Each week we are asking one member from each Working Group to share what they discussed at each meeting and plan to do for the next session. Here is the first Home Group overview:

The first session of the Home working group was an absorbing hour plus which produced a whole range of ideas for future exploration. Our job is to look at everything to do with housing, communities and Winchester as a place to live.

As a first session together everyone was keen to share their main likes and dislikes about the latter. We spent most of our time talking about the city centre which is obviously important to everyone. We talked about the visitor experience, the problems of ‘the high street’, what teenagers can do in the city centre, how ‘expensive’ Winchester struggles with a boho arts/workspace offer, public transport to and from the city, ‘diversity’, and how ‘good’ projects seem to get lost on the way to delivery.

Our group includes a mix of local people all with a keen interest in making the city better. Whether they had moved to the city recently or had lived here a long time everyone clearly had a passionate relationship with their city. The group includes people with direct experience in the subject but most don’t. When someone said at one point that they didn’t know anything about housing, someone else said “well I do live in one”! It will be very interesting to see how well we can work together over the next few weeks.

Although we spent most of our time simply discussing Winchester as a whole, we did manage to capture a lot of different aspects of our subject Home. We created a mindmap showing all of these and shared this around the group after our session. We also began to add our thoughts to actual places in the city, mostly the city centre, on an online map.

In readiness for the next session we’ve all got some homework and it will be interesting to continue the discussion to explore how we can find ways of improving Winchester as a place to live.

Share your views on what you might like to see for Winchester in the comments box below and stay tuned for the next update from the Home group next week! Don’t forget you can also join the conversation on social media, you can find us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram