Keynote Speakers

Vince Cable MP

In a wide-ranging speech to conference, Vince Cable said the British economy had suffered "a massive heart attack" saying it was now "in intensive care".

Describing how "too much cheap money" had come into the system, creating an unstable bubble, he also criticised the banking system as being inherently unstable itself – over confident and greedy in the good times and contracting when things go wrong, leading to recession.

He said no-one knows whether the crisis is passing.

The four main consequences of the crisis, according to Mr Cable, were unemployment, a broken banking system, housing market dysfunction and the impact on the public purse.

Here are biographies for the two speakers at It's The Stupid Economy! - Urban Forum's Annual Conference 2009.

It's The Stupid Economy!

Urban Forum Annual Conference 2009 – 3rd December 2009 at Central Hall, Westminster, London

PROGRAMME

9.30 Arrival/Registration

10.00 Opening Plenary - Conference Chair, Pam Stewart (Chair, Urban Forum)
Toby Blume: Campaign for Responsible Finance

11.00 Ideas Marketplace - Building Resilient Communities

12.30 Lunch + AGM

1.30 Policy Slam - Perry Walker, new economics foundation

2.30 Keynote Speakers: Vince Cable MP and Karen Chouhan, Equanomics (with Q&A)

3.30 Final Plenary

4.30 Close

Urban Forum and NAVCA are running several FREE events, working with a series of local partners, to prepare for the practicalities, opportunities and challenges of the rights within the Localism Act. We want to support inclusion and equality in how the new rights are taken up; focusing in particular on the needs of communities who currently lack power.

The FREE events yet to take place are as follows:

7th February 2012, Middlesbrough

9th February 2012, Rotherham

22nd February 2012, Devonport

7th March 2012, St Helens

14th March 2012, Tameside

28th March 2012, Birmingham         

Urban Forum provides a range of training and consultancy services designed to support community groups and the local public sector. For more comprehensive details on our track record and what we can offer please go to the services section of our website.

Currently Urban Forum only offers in-house training. This training can be tailored to meet your specific needs and designed to meet your specific requirements. The following is an indication of the type of training we can offer. However, please do not hesitate to contact us if your needs fall outside these areas - we might be able to help.

Training for community groups
We offer a wide range of courses to support local community and voluntary groups to engage more effectively in decision-making. These include the following:

• Understanding policy provides an overview of the latest policy developments, programmes and practice relating to communities and how they all fit together.
• Effective community representation can be tailored to cover various aspects of representation including what you want to achieve through representation, roles of reps, building influence and getting support.
• Put your message across loud and clear is a practical workshop to help you clarify the message you want to put across and make it as powerful as possible. We can also do associated training around getting your message across in writing and planning and delivering presentations.
• Basic facilitation skills is aimed at anyone who wants to run workshops, information or discussion sessions but has limited experience of doing this.
• We also run courses on increasing your influence to help community groups understand how they can have a more effective voice in decision-making. Examining where power and influence lies and what the available opportunities are to ensure community groups have a greater say in deciding policy.

We are also happy to develop bespoke courses to meet any other needs you may have. Please This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Training for the public sector
Our public sector training courses are designed to help public sector agencies strengthen their community engagement policy and practice and work more effectively with the third sector. We offer courses tailored to the meet the particular needs of LSPs, community engagement officers and Councillors.

• Our Developing Comprehensive Community Engagement Strategies course provide practical advice to help join up engagement across partnerships.
• We also offer introductory and advanced courses in effective community engagement and we can also offer training on a range of participatory methods.

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About our Training
All our training is designed to be engaging and practical and is always delivered to an extremely high standard.

• It is participatory with small group work and that enables 'learning through doing'
• It provides participants with checklists, guidelines etc that they can use to improve practice on a day-to-day basis
• It is flexible so that themes can be mixed and matched to tailor (customise) them to your specific needs
• Action planning is built into all workshops to enable the training to lead to real practical action
  
  

We are also able to conduct research, deliver workshops and presentations and undertake other consultancy services. We offer very reasonable rates, with a 20% discount on our standard rates for all Urban Forum members.

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