Once at the sea, I smelled the smell of rotting seaweed. I was later told the council used to clean it up but said it had become too expensive to continue. But surely Brighton do it? Brighton doesn’t smell. The pier was lovely, the place had the English charm found in Martin Parr’s photographs. Charm that is found in the places that are left alone.

There are parts trying to be Brighton, a small art corner on the coastal path, just the one bar with tables on the beach. But Brighton sometimes seems too bohemian. It’s nice that Worthing has elderly people playing bowls, they should be embraced. There should be tea parties and bunting. Worthing should be the seaside town that time forgot. In part.

It’s a good place. But needs livening up a bit.

I won’t go into my journey back to the train station too much, suffice to say that I was reminded of the time I got stuck on a ring-road in Norwich.

However, there aren’t many events celebrating Worthing’s sporting culture. There’s a lot of bowls (the English Bowls Association are based in the town), an excellent basketball team, and an annual hockey festival.

None of the suggestions need huge amounts of build, planning or infrastructure; they’re more about encouraging people to recognise what’s there and encouraging local enterprise to build on it.

‘Seasonal events on the beach – sports/ extreme sports/ skate ramps/ festival’

‘Mark a two lane 100m stretch on Worthing seafront – encourage fitness’

‘Lewis the kitesurfer could be a spokesman or face for Worthing sport’

‘Basketball courts on the beach – with seating for audience. Remember – people witting will want to buy food & drink’

‘Skate-zone along seafront near Splash Point (or skate-friendly zone)’

‘Where’s the kayak hire shop or surf shack?’

All of these need a nudge, not a shove, to make them happen. Perhaps my personal favourite, though – and one which I’ve decided we should make happen -

‘Encourage 2012 Olympic idling – lying around, staring into the distance’

Let’s make Worthing the place you spend a few weeks avoiding London 2012.

The Think Tank

There’s a clear need expressed to continue the work started by the think tank, letting local people and visitors come together to start making a difference to Worthing.

‘Hold regular think tanks in coffee shops’

This ties in with another idea that was expressed by a number of people, the need to bring people together;

‘A Worthing Likemind group – meet up monthly. Low key networking for creatives. Coffee morning, some evenings’

‘Bring Tuttle to Worthing’

‘Do that event where one day in summer, people sit on their doorsteps or on chairs outside their houses and chat’

madeinworthing.com

‘Create a ‘Town We Want’ blog and get the community to contribute to it’

Worthing has a number of community websites, all with slightly different purposes. There’s always a problem with local sites, usually built by keen amateurs (internet radio hams) keeping up with progress though. Do we need something bigger, faster, better?

worthingstuff.co.uk has shown a possible way forward, aggregating content from social media – it could easily, with some tech support, become a central point for information.

‘A website where anyone can post an audio recording, commentary, guided walk etc. You can download a commentary and trace their steps’

‘Signage for Twitter and Facebook around entry points to the town – tell us what you think of Worthing’

Made In Worthing

Made In Worthing was conceived as a once-a-year event, a weekend of new artwork, performance and exploration. It seems though, after the think tank, that people would like to see fresh thinking, original ideas, crowd-sourced planning and guerilla regeneration all year round. especially where it support local traders.

‘Made In Worthing stickers on shops and independent traders’

‘Promote pubs in town – didn’t really notice them’

Moving on

So while Made In Worthing was my baby, would you all like to come along for the ride now?  Mooey’s Mocha Shop in Chapel Road have already offered a home for a regular think tank coffee morning. Over the last couple of weeks this website has become a forum for forward-thinking debate and discussion. How about we carry on here, and add more multi-media content as well, and pull in content from worthingstuff.co.uk?

And with all that, do we make Made In Worthing a new, agile organisation, a 21st century, social media fuelled, civic society?

Worthing’s Not Working. ‘How can we improve the town?’ was the question on everyone lips at the think tank.  Out of a day’s conversations and mini tours came a wealth of good practical and achievable ideas; of course along with some crazy and off the wall ones; which always add colour!

So where do I sit on all this and as a non Worthing Resident why do I care?

The environment we live and work in are important to me and they should be to you. Living on the Old Kent Road back in ’95 for a year or so was a drab and depressing experience but what I learnt from this is that with a little community involvement and fellow support the face of what was one of the worst inner city neighbourhoods can be made better. This slight shift had a large knock-on effect to the residents and general well being within the area. It generated a sense of community.

Okay so I’m not comparing Worthing to the Old Kent Road but I am in the fact that we should all forget about shiny glass shopping malls, forget Multiplex cinemas, forget all the large scale development. We can’t change that and we shouldn’t focus our efforts on that. Instead focus on the smaller achievable goals that residents can get involved with. Community driven initiatives are far better than think tanks dictating what should or shouldn’t be done. (Don’t think we’re planning a dictatorship, but you get my drift.)

Worthing has so many jewels in it’s crown; yes some have lost their sparkle, but there are still many that make the town unique and different from the ‘identical towns’ we see the length and breadth of the UK. What isn’t working is the desire for everyone to get involved and make Worthing the town they want it to be. As the economy grows the large scale developments will come, this may take years in planning and sway back and forth through political change but they will happen; but they will happen according to what ‘fits’ Worthing.

With the South Downs on one side and the sea on the other the town is unique and envious to others but limited in space for development. What comes will come, change is inevitable but the uniqueness shouldn’t be lost and the uniqueness of the town should be expanded upon. Just look around – beautiful architecture, one of the best water sports spots on the South Coast, the South Downs National Park, independent shops, and a new architectural first for Worthing with the swimming pool/leisure complex.

There seems to be a sense of ‘We Want’ in the town, but many of these wants seem faceless, worthless, non value adding lifeless solutions that don’t address the underlying issues

So what to do.

Ask the residents what the want and only work on achievable projects and programs that add real value… and ones that the community can get involved in. From small seeds grow great things.

1. ?
2. Daniela Gargiulo – Wukulele Festival, Ivy Arch
3. Souldiers by the Sea
4. Mooey’s Mocha Shop (Danny and Linzie)
5. Mick and Chriss Smith
6. Chi Chi Revolver
7. Thomas H
8. Adam Stafford, Fresh Egg
9. Stefan Sykes, Coast, Worthing Film Club, On Location Film Festival
10. Mark Davies, Arena Menswear
11. Clare McIvor, Green Cuisine
12. 13 Ink
13. Martin Pace, Reflections Nursery
14. Graham Holden, Open Sussex
15. Brenda, Guildbourne Centre
16. James Doyle
17. Russ Bravo, Matt’s Comedy Club (Facebook), Roundabout
18. Sadie Collis, Worthing Calendar
19. Mags Bradley, Kids In Sussex
20. ?
21. Nicky Fijalkowski, Knit For Victory
22. Andrew Walker
23. Mike Pailthorpe, Happy Vibes
24. Richard Margolis, Ardington Hotel
25. JP, Quest Adventure
26. Nick Hallard, Eye bright Murals and author
27. Pete Fijalkowski, musician, bookseller, On Location Film Festival
28. Lynda Spain, Worthing Regeneration
29. Katie Fewings, Ethical Weddings, Action for Market Towns
30. Travis Elborough, author
31. Deborah Coughlin, writer, Gaggle founder
32. ?
33. ?

I’ve been working through the ideas today, each one written on a piece of A6 blue paper. Visitors to the Sunday Social today helped, sorting into rough categories and finding some common themes.

It’ll take me a few days to add all the ideas to this site (and a little longer to turn them into a handbook for Worthing’s future) but in the meantime I think there are five themes:

• Art & creativity
• Food
• Heritage & history
• Education & learning
• Sport

Charity shop #1: Cats Protection

By far the best find of the tour was by the entrance to the Cats Protection shop. A globe which when opened was a drinks cabinet. £20.

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Charity shop #2: St. Barnabas House

In this shop there was a lovely print by an artist called Thomas Lo. It was called ‘Hong Kong Harbour II’ no. 331/1000 and was just £5.

Charity Shop #3: The Salvation Army

What a fantastic charity shop, from artwork that seems randomly priced by how much the staff liked it to some horrific mock mother of pearl furniture and some pine chests of drawers that were exceedingly cheap. The charity shop where furniture comes to die. Favourite find in this shop was amongst the kitchenware/householod objects shelves. (see below).

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Charity shop #4: Save the Children

Not a particularly exciting shop but there was a pile of oven-bake clay at 50p a packet only in red and green.

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Charity shop #5: Shelter

Shelter was pretty thin on the ground on the great finds front, but there were a couple of Guiness branded mugs.

Charity shop #6: Worthing Churches Homeless Project

In here we found an ashtray with a picture of Tower Bridge on it and a 1000 piece Coronation Street puzzle.

Charity shop #7: The British Heart Foundation

Some potential auctionable items in here… if only we’d known anything about the potters…

Charity shop #8: YMCA

Weird dish:

I’m told that Worthing doesn’t work very well as a town, that’s why we got together today to talk and think about making it better. It’s true for me, that I don’t get wildly excited looking around. I don’t immediately think “I’d really like to live here” or “Wow, I really should come down to Worthing more often” but then I also don’t think “Oh my god, this is awful, it might as well be swept away into the sea”. (Since drafting this, I have now been through the “Teville Gate Shopping Centre” and slightly revised this initial opinion…)

I’m struggling with the idea that there’s something wrong that is easily fixed – as I walk around the centre of the town, I’m struck that there doesn’t seem to be much more wrong with Worthing than there is with everywhere else in the UK at the moment. Yes there are quite a few empty shops. The town is full of people, bustling around looking to me as if they’re looking for something to fix the hole in their soul. I don’t think it’s to be found on the streets of Worthing, even if that sort of thing is available through a retail experience (and I doubt it) then it certainly isn’t available through any of the retail experiences I had in Worthing.

And so if we’re going to do something about it then I think I need to be clearer about what it is that isn’t working. If “it” was working, what would we see on the streets of Worthing that we don’t see already? There may be all sorts of things that I don’t like, but which of these are just personal prejudices, prejudices against old people, against young people, against working class people, against middle class people, just against people?

Even working from the assumption that something needs fixing, it also seems to me that there is no shortage of ideas – we’ve come up with quite a few today without really trying very hard. And I’m not convinced that building new things or changing the use of existing buildings is the answer either. In most places, in my experience, it’s about a shortage of people feeling able and inspired to do things regularly, to join in, to get things moving not just today, but tomorrow and every day. I think this is the priority. Put aside deciding in advance what needs to be done and instead just bring together smart people on a regular basis to talk about what they’re already doing and what they want to do, helping them to connect and inspire each other.

I think Worthing needs a stronger social infrastructure for folk who want to do things. A Tuttle would be a start. Something like Pick Me Up would be cool too.