

Project Manager, Sustainability

Bristol City Council

European Green Capital Award 2018

Workshop for Applicant Cities

Date: Friday 3rd July 2015

1) The experience of the City of Bristol in applying for the award

• Many years of pioneering environmental efforts

• Strong performance across 12 categories versus other competing cities

• Strong community action and effective partnerships

• Exciting plans for 2015

• Ambitious and real investment in the future

• Sense of fun!

Why did Bristol win?

• Co-create, nurture or initiate a cross-sector partnership

• Help your city’s grassroots organisations to grow

• Adopt ambitious targets on all 12 Indicators, as well as action plans to

deliver those targets

• Work with neighbouring authorities on cross-boundary issues

• Commence an externally verified environmental management system

such as EMAS

Use the process to drive change in your city

E.g. in Bristol, over 4-5 years, investment in energy efficiency and

renewables increased exponentially and cycling rates doubled

Before you apply…

• A cross-sector partnership:

Broad brush strategic advice and encouragement

Small, focused steering group

• City politicians:

All parties

Political leads for the different subject areas read the relevant indicators

• Municipality Senior Management:

Top down commitment essential to enable technical authors to make time

• Municipality technical level:

Bristol’s bids required nine lead authors, plus one or more other technical officers

providing information from related areas of expertise for each indicator.

• The Coordinator Role:

Experienced project manager, identifying authors; relationship management with

authors; external peer reviewers; editing…

• International officer:

Understanding of what the commission would be most interested in (word count!)

• Public relations and communications:

Easy role to underestimate; great results for Bristol

Who will you need?

• Develop a project plan

• Create a steering group

• A senior owner for each indicator

• Technical authors - clear timescales, yet realistic

• Municipality-wide awareness raising

• Individual project plans for each chapter

• Regular and planned in 1:1 progress meetings with authors

• Schedule regular meetings for the working team

• Iterate (edit/re-write/edit/re-write), grinding down to permitted

word count

Preparing the application

• Identify quality external reviewers, ideally from an different

perspective but perhaps with some knowledge of local

government

• Copywriting

• Arrange meetings with owners and authors to review the bid

together and agree priorities

• Submit your application with plenty of time for technical

problems – don’t leave until the last minute

• Factor in time with technical authors for responding to

clarifications!

• If successful at this round, begin work on Jury presentation!!

Finalising and reviewing

• The vision for the city

• Building confidence

• How to craft the presenting team “blend”

• Balancing creativity and content

• Authenticity

• Resist the temptation to cover everything

• The leave behind

• Film making…

• Build on foundations of technical bid, but go beyond it and don’t

be bounded by it

• Use the information from the Secretariat

• Use the information from the Secretariat

The Jury Presentation

2) Programme development

Bristol City Council

• Integral entity

• Supporting and

steering programme

and grants

• Will carry some of

the legacy of 2015

Bristol 2015 Ltd

• Short term company with

independent board

• Set up to facilitate the

year; raising funds;

planning and delivering

some of the programme

Bristol Green Capital

Partnership

• Independent CIC (Community Interest Company)

• Over 800 member organisations

• Main legacy organisation after 2015

Key organisations

• Public Sector

– Arts Council England

– Bristol City Council

– UK Govt Treasury and Department for Energy & Climate Change

• Commercial Partners

– Strong private sector support through significant cash and in-kind commitments

– Tier 1 Sponsors - FirstGroup, Skanska, KPMG

• Strategic Partners

– Important strategic and resource support

– BBC, University of Bristol, UWE, Business West, Low Carbon South West, Destination Bristol

Sponsors & partners

Our vision

Our themes

• Grants Programme – £2m of funding, 110 projects

now live across the city

– Neighbourhood Grants

– Small Grants

– Strategic Grants

• Volunteer Programme

• Neighbourhood Arts Programme

• National Schools Programme

Local empowerment

• Bristol Method

• National Schools Programme

• International delegations to Bristol

• European Commission events

• UN Conference on Climate Change – COP 21 (Dec 2015)

• Eurocities Environment Forum

Sustainability leadership

• Bristol Debates and International Summits

– Young People

– Business

– City Leaders

• International Greentech Festival and the Green Capital

Digital Challenge

• International Fair Trade Towns Conference

• UN Conference on Climate Change – COP 21 (Dec 2015)

International profile

#do15 campaign

Involving everyone

Talking to everyone

• Our City – Bristol City Council publication to 197,000

households

– Bristol 2015 sponsored centre page pull out on #do15

Newsletter

Over 6,000 people

signed up!

Visit the online calendar of events:

https://www.bristol2015.co.uk/events/

Go Green

• The knowledge-transfer programme for our year as the

European Green Capital

• Purpose: to help people in other cities understand and

apply the lessons we have learned in:

– becoming a more sustainable city, not just in 2015 but in

the last decade; and

– activating the European Green Capital award.

The Bristol method

• The modules have been selecting based on the following criteria:

– activity that delivered a positive impact (defined as more sustainable

behaviours, more sustainable infrastructure and/or a happier &

healthier life for people in the city);

– likely to be applicable to or of interest and relevance to other cities;

– innovative or thought-leading activity that could be applied to other

cities;

Module selection criteria

1. Introduction / context

2. Relevant local history

3. Bristol’s vision

4. Detailed activity of municipality and of external partners

5. Projects and groups supporting Bristol’s vision

6. What obstacles did we overcome to achieve success? [Barriers]

7. What did we achieve? [measurements i.e. outputs, impacts]

8. What worked and what didn’t? [Review / evaluation]

Module structure

3) How winning has benefited Bristol

Existing events upscaled

National Schools Programme

Primary and special schools across Bristol have been invited to take part in free

sustainability workshops covering our five themes (food, nature, energy,

transport, resources). Over 5,500 children have taken part so far.

Last month

• EU Green Week – 3rd – 5th June in Brussels

– Nature & Biodiversity themed event, showcase for Bristol

So far…

[https://youtu.be/3WeVYIZ7K6Y]

So far…

• 200,000 people engaged with events, art and cultural activities

• Invested £2 million in 189 sustainable projects across the city

• Reached 7,000 school children in Bristol’s schools

• Welcomed 1,000 young people to Green Youth Day

• Hosted 1,600 people and over 100 companies at Venturefest,

showcasing Green Technologies

• Engaged over 800 businesses with Go Green

• 87,000 unique visitors to the Bristol 2015 website

• 430,000 page views, 6k twitter followers, 4,800 Facebook likes

• EU 2017 Awards & Gala dinner – 17th-18th June

• 52 IMCL Conference on Achieving Green, Healthy Cities; 29/06-3/07

Looking ahead

• National Sustainable Schools Conference – 2nd July

• 9th International Fairtrade Towns Conference – 4th-5th July

• Sustainable Shaun game launches – Bristol 2015 Lab

– 11th – 12th July

• ACE Exceptional Award – The Bristol Whales

– Millennium Square – 17th July

• Bristol Harbour Festival – 17th– 19th July

• ACE Exceptional Award – Richard Long, Time and Space

– Arnolfini, 31st July – 5th November

• ‘Go Green’ www.gogreenbusiness.co.uk

• Come and see us in Bristol! www.bristol2015.co.uk/event

• Find out more about our volunteering approach: – http://volunteerteam.bristol.gov.uk

• Sign up to receive the Bristol 2015 newsletter: – www.bristol2015.co.uk

• Twitter – @Bristol_2015 / #Bristol2015

• Facebook – www.facebook.com/Bristol2015

• Instagram – http://instagram.com/bristol2015

• You Tube – subscribe to Bristol 2015 channel – growing archive of films, view or contribute

4) To find out more…