Kirstie Edwards elected as Falmouth's 'woke' new mayor

In scenes more akin to a rock concert than the usual mayor making, Kirstie Edwards many guests, friends and family, whooped and hollered as she declared she was going to “shake things up”.

She takes over from former mayor Cllr Steve Eva who led the council through the pandemic.

Kirstie was only elected to the town council two years ago when she was immediately chosen as deputy mayor.

She started her acceptance speech saying Falmouth has been been her home for 28 years and that she loved this strip of land. She also thanked all the organisations that she had worked with during her time as deputy mayor as well as her children.

“New beginnings,” she said. “I’m going to start as I mean to go on and get straight on with being ‘woke’. For those of you unsure of the definition, here it is, it’s to be alert to injustice and discrimination in society especially racism.”

She then jokingly pointed at all the exits as she said “things are going to get a bit spicy”.

Falmouth Town Council 2023 (Image: Paul Armstrong)

She also made a plea not to call her mayoress. She said mayor is not a gender term but a name given to the head of the council and civic representative “Please don’t call me mayoress”, she said. Mayoresses are unelected but work extremely hard and represent the town but they’re not the mayor.

“Call me Kirstie, call me Miss Edwards call me Mayor Edwards, call the queen of Falmouth if you like,” she said. “You can also call me annoying, that’s perfectly fine, just don’t call me mayoress please.” Kirstie pointed out that she is the 176th mayor of Falmouth since 1661 when the borough was first formed, but only the fourth woman to have been elected since Edith Frost in 1962 with the last being Maureen Davis elected in 2002, over 20 years ago.

She said she had taken steps to make sure all roles on the council were gender neutral saying when she was given the mayor’s handbook it even says when ‘he’ takes office.

She thanked council clerk Mark Williams for undoing years of using madam chair or chairman.

“I understand it’s really tricky but it really matters to some of us,” she said.

She said another change will be to create a simple mayor’s consort pin badge for both mayors and deputy mayors consort with the Falmouth coat of arms to ensure from this day forward anyone and everyone is fairly represented within these roles.

Falmouth mayor Kirstie Edwards with her partner Sean (Image: Paul Armstrong)

She said her partner Sean would have been unable to wear the mayoress chain, additionally if she were in a same sex relationship as a man or woman or my person were non-binary there was no civic insignia to represent that person.

“You cannot get away from the fact I’m going to be a different kind of mayor,” she said. “I’m not a middle aged man of a certain age,” she said, looking at Cllr Eva.

There were a few bemused faces in the front row where invited mayors from other towns were sitting during the speech with some not joining in the applause.

She said she will always “respect, participate and adhere to the traditions of our town and community.”

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But would also like to make new ones and she wanted to know if some things were still fit for purpose in 2023.

“The term ‘the way things have always been done’ really does bother me,” she said.

She said civility and respect would be at the core of everything she does and would remain so “I believe in be safe be heard and everyone should be kind,” she said.

She said there was no room for nonsense at meetings and everyone was going to learn to be kind with no disrespect. “We are a team,” she said.

She chose the Wave Project as the mayor’s charity helping disadvantaged kids through surfing.

Cllr Alan Rowe was elected as deputy mayor.

You can watch Kirstie's speech and the ceremony on the Packet's Facebook page.