Help design the future of Charlbury - see events 22nd Feb

Tue 18 Feb 2014, 11:00

Greetings from far-away İstanbul. Despite my distance from my home of 18 years, I could not help but give my opinions for the future of Charlbury, and hope that my interest in the growing 'Placemaking' trend can be used to help boost the town.

My magic wand would be used for something realistic, that it to create the community centre which, if done well, could become the new centre of Charlbury if it can incorporate a number of different features such as perhaps a cafe, a small library, sports facilities and classroom. Although the current plans may include this, a personal must for the new centre would be that it has an underground car park to both attract those coming from a bit further away to use the location and to free up space outside currently being used as car park spaces to be used as space for events that need firmer ground than the Playing Close. With many only in town much later in the day, a single hub where people can get together, can go to evening class, or can take their children to sports class, would make a huge difference in helping bring Charlbury as a community closer together.

With or without this community centre, I think Charlbury needs to build off the current successes of the Beer Festival, its farmers markets, and the Riverside to get more of a social calendar to give people things to do all year round. Due to its links to Oxford and London, there is great potential for things like talks, music, comedy even, and I don't think it is impossible to see Charlbury as place where people from outside come for a Farmers Market/Winter beer festival/quiz night in winter or hiking/town barbecue/outdoor music event in summer.

Since this is an outpouring of ideas rather that a specific argument, I don't have a firm conclusion apart from perhaps to look into the idea of making Charlbury more of a destination, but I would highly recommend checking out Placemaking websites such as pps dot org for an idea of projects large and small which could be adapted to Charlbury to help give it more life when people are around in the evenings and when for the days and weeks when the weather is good, even warm.. There is much potential, I am all in from the other side of Europe to help tap it !