We now have huge banners on the Council House and by Bristol Royal Infirmary. Others may follow soon. The last week or so has seen several of the biggest employers in the city firmly commit to Chooseday and promote it among their employees. These include Bristol City Council, the United Bristol Healthcare Trust and Bristol University, who together account for perhaps 25,000 people. In addition we have several private organisations who have agreed to adopt Chooseday, such as Beachcroft LLP and Bevan Brittan. Many existing environmental and community groups are also on board - see our list of supporters.

One thing I would like to make clear is that we intend to keep Chooseday independent. Just because the Council, or anyone else, has a large banner does not mean they are running it. They are simply welcome partners along with so many others in this venture. Our aim is to build the biggest partnership Bristol has seen! In the process we shall make sure to keep Chooseday independent. That means that we will owe nothing to, nor seek to promote any major organisation, political party or faith community. Our driving concern will always remain our response to climate change and the environmental challenge.

By the way if you know a public building that would like to have a banner, please let us know.

One of the unfortunate things about the Points West story is that it made it looked like Chooseday was all about me (Chris Sunderland) and there was little evidence of the great team that has now come together to take Chooseday forward. This team is growing by the day, and there are loads of more informal supporters, but I thought you would like to see some of us. The photo on our front page shows (left to right)

Josh Hart - working at the grassroots with young people, community groups and existing environmental campaigners

Vala Ragnarsdottir- a long term supporter of Chooseday and leading environmental campaigner who ran our Chooseday cafe for us

Jo Foster - who is managing our relationship with the media

Penny Gane - who is one of the most experienced, high level environmental advocates in the city and is managing our corporate work

Simon Bale - our webmaster and also recently appointed Chair of Bristol Partnership

 Chris Sunderland - that’s me

Many of you will have seen the coverage of the launch. We have had articles in the Evening Post, Western Daily Press and a piece on Points West, which can at this point still be seen on the BBC website. Chooseday has certainly got out there and people are talking about it. One thing that might interest readers of this blog is how the ‘Points West’ piece actually happened.

Malcolm Frith and his cameraman Dave turned up at my house at a quarter to seven on launchday. They were to film me cycling in, so we did several shots, then they left me to cycle down the Bristol to Bath cycle track, while they sped off in their cars and said they would meet me where the track emerges in Old Market. All went well for me. I cycled quite gently and it was a beautiful morning. I arrived at the end of the track at 7.20am and waited. No sign of them. I waited some more, then phoned. Ah, said Malcolm, I didn’t realise the traffic was so bad. We are stuck on the ring road. I laughed rather despairingly realising this could make us late for the party in Colston Avenue and we had loads to set up.They finally turned up about 20 mins late, rushing because we were now all late. I said to Malcolm, ‘So there’s your story. I cycled down a beautiful track and arrived here on time, full of health and you….well what shall we say?’ He didn’t run the piece like that sadly, but that is what happened.

Thirty of us met together to generate ideas and action about Chooseday, led by Vala Ragnarsdottir and using the World Cafe style of discussion. People came up with a huge number of ideas about how Chooseday might catch the public imagination, how we might speak of it, measure its impact, use art, video, celebrity, have Chooseday awards etc together with several proposals for canny communication. i dont want to go into too many details because I hope we will use many of them and I would like to keep the element of surprise!

We also talked about Chooseday beyond the car campaign and what it might mean in a neighbourhood as people re-imagined their lifestyles in response to the environmental challenge. Everybody seems to think that local neighbourhoods will find new life as travel becomes more precious and there were many ideas for how Chooseday might encourage this. Our overall line ‘Chooseday - a different kind of day’ seems particularly attractive to people. Some spoke of how it may become a sort of treat day, where all sorts of people do something special in their neighbourhoods, perhaps a ‘talk to a neighbour day’ or a ‘mend day’ or perhaps have an ‘eating together event’.

As a result of the Cafe I can see Chooseday working at two levels. We run a series of public campaigns, beginning with ‘Tuesdays without cars’ at a city-wide level, but in neighbourhoods Chooseday becomes a focus for all sorts of healthy, enriching and climate-friendly lifestyle intiatives. What do you think? Sounds exciting to me!

Everyone has been asking me why the Chooseday Cafe was on a Thursday! And why did we call it a launch. Well the idea of the Cafe was to gather people who were interested in Chooseday, generate ideas and commit ourselves to action. It was a great time and it was a sort of internal launch if that makes sense. I will report on the Cafe separately.

In the next couple of weeks Chooseday will be going public in the media. We will let you know our plans by email. Jo Foster is handling this media launch. Please check in with us if you are approached directly by the media about this.

Later on, probably in November, we intend to hold a corporate launch, specifically for Bristol employers who have expressed an interest in Chooseday. Details to follow.

The aim is to build momentum over several months.