Like some other Academies, Sidney Stringer has the Local Authority as one of its sponsors. Communitas was taken on board as the Local Authority was about to begin its statutory school closure notice process, and as the proposed Academy was about to embark on its public consultation process.

We were asked by the four sponsors to devise a strategy which included running the statutory school closure in tandem with the public consultation on the proposed Academy.

The current school is well established within the local community and has good results. There is a vocal minority within the community and within the council who are opposed to any change in status.

As time was short we ran a quick stakeholder mapping exercise to identify the groups and how best to reach them. We also identified top line messages and identified the best methods of communication with individual or groups - using either targeted meetings and public/open meetings, paper communications or online.

The idea behind some of the targeted meetings is to use the opportunity to

deliver top line messages which would feed back from the meeting to a wider audience.

We also developed a set of materials to be used in the consultation. We devised a joint questionnaire which satisfied both the school closure notice and the proposed Academy. We designed and produced a consultation booklet and a popular version of the booklet which included the questionnaire which the reader would complete tear off and fold to make an envelope.

The sponsors used Communitas’ freepost and phone facilities for questionnaire responses and for questions from the public.

We also arranged domain name hosting and developed a website to be used by the proposed Academy. Once the Academy signs its funding agreement, the site will be used as the Academy site to help with building awareness of the Academy and what it will be offering to both existing and new parents, students and the wider community. The site will also help with recruitment and retention of staff.

Communitas has also been commissioned to produce a series of newsletters whilst the proposed Academy is in development through to its doors opening in September 2009.