Category: Big Society

Creative Councils, Podnosh and a partnership in Brighton.

I’m delighted to say the the Brighton and Hove Council proposal to the Nesta Creative Councils challenge has made it to the final 17 long list of 137 applications.

Why so?  Well Podnosh is one of the partner organisations in the Brighton bid along with Demsoc and Public-i.

Creative councils:

ambition over the next two years is to work with a small group of pioneering local authorities across England and Wales and their partners to develop, implement and spread transformational new approaches to meeting some of the biggest medium and long-term challenges facing communities and local services.

Put simply our proposal will work on taking online and offline civic conversation and digitally connecting that into local public service decision making in a concrete way.

Thanks very much to Anthony Zacharzewski, Catherine Howe and Paul Brewer for getting things to this stage.

What next?  More work will be done on the final 17, with the hope of much more significant investment in 5 of the ideas.

The other 16 on the long list are:

  • Bristol
  • Cambridgeshire
  • Cornwall
  • Derbyshire
  • Essex
  • London Borough of Havering
  • London Borough of Islington
  • Leicester
  • Monmouthshire
  • Reading
  • Rossendale
  • Rotherham
  • Stoke on Trent
  • Westminster
  • Wigan
  • York

You can find and engage will all 137 ideas on simpl.

Open data, corporations, companies charities and some remarkable progress

Open Corporates - open data for making companies and corporates more transparent

Chris Taggart is one of the main energy bundles behind real practical progress in open data in the UK.  besides starting to scrape local government websites to create the the remarkable openlylocal, and  then casually setting up open charities (open data for information about charities) he has also been working on making information about business more freely available,

Open Corporates – he tells me – has reached quite a milestone:

A few hours ago, OpenCorporates tipped over the 20 million companies mark (with information on 40 million statutory filings too). Traffic is doubling roughly every 3 months, and all without VC backing.

We’re pretty pleased with all this, and couldn’t have done this without the open data community, who’ve helped with writing scrapers, giving advice and generally being there for us.
Open Corporates not only makes it easy for us to find out who owns what and how much profit they make, it allows us to groups companies, so we can see relationships begin to emerge. So for example you can help list the companies that form part of the Birmingham City Football club family of companies.
Why am I telling you this? Because it is important for us to recognise that individuals or groups of independent minded people are making significant progress is making our public life more Transparent.  they are no longer alone – they are starting to see some government help, in the UK, USA and the EU and charitable trusts are also growing their interest in how open data bolsters democracy.
But just for today I’d like to say congrats on 20 million companies – that’s is some achievement.

Social media surgeries, simplicity and being there

A proper cup of tea
A proper cup of tea by James Shade on flickr

 

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 Read more

Community Lover’s Guide To The Universe and Birmingham

Spines of Community Lover's Guide books arranged on a shelf

Tessy Britton is an inspiration and so is Maurice Specht. Tessy got to me to write a chapter on social media surgeries for Hand Made – her book on new community culture and  militant optimists. Maurice ‘dragged’ me over to Holland to talk about the work we do to government, housing associations and community groups.

From that has emerged the “Community Lover’s Guide To The Universe”  and we’re editing the Birmingham edition.  Sort of like the Grassroots Channel but with better pictures (and a book).  Let Tessy explain:

A few weeks ago Maurice Specht turned to me on the way to Schiphol airport and said ‘So when are we going to bring out a Hand Made for Rotterdam?’.

What a brilliant suggestion!

Since then the idea has really taken off with 12 community enthusiasts already volunteering to edit special local editions – collectively now called the Community Lover’s Guide To The Universe. Since we brought out Hand Made last August the number of people-led projects has continued to grow and we wanted to explore both the common themes, but also the unique cultural ideas and interpretations from all parts of the world.

We also wanted to start to show how places that are buzzing with community activity and projects are amazing places to live, increasingly more amazing than places with cool architecture or luxury shops. Community brings places alive, gives us new and interesting ways to contribute and connect … and there are signs already that people are finding places that have this creativity and excitement going on highly desirable.

Community can’t be mass produced and it can’t be ‘delivered’. But in rising numbers there are a lot of very excitable people just getting on and making and shaping their local communities for themselves. This series of books will create the opportunity for them to tell their stories, which in turn we hope will encourage other people to put aside any hesitations they might have and get more involved in their neighbourhoods.

So I’ll be doing one of my favourite things –  chuntering my way through the wonders of Birmingham, asking for 800 words or so and loveley pics. No one’s getting paid for this, but I hope you’ll join in.

Who should I talk to – where is the new community culture in this city and who are the militants optimists?