Thank you, Greater Londoners
Let's work together
Thank you all for coming to our launch on Thursday. We had an amazing turnout – next time we’ll book a bigger venue (and one with air-con)! It was great to meet so many people who shared our vision and came brimming with ideas for how London can be better. To get updates on what we’re doing, including the next event, please sign up at www.greaterlondon.co
Many of you asked us how you can help.
In the near term, we want to continue building the network of “Greater Londoners”. We’ll announce our next central meet-up soon, and if you’d like to host a meet-up near you, we’ll let people know that it’s happening.
We’d love people to submit their ideas for the newsletter. In particular, we’re looking for 500-800 words on:
Ideas to make London better, primarily from a policy perspective;
Ideas from London that the rest of the world could learn from;
Pieces about stuff being done in London and by Londoners that are underrated, and need more attention!
Please email pitches or drafts to founders@greaterlondon.co (if you previously emailed us at greaterldn@substack.com , we’re having issues with it, so please forward it to this one)!
We’re also keen to hear about new housing or infrastructure developments that our network might want to write in support of. We think local councillors may be surprisingly receptive to genuine expressions of support for new projects, since they normally only hear objections. Where we think we can make a difference, we’ll make our network aware of projects to support.
In the medium term, we’re going to host some talks about how London works, some ideas in housing and infrastructure that are well-developed, and maybe a conference with a fairly open agenda so that people can develop plans to start changing things directly.
In the longer term, we’re thinking about the Greater London Project as being infrastructure for other smaller groups of people to effect policy change. The model we have in mind is:
Help people find others who want to work together on a particular issue – like, say, improving air quality on the Tube. This should probably start with a pitch article for the GLP newsletter setting out the problem and the solution.
Give advice and templates to them to help them know what to do from people who have already had successes campaigning or changing policy.
Where we can and think it’s appropriate, introduce people to others in media, civil society, government and elsewhere who might be able to help get things to happen.
Aim to boost a few campaigns as much as we can to secure some “wins”.
That model is an experiment, and might not work, but we think it’s absolutely worth a try. Since this is such a talented group of people, we really want to bias this network towards action, and encourage bottom-up initiative rather than trying to do everything from the top down.
Let’s work together!
— Joe and Sam, on behalf of the Greater London Project.