Wiltshire Council had just been created. It was the product of a merger between four District Councils and One County. It had undergone a major transition and wanted to communicate the key results to internal staff, to Council members and to the wider public. Practicus had helped create the team that delivered the Council’s transition to unitary status. The Services Director for Policy, Research & Communications, Laurie Bell knew that Practicus had a track record for making films about change initiatives. She asked Paul to communicate some of the key messages in a different way that would capture the imagination of the three different target audiences.
What he decided to do was to make a film that would critically examine what the Council had achieved in a mini documentary format with independent contribution from the Department for Communities and Local Government. The film focused not just on how the Council had achieved disproportionate success on the Transition part of its Transformation programme, but also on what learns it had to share with other Authorities.
Over the course of two weeks, Paul and his team interviewed the key players in the Council’s change programme from the Chief Executive to the Council Leader, from the Director in charge of Communications to the person in charge of the Programme Office.
What Paul and the team produced was a film that the Executive team was happy with, the internal staff were proud to be associated with, the Council members felt comfortable with and the general public both understood and liked. Indeed the Council Leader, Jane Scott was so impressed that she wrote an article about the change initiative and sent a copy of the video to the MJ (Management Journal). The MJ decided to put the DVD on the front page as a give-away in one of its December 09 editions.
