If you want to start a new region, the club can help.
First, you could ask the membership secretary if there are any other members in your area, or perhaps the nearest members you could contact to see if they are interested in being in a new region. You might be surprised!
The membership secretary can be contacted at membership@redrope.org.uk.
If there are no members in or near your region, then you might want to find some like-minded people and set up a new group.
Both the Newcastle region and the East Anglia region are relatively new. The Newcastle group started up with some local posters and a meeting in a pub. The East Anglia group started from one person who got some of her friends and work colleagues interested.
You could start by getting a few interested people together in a pub (or a coffee shop?) to check the level of interest and what kinds of activities you’re interested in — walking, hill-walking, scrambling, maybe even climbing?
Have a couple of local walks in mind to get the ball rolling. If the group gels, then you can encourage the others to join Red Rope. Once you have the interest, the NC can officially approve the region and you can ask for a start-up grant if you need one — for example, to cover your first trip hut deposit or any event you want to hold.
Publicity material
Traditionally we’ve used posters in libraries and other likely places such as whole-food shops, outdoor shops and cafes. For your first meeting, you might want to do that too. I will email separately some example posters you could adapt, but there is nothing official for getting started.
We have a national leaflet about Red Rope and small business cards. You can see a picture of these on the website:
Ask the publicity officer for any material that is available at publicity@redrope.org.uk.
Online publicity
Red Rope has a Facebook page — you could put a post on there if you want to announce a new group.
Red Rope website — we can put up a page on the Red Rope website with your intended region, which may bring in a few people over time. We could also set you up with an address such as borsetshire@redrope.org.uk that gets redirected to your own email address.
The web page is not hard for us to do, but it works best for an established region. It is really too slow for getting a new one off the ground.
Other ideas
Meetup? No-one in Red Rope has tried the Meetup online club tool yet, but it could get good results. It costs a modest monthly fee, so you could try it for a few months yourself. If you really want to do that right away but need funding, you could ask the RR Treasurer for a contribution.
Contact your local Labour Party or Green Party for an entry in their newsletters.
There are several neighbourhood groups where you could publicise your first meeting. For example, there is one called Nextdoor, but check what is available in your local area.
What the constitution says
The official statement in our constitution about new regions is below. The wording about competition seems rather optimistic, and possibly the last sentence has never been tested.
New Regions. The NC must approve any proposal for a new region but individual members are free to canvas for support. Only after the NC has given its approval can a start-up grant be paid to the new region. The views of nearby regions must be taken into account and any implications caused by possible competition for new and existing members be considered. The members wishing to form the new region must be able to demonstrate a commitment towards, and an understanding of, the philosophy and policies of Red Rope.