With a new issue of Lewes Pounds set to be unveiled soon, Susan Murray explains the themes and ethos being celebrated on the new designs

The new Lewes Ten Pound note featuring Dr Colin Tingle and Lewes’ new Tingle’s Way walking route

During the Covid 19 crisis it hasn’t really been possible to spend Lewes Pounds (LPs), either because businesses that accept them have been closed or because businesses have preferred contactless payments rather than paper to reduce the potential spread of infection.

That doesn’t mean that we have given up on our local currency and we hope it will be back in circulation soon. We believe that the Lewes Pound is a vital tool in supporting a thriving local community that is more sustainable and fairer for all. The designs of our notes send out an important message about what kind of town we are and what kind of town we want to become. That’s why we say that the Lewes Pound is ‘more than just money’.

Designing the new notes

The current notes expire shortly and even before lockdown we had been discussing themes for the new notes and connecting with people who might work on the designs. The text on the reverse of the new notes will say that the Lewes Pound:

• Celebrates Lewes
• Supports Local Traders, Social Justice and the UN Sustainable Development Goals
• Helps Combat Climate Change
• Keeps Money Circulating Locally

These four topics are all reflected one way or another in the new designs we have commissioned. We really want our new Lewes Pound issue to tell a story about our town and how it is addressing these vital issues in 2020. We can say that our overriding theme is to do with ‘Celebrating Lewes’ and that we want each note to reference one or more of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Reflecting Lewes culture and nature

As always, the 21 Lewes Pound (LP21) note will reflect the importance of Bonfire to the social and cultural life of our town. This supports SDG3: Good Health and Well-being for All – and SDG11: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions.

We also wanted to pay tribute to our late director, Doctor Colin Tingle, who was such a strong supporter of the Lewes Pound, a keen believer in the value of nature to people and the economy, and a driving force behind the integration of ecosystem services principles into the Lewes Neighbourhood Plan, which now influences all planning applications in the town.

Tingle’s Way – a walking route through Lewes linking it to the South Downs – was conceived in his memory and we are proud to include it – and Colin – in our new LP10 note.

Celebrating Lewes

Continuing with Celebrating Lewes we are delighted that Lewes District Council has supported the LP1 and LP5 notes in this series by providing the services of designer Galia Pike to provide notes that respectively promote Visit Lewes tourist attractions and Shop Local.

We were also very pleased that another mainstay of Lewes’s cultural and social life got in touch to ask if we could do a note to celebrate their work. Yes we could and there will be a note to celebrate Patina and its amazing work with our young people as part of the 2020 new issue.

Highlighting the climate emergency

Given the mounting urgency of the climate emergency we knew it was vital to have a set of notes to underline this. Climate change has always been one of the underlying reasons for our work on the Lewes Pound, but now is definitely the time to be more explicit in our support for action.

For the new LP5 note we turned to Extinction Rebellion Lewes, inspired by some of the wonderful XR artwork that has appeared around our town. The resulting note is really beautiful, as well as inspiring.

Because young people have been so involved in campaigning for action on climate change it seemed obvious that we should invite local schools to submit designs on this theme too. We think the winner has created a positive vision of the future – and one that supports a number of the UN SDGs, including SDG 13: Climate Action.

Social justice and inequality

Especially in view of the work the Lewes Pound has been doing to support food bank users, we also wanted to create some notes promoting social justice. We have long wanted to create a note celebrating our locally-owned football club and in particular its status as the only football club anywhere – as far as we know – to pay its men and women equally. Something else our community can be very proud of. So our new LP1 note celebrates this – alongside SDG 5: Gender Equality and SDG 10: Reducing Inequalities.

Which brings us to our final note and a bit of blowing our own trumpet! We are proud to mark the great success of our ‘Donate-a-Drink’ scheme with Depot with our new LP5 note. In the last couple of months of 2019, over £1,000 was donated through the scheme and given out in envelopes of Lewes Pounds to food bank users before Christmas.

We have more money in the kitty for when it is possible to restart the Lewes Pound as a physical currency and we feel sure that visitors to Depot will in due course rise to the challenge of supporting some of the most socially excluded residents of Lewes with just a simple £3 donation when they buy a drink.

All in all, we are very excited by the themes and the designs of our new notes, which we look forward to unveiling soon. We hope it won’t be too long before everyone can use them to support and celebrate the very best of what Lewes is and hopes to be.