Agenda and minutes

Attended: Morcea Walker (adult co-chair), Aimee Luck (NBC), Debs Burns (NBC), Mary (KC), Charlie (CC), Thomas (WPS), Ayo (NIA), Oriana (NSG), Tracy (NSG)

Aimee apologised for the issues that delayed starting the meeting.

Apologies from Zach, Jay, Cllr King who is in EPB, Lissy, and Tabi.

Morcea welcomed our guests and checked in with the young people on the meeting.

Jenny Labbon

Jenny works for Northamptonshire Rights and Equality Council and is here

to encourage people across all ages and backgrounds to report hates crimes and hate incidents. It can be really hard to describe and express a hate crime you have faced and make you feel under confident, particularly if you have any disability/special needs that may mean you are misunderstood.

If you see discriminatory behaviours we want you to report even if you don’t want action taken. This helps give a picture of what is happening.

Ways to report:

If a crime is taking place call 999 in an emergency or 101 in non-emergency.

Professionals make the decision if the incident is a hate crime – you don’t have to justify.

Q- Every POC (person of colour) goes through something like this – is a one off racial slur still a hate crime or does it have to be continuous?

Often complaints are about incidents that might seem insignificant alone but create a world view for that person. NREC want to pick these issues up before it gets to this point.

Morcea raised the issue of layers – being a woman, and a person of colour for example. You can report things you see, not just your experiences.

For more information, case reviews, to report; visit the NREC website https://northantsrec.org/  or contact Jenny on jlabbon@northamptonshirerec.org.uk

Mary thanked Jenny – it’s great to know there is a local organisation supporting people.

Laura Graham

Local hub all about making Nton a happier place to live and little things you can do to bring positivity into your life. Working with public health, councils, faith groups and others to spread some happiness.

National A4H developed 10 keys for happier living actionforhappiness.org help you be proactive about your mental wellbeing.

Locally, @A4HNorthants across social media

Looking for youth input on projects:

Charlie suggested forum could look over content.

Suggested that A4H could support covid messaging and keeping well in lockdown.

Morcea – suggested Young Healthwatch and for Laura to contact Esther.

Open to feedback or content ideas for the Instagram page from youth forum.

Happy Hood:

Set up after sick of hearing bad news in Northampton so created a positive zine that celebrates good stuff in Northampton. Run by volunteers, all graphic design and artwork/no photos and on sale across the town – money goes back in to create more! If you have a good news story to share contact or visit web to

Funded by NCF for 4 schools to produce their own.

Suggested Charlie contact Laura about the inspiring young people project he has been running.

Anneka Shalley

Anneka joined us again to work on perspective project; thanked all youth forum members who sent in their recommendations and ideas which have been added to the document.

Our report is made up of 5 chapters with a number of recommendations for each.

We focussed on developing recommendations for Chapter: Colour Northampton/Heart of the Town.

Northampton have secured £8+ million to regenerate the market square and forums ideas could influence the plans.

Ideas included; a multi-purpose community hub, using the public realm for exhibiting local artists work using external wall space, shop fronts, and wall space in restaurants and shops. Suggested secondary schools, college and the university could be partnered with, along with 24 Guildhall art space and the museum etc to promote artworks. Develop something around ‘Look up in Northampton’ and better ways to link Becket’s Park and open space to the town centre. The use of Maps and QR codes to tell people in the town about nearby points of interest and share information on the heritage aspects.

Anneka to update the report and share with group.

Available for collaboration on GoogleDrive - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YZtWvTNpc2zEJjtBcI-VtSVA3k86eFvvQsyIIILHCTg/edit?usp=sharing and updated PDF to be circulated.

Mary asked if they can share the draft report/ideas with their schools/networks – All encouraged to get views of peers, friends etc to feed in.

Cllr Anna King would like to take the report of recommendations to full council.

Thursday 4 March, 4.30pm

Thursday 4 March