The Big Society Awards were set up by the Prime Minister in November 2010 to acknowledge individuals and organisations across the UK that demonstrate the Big Society in their work or activities. The aim is also to galvanise others to follow. David Cameron said this about the surgeries:
“This is an excellent initiative – such a simple idea and yet so effective. The popularity of these surgeries and the fact that they have inspired so many others across the country to follow in their footsteps, is testament to its brilliance.
“Congratulations to Nick and all the volunteers who have shared their time and expertise to help so many local groups make the most of the internet to support their community. A great example of the Big Society in action.”
Thank you for such kind words – to which we responded formally with:
“It’s wonderful to have recognition for everyone who has organised a social media surgery or turned up to volunteer their help. I think the surgeries work because they are simple. They are very easy to organise, fun to do and not in the least bit intimidating for people who want some help. They give active citizens and community groups the confidence and skills to use social media to campaign, organise and hold power to account. They’ve grown because of the passion and energy of bloggers and voluntary groups up and down the country.”
Background
The idea of a social media surgery originated with Pete Ashton – who used them with people who were looking for free help from his consultancy supporting arts organisations. We then applied the relaxed approach in a new way, scaling it up and putting together two sets of people – lovely helpers from the Birmingham Bloggers group (started in 2007) with the fab active citizens I’d had met through (more…)
Last Friday, Steph and I spent a great morning in Bexley at Orbit South housing association, with Orbit residents from Kent and Sussex.
We worked with Heather, Paula, Peter, Sue and Jackie to set up their own Posterous blogs to talk about what’s going on in their neighbourhoods and to help them in their roles representing Orbit residents where they live.
This week I’ve been playing with stacks on Delicious, the social bookmarking site. Stacks are a way to organise your links into a common theme and the new social features make collaborating much easier.
To learn how the new features work – rather than curate links around an arbitrary theme (such as “most awesome kitten stunt videos”, which someone has probably done already) – I started this stack to share resources and links aimed at social media surgery managers.
Yesterday at the Lozells and Birchfield Social Media Surgery I was paired with a young man who was looking for help setting up a blog for an organisation he was involved with. I started as always by chatting with him a little bit about what the work he was doing and what they wanted to use the blog for when he said something that really pulled what he was trying to achieve into focus for me;
“The girls have babies and the boys shoot and stab each other. I’ve lost count of the amount of christenings and funerals I’ve been to but I’ve never been to a wedding that’s just not what we do”
- He was talking about life in Handsworth and Lozells as he knew it.
The patients name was Mosies, he is a 19 year old ex gang member from Handsworth, He’s not long been found not guilty on a very serious criminal charge, and by his own admittance has been in trouble with the law before, and now he’s taking that experience to not only try and turn his life around but also to try and change the gang culture that plagues youths in some parts of North Birmingham.
He along with other ex gang members from opposing groups in the area, some with criminal records for gang related activities have come together to form the New Day Foundation, They are aiming to try and combat gang culture targeting younger children to educate them on the realities of gang life and try to show them that there are other options to what they think is “normal”, to change their futures so they can go to more wedding than funerals in their lives!
I sat for an hour and listened to Mosies as he told us about the path he’d taken to be sitting in the room with us that day. Where he’d come from, why he wanted to change the lives of people stuck with the perception that joining a gang was the only option and how he and the other members of his group hoped to do that.
He had the whole room enthralled and as he was telling us how at the age of 14 he stopped going out to the cinema with his friends so he could save his money to buy a gun and all I was thinking was look at you now! 5 years later a changed individual talking about the pride taken in earning money the “proper way”, looking forward to getting a mortgage and hoping the story of your experiences would in some way stop others having to go through it.
- and that right there is what I like so much about the Social Media Surgery format; Only in a room where people are encouraged to talk to each other and help each other one on one would I have heard Mosies story. At a prescribed training session we’d have all sat in rows listening to one person talking and hoping to pick up the most relevant bits for our needs and no one would have realised the momentous journey this one young man had taken to be there with us.
Last week I talked to the Ma Social Media Students at Birmingham City University about social media surgeries for community and voluntary organisations. I was explaining how they emerged from a wide range of activity that was building social capital here in Birmingham.
It’s a story I’ve told before but never really in such a concentrated way – in fact I told it twice in one day. The students were a guinea pig for the talk I was planning to give at Michael Overduin’sScience Capital event on “Networks, Nodes and Knowledge: from local enterprise to global engagement”.
The slides are here but what I’d like to share if what one of Dave Harte’s students made from the talk. Dave shared the whole thing with his overseas students who study the degree remotely. He asked them to:
This week I would like the distance learning students to reflect on the talk by Nick Booth and consider how you might go about setting up a social media surgery in your own town. What would your strategy be? Have a read of Nick Booth’s ‘recipe’ listas a starting point.
Your response should be a short (5-10 mins) video that tells us the following:
What’s your town like? – rich? poor? digitally deprived??
Is there a way to connect to voluntary groups and community organisations (an umbrella organisation of some sort)?
How would you go about connecting to other digitally minded folk to persuade them to help set up a surgery?
What’s stopping you doing this?”
This is a question about social capital and innovation, where is it, how does it happen. Can you nurture or grow both. Dave highlighted one response from Jeff Sage.
Jeff talked about how a group in London Ontario developed “Emerging Leaders” a network for connecting people. As yu can see they also work with different agencies in the city to help improve their community. Principles that struck a chord with the social media surgery ethos include:
never duplicate efforst of others or create silos and making mistakes should be a goal, rather than something you’re tryng to avoid.
This morning we started our work with Birmingham Settlement – one of the city’s oldest charites with a track record that spans two century. They do tricky and incredibly supportive work working with the most disadvantaged people in their neighbourhood, the wider city and increasingly the wider world! As one of them put it – they make life better for Brummies.
We worked them through our social media awareness session – the one designed to help people get their heads in the right place, to understand the link between what they do and what we know.
Margaret Farrell is in charge of the business of outreach for Birmingham Settlement’s money advice services. She confessed that all this digital stuff is outside her experience – then at the end of a mornings worked told me this
We do various forms of bespoke paid for training for all sorts of people in the third sector, government, housing associations and others, but every month we also give free help for local active citizens.
I often say this about social media surgeries: please keep it simple.
Why? Because the most important single thing about a surgery is that it should be there.
Being there is a core part of supporting communities. Month after month they know you’ll be there, they get used to it, they get used to the relaxed format and they come for help, come for ideas, come for connections, come back to offer help.
It is just a truth that something is more likely to happen if it’s simple. A cup of tea with a friend is much more likely to happen than (more…)
I think I just got paid with a hug. Full of the joys of social media surgeoning Lorna Prescott from Dosti put her arms around me and said thank you. (sorry Lorna for being embarrasing and thank you!)
It is really one of the reasons I love social media surgeries – they make me happy and they seem to make others happy too.
30 people turned up and the proportion of surgeons to patients was just right. This rather dark video shows just how busy and absorbed people were:
I shared the evening with two wonderful people. Michael Dennis turned up thinking he was there to get some help for the St Thomas Community Network - but because he does web development he got wordpress ganged into being a surgeon. It turned out Michael also run a successful ning network for foster carers.
Michael worked with Jackie McGuirk from Dudley Lions.
He helped her understand why social media might help their work. She said up a blog and wrote here first post (and this jackie is your first trackback). The worst part for Michael seemed to me interviewing them both:
Great evening and a great start to surgeries in Dudley.
I had no idea...