Mary Portas failed in her endeavour to regenerate the high-street, but Robert Ashton thinks he might have more success with his new idea.

The other night I was guest speaker at the AGM of a very interesting community group in Thetford, Norfolk. ‘Sort It’ is an acronym, standing for ‘school of radical thought in Thetford.’ The organisation was formed to bid to make Thetford a Portas pilot town. Needless to say that whilst they were radical and fuelled by passionate community leaders, success they felt, went to those able to fund a professional bid writer.

The paradox of that assumption is that the very passion and frustration that Portas seeks to convert into retail regeneration was not presented in a formulaic enough way to win the funding. In short, they wrote from the heart rather than the head.

And that so often is the problem. When confronted by such ‘wicked problems’ as market town centre decline, you simply don’t make things better by following a formula. Instead you have to take risks, trust people’s instinct and challenge the ‘usual suspects.’

Someone asked the inevitable question; ‘isn’t this competing with Moving Thetford Forward?’ To which of course the answer is no. That is a top down, local authority-led initiative. Sort It starts from the grassroots.
When you see the extent to which the successful Portas pilot towns failed to succeed, you might be inclined to agree that the grassroots might actually be a better place to start. Why not, it’s where the energy, enthusiasm and raw passion is to be found.

When I stood up to speak and scanned the room my heart sank. The audience didn’t look to contain many if any of what looked to me like the ‘right’ people. But when it came to the discussion afterwards, I was humbled by the extent to which those present understood exactly what was needed. Moreover they had boundless energy and obvious commitment. And none were constrained by position or role; most were simply committed residents.

But to succeed, these folk need to win more support, build their membership and create a movement. They have to challenge the deep rooted cynicism that for too long has held this town back. It’s half an hour from Cambridge and right now there’s massive investment in improving road and rail links. It’s a town in the right place at a particularly good time.

So how can the group build that groundswell of support? I had an idea! You see I’ve been reading about Todmorden’s community gardening project ‘incredible edible’.  There they’ve been growing vegetables on spare bits of land around the town. The project’s grown and become quite significant. It’s captured imaginations, perhaps rekindling that wartime ‘dig for victory’ spirit of a previous generation.

Most important of all those urban gardeners of Todmorden are talking to one another. They dig together, sow together, hoe together and harvest together. And the evidence of their work is all around the town for everyone to see; a visual reminder of the change that’s taking place.

So my suggestion to Sort It is simple. Follow Todmorden’s example and start growing stuff. That’ll get people talking; to each other and about the town. It’s a small starting point and as crops start to grow, so too can the conversation about bringing the town centre to life. I’ve even ordered them a copy of ‘Grow a Revolution’ the crowd funded written by local activist Joanna Dobson.

You see the way to create the future in any market town is quite literally to turn over a new leaf!