The various community events that I find myself attending have settled into a more predictable monthly schedule. Also, the benefits of being seen and being recognised as a representative of the club are slowly emerging. The cohesion behind the scenes between the various elements of the BFC family grows ever stronger, and, after only a few months, I feel we are making real progress on a number of fronts. It would be great to record a financial upside from all our efforts but that will take longer to feed through. However, several people outside the club have remarked to me how pleased they are to see Brentford out and about and this gives me confidence to keep on going. The new stadium project is attractive to local businesses of all sizes and as progress is made there, so the commercial attractiveness of partnering BFC will grow too.
The first meeting of the month was the Lionel Road liaison meeting which focused on the financial viability of the new stadium/Lionel Road development, which, of course, includes the Fountains Leisure site and the plans to redevelop Griffin Park, once we have moved out. Peter Murphy, our senior contact at Barratt, made a very clear presentation of all the elements that make up their calculations of viability, and managed to make the complexity of the subject matter simple enough even for me to understand. The full presentation is available to view on the website: www.brentfordcommunitystadium.com.
The Brentford Chamber of Commerce held their November meeting at the local Musical Museum, and their focus for the evening was tourism and leisure in the local area. It was a very well attended event and enabled us to talk to people from local hotels, retailers and other businesses, including other attractions like Boston Manor House, and the Steam Museum. The museum itself, having moved from the church to a purpose built site just along the road, is fascinating, with dozens of wonderful exhibits, topped off by a “mighty Wurlitzer” from one of Kingston’s old cinemas. It was an interesting venue in which to discuss what Brentford and the local area provides by way of tourist attractions. BFC was mentioned very often as a reason why outsiders visited the area although it was acknowledged that little was done to tempt these visitors to stay beyond the football matches. There was also a presentation by the Allsigns Group, a thriving design company based in Commercial Road. I talked to them afterwards and at a subsequent meeting later in the month and I hope we can find a way to work together in the future.
The One Brentford project gathered more momentum last month as we had our second “all-party” commercial meeting, considering how we could present the various facets of the club to potential sponsors and partners. This effort has been given extra impetus by the fact that our local MP, Ann Keen, has kindly arranged for Brentford FC to host a reception on the terrace of the House of Commons in December. This is a unique opportunity to showcase all that we currently do, and what more we would be able to do once in Lionel Road, to all those people who support us now, or who could support our cause in the future. As a consequence of this event, we are putting together the first combined One Brentford DVD which will be shown on the day but invaluable for mailing out to all potential business contacts thereafter. We are also producing a new set of banners for the Club, the Community Sports Trust, the Learning Zone, Bees United and Lionel Rd, as those used at the summer fairs were showing signs of wear and tear.
The other key initiative to emerge from the commercial meeting was an agreement that, in the immediate short-term, all marketing efforts would be focused on publicising the Family Ticket. We are printing a leaflet which will be distributed far and wide (we may have to ask for help from supporters to reach as many places as possible) and we are making a list of all the websites and locations in which we need to get this posted. Please keep on telling neighbours, friends and complete strangers that we have this amazing £20 ticket offer. We are convinced, that, in these economically straitened times, this is a really important initiative and the best possible chance we have of attracting a new audience. We have often tried to do too many things at once with little effectiveness. This is an attempt to do one thing well and we’d appreciate everyone’s support.
The end of the month was rather dominated by the BU board meeting and the AGM’s of both BU and the Loan Note holders. These are covered elsewhere. My personal thanks to Edmund Paton Walsh for his efforts on the BU annual survey. I feel that the supporters are due a view of our assessment of what the results mean and what we intend to do as a board in the light of those results. I will post that summary in the next week. Prior to that summary, I would only record that the most telling result for me was the large number of people who agreed to the statement that “supporters’ trusts like BU are the way forward for clubs at our level” who nonetheless are not members of BU. In my view, we need to sort that apparent anomaly out as a priority. Criticism of our level of communication, which this monthly bulletin is a small attempt to counter, is something else we need to address.
Brian Burgess and I both attended the awards ceremony for the Partnership Challenge for Education & Business which was held in Brentford School for Girls on 27 November. This award, which this year was handed over by Dame Julia Cleverdon, Vice President, Business in the Community, recognises and rewards active collaboration between education (schoolchildren) and the local economic community. Both Brian and I have worked with Garth Buckle who coordinates schools and businesses in the borough but the club has not engaged formally in the Business/Education partnership scheme. This is perhaps something we can review. Also, Business in the Community has a specific scheme called Clubs that Count, that recognises the work done by sports clubs in local areas, and we may also become involved in that in the near future.
Finally, to that other community to which we belong, Supporters Direct. This month we voted in their annual elections to their SD board and on 2nd December I am attending their workshop which is considering whether and how clubs can put a real value on their role at the heart of their local community. This may sound rather ambitious, but if we are to attract support from other institutions, whether in the form of grants or sponsorship monies from companies wishing to invest in their local community, we need to be able to do more than claim to be a vital cog in that local community, we need to show we bring genuine value to it. BFC is mentioned in glowing terms in all these discussions, and I have been asked if we would agree to be a case study following the workshop. We are deeply indebted for our reputation in this respect to the work that Lee Doyle and Jo Emmerson do in the CST and GPLZ respectively. In my view, we also need to consider what we do as BFC to substantiate the claim that we are a community club and whether, within our limited means, we could do more.