Known as the Covid Mayor after taking up the position of Bridport's first resident during the first lockdown, councillor Ian Bark has had a bit of a different time during his terms in office.

Ian moved to Bridport after retiring from teaching in 2013. He is currently in his second year as mayor, despite only living in Bridport for less than 10 years.

"Prior to moving, my working life had been roughly split in two, half of it in teaching, the other half working in business and design," he said. "This has given me a pretty wide range of experiences on which to draw on today in the position I find myself in."

Ian grew up on a farm in the beautiful Vale of Belvoir and had what he describes as a pretty idyllic childhood. This is where his love of the outdoors, the natural world and growing his own food stems from. An average student who enjoyed himself too much Ian surprised everyone with good 0 and A level results.

On leaving school Ian trained as teacher at Keswick Hall College of Education, Norwich, with Geography as his main subject area. But instead of going into teaching he worked for a bookbinding company for 5 years before retraining as a teacher of Craft Design and Technology at Bristol Polytechnic.

He then took up his first teaching post at Wooton Upper School in Bedfordshire. Little did he know that he had landed a job in one of the most forward thinking and innovative education authorities in the country and Wootton Upper School was right at the sharp end of it.

Ian added: "Around the country we had teachers teaching children how to make pokers, but many of these children lived in tower blocks without fires and making pipe racks. And what's around the corner is the age of micro-electronics, pneumatics, automation, robotics and we're teaching kids to make pokers - we had to do something.

"In order to deliver that major shift we had to address; the curriculum, the staffing, the resources and the environments. The emerging Design and Technology curriculum was a very expensive subject to deliver. The cost of upgrading environments with highly specialised resources, and retraining teachers was prohibitively huge and would take many years."

The big breakthrough came as the result of a brainstorming session one Friday evening after work in the pub. The idea of using mobile classrooms fitted out as fully resourced specialist environments was born. Ian was involved in designing the first of those vehicles and very soon Bedfordshire had several including a state of the art recording studio that served the emerging digital music era.

This led to the establishment of the British School Technology Project which over three years, re-trained more than 4,000 teachers, produced 200 vehicles as they rolled out what was happening in Bedfordshire nationally and moved the curriculum form the 19th towards the 21st century.

Ian said: "This meant that young people coming through school had got some idea of micro-electronics, were able to programme things and build and control robots - all sorts of weird and wonderful things. It was exciting times.

"I was part of a team that made that really big transition happen and helped young people prepare for the future that we are now living in."

When the project folded, Ian set up his own design business and carried on designing and project managing the manufacture of a range of highly specialised vehicles branching out to include dental and chiropody clinics, breast screening units, play-buses, hospitality vehicles, and roadshow vehicles for several major companies.

Exciting though it was it was it was also extremely tiring and stressful. It was time take stock, focus on family and move on to a new challenge.

Ian spent the 15 years prior to retiring teaching Design and Technology and leading the sixth form at St Pauls Catholic School, a large comprehensive school in Milton Keynes, where more than 30 languages were spoken. A very different cultural environment to Bridport!

Ian and his wife, Anne, then moved to Bridport after several years of visiting their youngest daughter who lives in Dorchester. Ian added: "Through visiting Matilda we started to get to know the area and thought it would be a great place to retire to. Our first experience of Bridport, on a cold wet November day, was not a positive one and it was a couple of years later when we came down to view several houses and finally hit the jackpot with the house we now call home, on that day it, and Bridport, ticked all the boxes."

Previously Ian has never been particularly politically active, although he had taken part in the odd demonstration when younger and was even accidentally bashed on the head by a policeman at the infamous Grosvenor Square anti-Vietnam War protest in 1968.

Ian said: "When people asked me, 'What are you going to do when you retire?' Becoming involved in local government would have been at least 5,000,063 on the list because it wasn't on the agenda at all. As to becoming Mayor well…"

It was when he went to ask about an allotment that he found himself agreeing to be coopted onto Bothenhampton and Walditch Parish Council. He gave some good points on a topic and they asked him to join. That was how he got involved with the Neighbourhood Plan and was then elected onto the town council.

"The next thing I know, I've become mayor, how crazy is that." said Ian.

Despite the coronavirus pandemic putting restrictions on his time as mayor, there have been some highlights, including visiting Hollis Mead Farm and milking the cows at 6am taking him back to his childhood growing up on a farm all those years ago.

He added: "I went round all of the shops that stayed open during lockdown and personally thanked them for all they have done. Some of the stories I heard about the things they've done… they had done it because it was the right thing to do - that was heart-warming. Our local businesses really are something special.

"Working with the Plastic Free Bridport team and establishing the Bridport Litter free Street Champions on the litter was another highlight, that's been really good and the way in which businesses and community groups have responded to the plastic free campaign in particular has been really encouraging.

"I've come to learn that one of the most important things I do is make links, in my role as mayor I meet people, talk to people and a few days or weeks later I will be talking to someone and think, 'you should be talking to so and so, you two need to get together'.

"The other thing that was a real highlight and really enjoyable was my Civic Day, the day all the local mayors came to Bridport. That was special. I wanted to show off Bridport and how it is attempting to deliver on its Climate Emergency declaration, what it has already done and what its ambitions for the future. That was a really memorable day."

"I'm looking forward to a time when Covid is behind us and having the opportunity to promote Bridport more widely across Dorset. I think much of my time has been supporting Bridport through Covid whenever and wherever I can, it is time to spread the word more widely."

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