“If you've got tools, use them”

Steven met Alex Cameron, co-chair of the Intra Community Trust, at the Moat House Coffee shop after originally turning up a week early. They spoke about how many community groups Alex is involved in, how he received his MBE, and, importantly, where Chatham Intra actually is.

What is your official occupation?
I'm retired. 

And do you have any additional roles, paid or unpaid? 
We have a list.
The background is that when I came to retirement in 2000, I had to make a decision about where we were going to be and what we were going to do. When we came down to Medway in 1978, we decided to be here for two years. We're still here. Medway turns out to be a really nice place. People don't always understand it because it looks gruff and horrible, but it's a really nice place. So, we stayed. I had to decide what to do. Do I vegetate or do I do stuff? And I decided I wanted to do stuff. That leads you into things.
Back then, I got involved in the City of Culture bid and that led into meeting a bunch of other people, including you. That led into the early days of the Heritage Action Zone project and Intra. I got involved in that, and that's how it all started. These days, I am an elder and part of the leadership team at the Vines Church just up the road here. Through that, I get involved in Churches Together in Medway. I don't have a formal role there. I help out when I can, I facilitate meetings with the council and stuff like that. The Vines happens to be part of the United Reformed Church, so I tend to get involved in some of that stuff. Not as much as they would like me to. The faith element of my life is important to me. It drives everything else. 
The things I'm actually involved in in the wider community, I'm co-chair of what is now called Intra Community Trust. I'm a trustee for Ideas Test, another local charity which uses culture and the arts to make a difference in communities that need support and help. They do a marvellous piece of work. I'm really impressed with what the team does there. I'm chair of a small art society, Rochester and West Kent Art Society, because my wife happens to be an artist, so I got dragged into that. I sit on the sidelines of creative media.
I'm part of Rochester Eco Hub, which we can talk about for hours. That leads me into being part of the council. There's a community working group that the climate change team have set up. We get involved in helping the climate change team do stuff. We put inputs in. That has led me into a small activity looking at how we could get some community energy projects started in Medway. We've set up a little working group called Medway Community Energy Project to try and get the beginnings of a community energy system in Medway. It's not about being it, it's about enabling it to start. I've been taking part in the Urban Room in Chatham because I care about what happens there. I try to get involved with the planning when that's relevant, because Intra has a fairly good footprint in things happening around. We now get involved in town centre board meetings. I am trying to help the town centre boards talk to each other more.
What else can I tell you? That's probably enough. But I am retired.
One of the things, this is just me. One of the things that you pick up, having worked 45 years in a high intensity industrial world. The aerospace industry, it sucks you in, you learn a lot of stuff, and the surprise to me when I retired was that most of that stuff is useful in other places. If you've got tools, use them. 

You mentioned faith being important to you. Has that always been the case? 
Yes.

In your early childhood, was faith important? 
Oh no, that happened when I was a student at university. 50 years. 

What happened at university that led you to faith? 
That's a long story. I met my wife, amongst other things, and that led me into the Christian Union, which led me into finding out more about it, and I became a Christian at university.

Was there a reason that when you retired, you decided to focus so heavily on the community?
Yes, it's because it's that drive that you've got inside you to do stuff if you don't want to vegetate. You don't want to get old quick over the years. I watch people get to retirement and then do nothing, fade away or die. Some of my friends passed away quite quickly after retirement, and that makes you think. Go for it. One of my colleagues I worked with, a guy called George, who was based in the US in the last few years, got pancreatic cancer and died two years after retirement. Very sad. You're going to make use of the time you've got where you've got it and where you can do things, do them. Otherwise, you live in regret.

What was it that drew you or connected you to Chatham Intra, to become a part of that?
Back in 2020, the council got a grant from Historic England for the High Street Heritage Action Zone, and as part of that, they had to set up the Cultural Consortium. I got involved in that, and about a year or two in, the group realised they actually could do stuff. They're very good at doing stuff. An interesting mix of people who live, work, and are part of Intra. There's a lot of skills, a lot of talent, a lot of know-how. We started doing things. Little festivals, events, additional funding and finding out we could do stuff.
As that three-year project started to run down, we decided we needed to do something. We got a little grant from UKSPF to do a community consultation. Out of that came, let's become a registered charity. About the same time, the opportunity to bid for funding from the Architecture Heritage Fund came along. Architecture Heritage Fund had a three-year tranche of funding to create heritage development trusts around the country. We're one of 12 in this tranche. We are a brand new one. Some other ones are long established. A lot people looking to see how we do it because we are so new. That's good. That brought in funding for three years. That funding has enabled us to go through the process of becoming a a registered charity, and also pays for a couple of part-time staff, to enable us to function as a registered charity. We're going for it, basically. 
Does that answer your question?

Why did you get involved? 
Why did I get involved?

Did you have a connection to the area? 
No, I didn't. Out of the city of culture bid, I got to know the consultants the council brought in to set that up. They said, “Would you like to come and be part of this?” I was sceptical because it was a place you drive through. It isn't until you go there and then you suddenly realise it's somewhere special. They basically got me involved, and I stayed.

What was your official occupation before you retired? 
I worked for BAE Systems as product manager. I looked after a product line, and it's a bit...
The Rochester site of BAE Systems is a world-class aviation avionics provider. It's really good at what it does. It's got a very good team and a growing team. They're good at what they do. We were doing head-mounted displays. There are three capable companies in the world, and we're one of them, and that's out of Rochester. People don't always understand that Rochester leads the world in some technologies. It's an international business.

Is also part of it, because of non-disclosure agreements? Working with government contracts that you're not allowed to talk about?
You can't talk about some of the defence aspects, and that's just the realities of life. It's an international business. I spent my life travelling the world. You get different perspectives, because that's the nature of the business. It just happens to be here. What that means is there's a large number of talented people who have worked there over the decades. There's a legacy in Medway which we don't often realise. It's like Shorts. They left in ‘46, didn't they? There's still that long-term legacy that pervades into society today. Everybody knows somebody who worked at Shorts. 

At the risk of annoying someone, where is Chatham Intra? Where does it begin? Where does it end? 
Right, the historic definition would be the Chatham end of what we now call Intra, but for the purpose of Intra Community Trust, we are between Sun Pier and Star Hill along the old high street that runs there. It's not the old high street. Everything's the old high street. It goes for miles. 
We have an Intra Conservation Management Plan, which is adopted by the council and a development framework, which is very helpful in that it starts to tell developers what they can and can't do. Starting to manage some of the developments to be more sensible, shall we say, and more in keeping with the nature of the area.