Curo, the Bath-based housing association, harnessed the power of Zoom, YouTube and Facebook Live to stage its traditional annual residents’ conference.
Curo designed the day-long, interactive programme so residents could see and hear directly from staff from across the business and choose to join the sessions that most interested them.
Broadcasting live on the three main video platforms meant participants could easily ask questions and share their ideas and thoughts.
Each of the 15 themed sessions has been made available to watch again on Facebook and YouTube and Curo’s own website
As a result, it has now been viewed more than 1,200 times, with numbers continuing to rise daily.
Curo, which has more than 25,000 residents, manages more than 13,000 homes across the region and builds hundreds of new ones a year, has been staging Facebook Live events for several years and increasing their frequency to make them monthly fixtures.
It also publishes an engagement menu through which residents can choose from a wide range of other opportunities such as more formal groups, online or in their neighbourhood.
Curo resident engagement manager Tom Box said: “We’re determined to stay in touch with our residents as much as we possibly can throughout these extraordinary times.
“We want to hear what our customers are saying and give them the information they need about our services.
“Our annual residents’ conference is an important way for us to do this and we weren’t going to let Covid-19 stop this happening.”
Rigorous Covid-19 safety measures were in place for the filming, which featured socially-distanced presentations from Curo staff who were joined virtually by a panel of Curo residents with Curo chair Liz Potter taking part from her home.
Tom added: “We recognise that not everyone has access to the internet so we provided information about the event to residents living in our sheltered housing and offered to support anyone who wanted help getting online.
“We’re also including a report on the event in Prime Time News, our newsletter for sheltered housing residents and customers of our Independent Living Service.”
Among Curo’s current schemes is the 700-home Mulberry Park development on the former Foxhill MoD site on Bath’s outskirts.
Pictured: Curo new customer account advisor Ali Hender, left in top photo, and Universal Credit advisor Dawn Woods taking part in the housing association’s first virtual annual residents’ conference
