Anita is away enjoying some sunshine, so she’s asked me, Cllr Fiona Barrows, to stand in and write the mayor’s column this week.
Like Anita, I was recently elected to a new role as chair and leader of Frome Town Council. Usually in a town council, the ‘chair is the mayor’ but at Frome Town Council we’re taking a different approach.
Anita, as deputy chair of Frome Town Council, is taking on the civic leadership role as mayor; attending events, meeting residents and community groups and writing this column (usually!)
My role as chair and leader is about political leadership and chairing council meetings. I’m looking forward to working closely with Anita this year – we share an enthusiasm for giving young people a real voice in our town.
Like many of you, I’m struggling with everything that’s going on in the world right now. It feels incredibly dark and difficult, as if we’ve somehow lost our sense of humanity. We’re facing enormous crises as a global community in the form of climate breakdown, ecological emergency, and ever-growing inequality. Yet rather than coming together to find solutions, we’re waging war and committing atrocious acts of violence against one another.
We can’t ignore it; we can’t turn a blind eye, and yet I know how helpless and powerless it can make us all feel. What can we do? We do need to raise awareness of these atrocities and do whatever we can to ensure that the voices of violence are not the only ones being heard. But we also need to do what we can, here in Frome, to spread kindness and community. And we need to remember to be gentle and kind to ourselves, too. There is so much division in the world right now and our national politics are cleaving us apart rather than bringing us together, trying to turn us on each other.
My favourite film is Pride and the reason I love it so much is that it portrays two communities that, on the surface, couldn’t be more different, who discover that they have more in common than they’d realised and can use their voices to amplify each other.
We have to do what we can to bridge divides and find the common ground that unites us. The story of Frome resident Jo Berry, who has just received a CBE for her peace work, is an inspiring example of what people can achieve when they turn away from hatred and choose empathy and understanding, even in the hardest circumstances. You can find Jo helping to run regular Let’s Talk sessions at the town hall. If restorative conversation and active empathy can create an understanding between Jo and the IRA operative who planted the bomb that killed her father, there is almost nothing it can’t do.
Kindness to yourself can takes many forms. I have an allotment here in Frome, and while it’s not being quite as well taken care of since I became a councillor, it is my happy place. Not just because of the time outside and hands in the soil, but because it is a place where people from all over Frome with all different types of backgrounds come together and help each other to grow things. It reminds me of the unifying power of growing things together, whether that’s vegetables, an event, or a project.
As many of you will know, we are currently discussing the future of Badgers Hill. At times the divisions have felt hard to overcome and yet we all ultimately want the same thing: a thriving Badgers Hill, home of football in our community. At a recent meeting, every stakeholder representative spoke passionately about football and its ability to bring people together. We hope going forward that passion can bridge current divides and unify the town.
