Veronica Swindale, MD of nesma, meets up with Kate Clark, Marketing and Campaign Manager at Northumberland County Council to talk about some of the work Kate has been doing recently
Thanks so much for chatting to us this month. Could you just give an outline of your role at Northumberland County Council?
I sit within the corporate communications team, as a marketing and campaigns manager, working alongside a variety of teams at the council. For the last twelve months, I’ve been working on a new digital platform and rebrand for Northumberland Tourism. Northumberland’s tourism industry is a significant economic driver in our region, the rebrand and immersive website will be one way to support our local businesses at this time. The other piece of work that keeps me busy is Discover our Land, a campaign created to capture people’s stories across our county and to celebrate regional pride.
Clearly, things have been pretty hectic over recent months, what have been the most significant challenges do you think?
When the lockdown was announced, a new team was established to support our communities. Northumberland Communities Together (NCT) initially helped our most vulnerable residents, ensuring access to food and medication. From a marcomms perspective, our biggest challenge was communicating at pace with the voluntary groups, partners, charities, and individual volunteers across the county who were all working together to keep our communities safe and well.
Within a few weeks, we’d created a brand, webpage, social media accounts, and an electronic information pack which covered everything from public health messages to safeguarding tutorials, to highlighting best practice and celebrating local heroes to keep morale high. Within three weeks, we had over 1,100 people volunteer: the response was astounding. Now we need to focus on building more awareness of the NCT team.
In what ways have you had to innovate to be able to do things differently for the community?
There has been a real ‘can do’ approach right from the start, many colleagues from different areas of the Council, Northumbria Healthcare NHS Trust, local partners and voluntary groups had to collaborate quickly to respond to the needs of residents. We worked closely with the data and IT team to build a picture of what was happening in our communities, mapping volunteers, voluntary groups and support networks – allowing us to react promptly and effectively across a large geographical area.
Data is now streamed to iPads to enable our on the ground teams to reach out to residents. What was encouraging was so many people had strong support networks in place with neighbours, friends or family. This data continues to inform a picture of the wellbeing of our communities across the county.
The NCT Team worked with NHS Health Trainers, libraries, NCC service, local businesses as well as schools and community organisation to engage with residents. Providing them with socially distanced activity, PPE packs and ideas on keeping active, safe and well. Over 150 pop-up events were created with over 3,000 residents engaging, and we are committed to continuing this work through the winter.
What work is there still to do?
An increase in the number of people testing positive for COVID-19 and tighter local restrictions require residents to have more support around testing, selfisolation, and reassurance. There are several areas of concern; a rise in domestic violence, criminal activity, food and fuel poverty and mental health issues. Hopefully, we can start adopting a micro-targeted approach to address these as we work more closely with partners on the ground in each community.
Although this crisis is horrible, we’ve seen amazing people across our region working to help our most vulnerable residents. It’s been humbling to see how everyone has rallied together. We must all continue to be kind and support each other.
Kate is also studying for her Masters level CIM Marketing Leadership Programme (Level 7) with nesma. For more information, take a look at the qualifications section of our website.
