Nottingham Citizens

In 2010 George began working with the Reverend Karen Rooms to build Nottingham Citizens, a broad based alliance of faith groups, trade unions, educational organisations and charities that could work for the common good of their city within the Citizens UK umbrella.

After raising £60,000 from civil society in the city in 2012 George was appointed as Nottingham Citizens first organiser. After 1,000 one to one meetings Nottingham Citizens took it’s first action, gathering a thousand people for an Assembly ahead of the Police Crime Commissioner elections where they could put their agenda for a safer city to the candidates.

Over the following 3 years Nottingham Citizens fought and won campaigns to introduce the Living Wage at City & County Councils benefiting thousands of workers, to protect families with no recourse to public funds, to treat misogyny as a type of hate crime, to improve security in the Forest Recreation ground, to install CCTV in the city’s cabs, to recruit more diverse candidates for the police and reduce stop and search disproportionality and more.

In 2013 & 2014 Nottingham Citizens hired two more organisers Lydia Rye & Hugh Murdoch and grew through the building of Maun Valley Citizens in Mansfield. Nottingham Citizens trained thousands of people in institutions across City and Council in community organising and remains a force for the common good led by member organisations, their leadership group, and Pete Rogers their organising lead.

Lessons are drawn from building Nottingham Citizens in blog post Fast & Slow.