NAG Magazine 2007
News Story :: 2007-01-03 18:52:05
Hello and Happy New YearOur first task for this year is to put together an issue of the NAG magazine. Previous issues have relied heavily on contributions from the NAG membership and other National HMO Lobby members - full blown articles, snippets of information, thoughts, experiences, and, of course, photographs. So, since the results seem to have met with general approval, I guess I'm asking you to let me have anything you think might be of interest to other NAG members.
Size guidelines are quite simple. The maximum number of words is in the region of 500-600. And don't worry about such things as fonts, italics, bold, underline, margins, etc. That'll all get done at the editing stage. Photographs shouldn't be too much of a problem either, though it might be an idea to get back to us before you send one.
Content: This is really up to you. We've got at the back of our minds some of the more recent developments, e.g.
We have a National HMO Lobby for residents. On 1 February the inaugural meeting is going to take place in Nottingham of a national ward councillors lobby. There are plans in the pipeline for a Parliamentary Balanced Communities Lobby as well. Have you any thoughts about these developments?
Purpose build - what do you think of it? If you live in an area with purpose build has it had any effects (good or bad) on you and your neighbourhood?
What do you want to see in the next Student Housing Action Plan?
We talk a lot about 'balanced communities', but we wonder what you think constitutes a balanced community or, conversely, what makes makes a community/neighbourhood imbalanced.
The so-called 'tipping point' when the number of HMOs or students in a neighbourhood becomes sufficient to make residents feel that the neighoburhood has become unbalanced, etc. It would be useful to hear from people about their experiences of this. There's been a lot of talk about exactly what the tipping point is in any one neighbourhood and it would be really interesting to hear from people what they think the tipping point was in their neighbourhood, or if your neighbourhood hasn't tipped, how many HMOs do you think would tip it over the edge into imbalance.
How has studentification or landlordism, or whatever you want to call it, affected you personally, not just from an environmental point of view, but how you feel and think and plan for the present and the future?
Have you got something 'nice' to report, e.g. friendly student neighbours, good landlords, council officers who have been particularly helpful. In other words, anything that counteracts the usual doom and gloom of the NAG's environment.
Tell us what you value about your home and your neighbourhood, why you haven't sold up and moved out, etc.
Photographs: Many of the photographs we have in the NAG archives are the bad news ones - litter, rubbish, rundown properties, overgrown gardens, dumped sofas, mattresses, pilfererd road signs. They are always welcome, especially if they illustrate a particular point. However, it would be nice to continue getting photographs which also show some of the good things about our neighbourhoods, their character, etc. Think of the last issue of the magazine which carried a mixture of photographs. We need more of that.
Anyway, we hope this inspires you and the contributions start flooding in. We're aiming for a deadline around the third week of January.
A final bit: Are any of you interested in taking over the magazine or part of it?
Content: This is really up to you. We've got at the back of our minds some of the more recent developments, e.g.
We have a National HMO Lobby for residents. On 1 February the inaugural meeting is going to take place in Nottingham of a national ward councillors lobby. There are plans in the pipeline for a Parliamentary Balanced Communities Lobby as well. Have you any thoughts about these developments?
Purpose build - what do you think of it? If you live in an area with purpose build has it had any effects (good or bad) on you and your neighbourhood?
What do you want to see in the next Student Housing Action Plan?
We talk a lot about 'balanced communities', but we wonder what you think constitutes a balanced community or, conversely, what makes makes a community/neighbourhood imbalanced.
The so-called 'tipping point' when the number of HMOs or students in a neighbourhood becomes sufficient to make residents feel that the neighoburhood has become unbalanced, etc. It would be useful to hear from people about their experiences of this. There's been a lot of talk about exactly what the tipping point is in any one neighbourhood and it would be really interesting to hear from people what they think the tipping point was in their neighbourhood, or if your neighbourhood hasn't tipped, how many HMOs do you think would tip it over the edge into imbalance.
How has studentification or landlordism, or whatever you want to call it, affected you personally, not just from an environmental point of view, but how you feel and think and plan for the present and the future?
Have you got something 'nice' to report, e.g. friendly student neighbours, good landlords, council officers who have been particularly helpful. In other words, anything that counteracts the usual doom and gloom of the NAG's environment.
Tell us what you value about your home and your neighbourhood, why you haven't sold up and moved out, etc.
Photographs: Many of the photographs we have in the NAG archives are the bad news ones - litter, rubbish, rundown properties, overgrown gardens, dumped sofas, mattresses, pilfererd road signs. They are always welcome, especially if they illustrate a particular point. However, it would be nice to continue getting photographs which also show some of the good things about our neighbourhoods, their character, etc. Think of the last issue of the magazine which carried a mixture of photographs. We need more of that.
Anyway, we hope this inspires you and the contributions start flooding in. We're aiming for a deadline around the third week of January.
A final bit: Are any of you interested in taking over the magazine or part of it?