Erica Roffe

About

I am the co-founder and editor of the Bedford Independent, a local news website for Bedford Borough with an average of 160,000 unique views per month. I have over 20 years experience in PR, marketing & copywriting for blue chip companies. I co-founded the community group We Are Bedford which organised The Castle Quay Weekender, a pop-up arts festival in seven empty shops in the town centre in 2011. The We Are Bedford FB group now has over 80k members. Myself and Kayte Judge (co-founder of We Are Bedford) have worked with Dan Thompson of the Empty Shops Network and Bedford Borough Council to develop their Empty Shops Strategy. In 2013 I launched BedPop to continue utilising slack space in Bedford town centre. With the support of the Portas Pilot Town Team we ran 19 projects in the former Pizza Hut building at 68 High Street for six months from December 2013 til June 2014 and worked with dozens of artists, entrepreneurs, makers, crafters, students and curators. We hosted a pop up cinema, record shop, an arts festival, Christmas shop, art galleries and a conference. The shop had been empty for six years before the project. It has been a thriving coffee shop since 2014.In 2015 we worked with the national Fun Palaces initiative to run BedPop Fun Palaces in five town-centre locations. We ran BedPop Fun Palaces (Oct) and Science Labs (March) for five years.In 2017 BedPop launched Taste Bedford, a food and music festival on Mill Meadows and in 2018 we launched the Bedford Flea market. Since 2018, Fun Palaces, Science Labs, Taste Bedford and Bedford Flea have continued to thrive independently of BedPop while we concentrated our efforts on launching the Bedford Independent.Since June 2011 I have published and edited The Bedford Clanger, an independent arts & culture newspaper with the aim to promote the people, places and things that make Bedford a great place to live and visit. On hiatus since the Covid pandemic in 2020, The Bedford Clanger was relaunched in January 2024.I am passionate about Bedford and making a difference to our town.Specialities: Writing, news, public relations, marketing, copywriting, event management, ideas.