Using AI in your Civic Society – Meeting Report & Videos
We held a lively interactive meeting on the subject of Artificial Intelligence on 30th April, which was recorded. Our first speaker, Richard Farthing, covered the background and some relevant uses, not only of well-known ‘chatbots’ such as ChatGPT, but also applications that use AI in the background, and real-world examples, particularly around planning. The second half was a full-on interactive session led by John Myers, who tested out several audience questions on live AI services, ranging from planning to creating images.
We naturally chose AI – in the [more…]
Are London’s High Streets and Town Centres in Crisis? Meeting report
We held a lively meeting last week, chaired by Michael Bach (pictured), examining the many issues around high streets and the night time economy. We had four expert speakers, and a significant number of audience questions.
For the first time, we video-recorded the event. The video and audio recordings are posted on the event page. We used AI to generate a summary, plus an even shorter summary here. If you’d like to discover how we did this, please book for our AI talk at the end of [more…]
Using AI in your Civic Society
Artificial Intelligence is everywhere in the news and in business these days – we even used it to generate the image for this event. How can it help your civic society ? Do you need to be an expert? (No!) Civic societies are often under-resourced, and at this event we showed that with a little knowledge, illustrated with examples, AI can bolster your resources in several useful ways, without necessarily spending a penny.
Agenda
We looked at some novel pre-built applications and services that use AI behind the [more…]
Website search improvements
We’ve long had an effective search facility on the website for current news, Insights, events and other pages. Last week there was an opportune moment to invest in an important additional feature to support our institutional knowledge: Search for our archive of several hundred pdf files
This is significant, in that the entire archive is now indexed and searchable, most notably ‘What We’ve said‘ since 2011, all reports and pdf attachments, plus historic editions of Insights and NewsForum.
If you’re researching particular subject in our [more…]
![Help [ Image http://www.freepik.com ]](https://i0.wp.com/www.londonforum.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Help.jpg?resize=1000%2C600&ssl=1)
Can you help ?
The Forum’s Membership Services Committee (MSC) is looking for volunteers to help with activities, including organising events, producing news and Insights editorial, and communicating with the membership. Is this you? Please contact the secretary and let us know how you can help.
CBE for Tony Travers
Tony Travers, Visiting Professor in the LSE Department of Government, Associate Dean of the LSE School of Public Policy, Director of LSE London and Patron of London Forum of Amenity and Civic Societies was awarded in the King’s New Year Honours a CBE for Services to Economics and to Public Service.
Congratulations to Tony for this well deserved honour.
You can book for our open meeting on 29th January to hear Tony’s comments on ‘Densifying the suburbs’.
New Resource Pages
There are many public sources of articles, reports and publications that could be important to London Forum’s members to help awareness of policy changes and activity of Government and GLA departments. The information could be useful for the way societies work with their local authority and their MP.
To help you, we’ve created a Resources website menu with links to useful research resources on the Internet, as well as to relevant London Forum material, including the Find Your Local Society page with its new map, and the [more…]
Interactive member map
We’ve added a new interactive member map to appropriate web pages, based on membership data provided by societies. Try it out live here (the image in this article is necessarily a static screenshot for publication). You can zoom in, and click on any of the blobs representing societies – the size of which represents membership – and review the data we show, including clickable links to member websites – example illustrated.
If you spot errors in location (an approximation in a handful of cases), or the [more…]
Inspiration for Community Action
The TCPA has resources for community groups to help make change happen at the local level.
See the various guides and case studies on their website here.
Please let London Forum have your comments on the TCPA facilities and on any local use made of them by completing our contact form.
2025 Annual General Meeting
On 16th October, The London Forum held it’s 2025 AGM with two speakers, and a full house of members.
Michael Jubb, our chairman, made opening comments, and introduced the speakers: our patron, Prof. Tony Travers, and guest speaker, Leanne Tritton, chair of The London Society. Each talk was followed by a substantial Question & Answer session addressing prescient topics in depth.
We’ve annotated our AGM event page with photos and recordings of the talks and Q&A sessions, so that you can listen again, or review [more…]
Didn’t find what you’re looking for? Try a new search:
![E-bike fire Shepherds Bush [photo: LFB]](https://i0.wp.com/www.londonforum.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/ebike-fire-shepherds-bush.webp?fit=150%2C113&ssl=1)
A lithium-ion battery fire every five hours
More social housing
Planning Fees consultation response
Planning for Telecoms Masts
Most of us now carry smart phones around with us all the time: they have become an essential part of modern life. For most of the time when we are out and [more…]
Most Popular This Week
-
Planning, Environment and Transport committee meeting
📅 Thu 11th June | 14:00 - 16:00
🚩 Room B1 70 Cowcross St, EC1M 6EJ (map)
-
London Forum open meeting - Enforcement
📅 Mon 29th June | 18:30 - 20:30
🚩 77 Cowcross Street, EC1M 6EL (map)
Speakers and agenda to be confirmed
Please save the date !