Image courtesy of Knight Foundation on flickr. click to find the original
The Knight Foundation is an American organisation which funds innovation around the internet, news organisations and civic change. They have funded many experiments in hyperlocal media. Here they write about there support for Lean urbanism…
“Big Civic” is disappearing. The days when CEO roundtables, mayors for life or a few big foundations were the primary makers in our cities have passed. Now, getting more people into city-building is fundamental to making communities that work for the 21st century. Making cities today is all about robust engagement of a lot of people, not just a few.
That’s why we were immediately enthusiastic when celebrated architect Andres Duany approached Knight Foundation with his plans for “Lean Urbanism.” It is all about making small possible in our communities.
As a movement it could be thought of as at odds with the idea of data driven civic platforms which helps manage the city as a singe system – or a collection of systems. But do they really conflict? More data is inevitable – and if it sometimes gives us the power to know and act more locally, that is partly where small and big overlap. See also Rick Robinson on Little/big.
Today we are in Shrewsbury delivering a workshop for an array of people that work in museums, heritage and tourism from across Shropshire and the West Midlands. We’re running a session talking about the importance of building social capital and working hyperlocally. The day will be roughly structured as follows:
Building Social Capital and making use of it – including time to reflect on how this relates to what you are trying to achieve.
Working Hyperlocally, What does this mean and what does this look like?Your examples – are you already doing this? – Show us.
Lunch/Social Media Surgery and Networked learning. A practical session with support from Podnosh and learning between yourselves – time to start exploring the tools and concepts we discussed this morning.
Where next for you. Group discussion, based on the thing you’ve learnt in this mornings session and started to put together in this afternoons surgery, What is next for you?
These are the notes from the discussions that took place after our presentations
Building Social Capital
Nick Booth talked about Social capital – your social capital is the group of people, or the community you build around your cause or organisation. These are the people you have invested time in and in return they are prepared to invest time in you to get things done/ make a difference / help you out.
Q. But is this bigger than our individual organisations? Social capital can work on a large scale – but also for individuals, and individual groups. Sharing information, being social and useful helps build your social capital and helps you make things better.
Q. But what about the groups what have already – if they are reluctant to use use the internet? It usually only take s one or two people to come on board for others to start seeing the benefits,
To make the best use of your social capital and to see it really work you have to build it in the first place – it’s just like any other relationships – the more effort you put into it, the more you’ll eventually get back out of it.
Working Hyperlocally
Hyperlocal is a really messy word to imply something niche and local – this could be a street, a neighbourhood or somewhere larger like a City. WV11.co.uk is a hyperlocal website that covers Wednesfield a neighbourhood in Wolverhampton, yet Connect Cannock is also a hyperlocal website that covers the entire town and the surrounding areas in Cannock, Staffordshire.
Museums, Tourism and Heritage organisations are also Hyperlocal – serving areas both big and small, but that are local and niche.
Hyperlocal Blogging
Steph Clarke talked about her Wednesfield Blog = one of the questions that was asked was around competition – if there are lots of people in an area all talking about that area isn’t that overkill? In short the answer was no. NO because the useful website will outshine the useless ones and on the other hand the more people talking about an issue/cause/place online the more varied and vibrant the conversation about that place will be.
Another question was asked about community and conversation, how long does it take to moderate and how is the community built? Going back to the points that were made about building social capital – in the beginning it took more time as we were building the trust and building the community, Now, on a day to day basis we can keep the facebook page up to date and moderated in around 20 mins a day because we don’t have to moderate conversation – the community help us by managing themselves. Posts to the main website can be scheduled.
Tools
A brief look at some of the tools discussed.
Facebook: Pages vs Groups – one is more public than than the other.
Twitter: start conversations, join in conversations, look for “local” hashtags ie #oswestry or #shropshirehour
Tripadvisor – What are people saying about your venue or attraction?
Foursquare – what tips are being left, gamify visits prizes for the mayor?
Blogs – talk about what you are doing. Invite others to write for you
Links
Here is a list of links and resources that were mentioned by attendees or discussed in sessions that would be useful to look at and share experience.
This is an offer to fund work with young people (from 5 to 18) to encourage them to make digital things. I’m told that the Midlands didn’t grab it’s fair share of this fund the last time it was offered so go for it. (You’ve missed the Midlands day explaining it but there is an online one in November) – here’s lots more info that Amy at Nesta has just sent me:
Nesta and Nominet Trust (proud supporters of Make Things Do Stuff) are pleased to announce a second open call for ideas to significantly increase the number of young people who participate in digital making activities.
We want digital making to go mainstream. We want making with technology to become as accessible an activity as making music or making food. Ubiquity is a long way off, but we want to support initiatives that can take us closer to that goal.
The second call is backed by a fund of £250,000 and we expect to make a small number of grants between £20,000 and £50,000. Alongside the grant a package of tailored support will be offered; this includes expert advice and mentoring and access to Nesta and Nominet Trust’s expertise, networks and event space.
1. What we’re looking to support
We expect successful initiatives will use young people’s existing interests, passions and pastimes as a gateway to digital making, inspiring young people to become creators, not just users of digital technologies. We’re looking for applications from organisations, or partnerships between organisations, that have the capacity to engage thousands of young people in digital making activities.
Use different interests and content to reach new audiences –how can digital making tie in with music, fashion, sport, film or brands that will inspire young people to participate?
The ‘making’ element is important. We want ideas that lead participants to the creation of a digital product that they can show to and share with others.
We’re interested in reaching different networks and communities for learning – youth clubs, libraries, after school clubs, interest groups and social networks speak to thousands of young people every day. How can they integrate digital making into their activities?
· We take a broad view of digital making that encompasses 3D printing and physical computing, as well as coding and programming, and want to work with partners who are noisy advocates for the importance of digital making; who will use all the channels available to them to shout about and promote their projects.
2.If you’re interested in applying?
You can find out more about the fund’s aims and how it works by enrolling on one of our workshops or webchats (dates below). Anyone who hopes to submit an application must attend one of these or if you’re interested in knowing more about the programme and networking with others we’d be happy to see you too.
Lol being shown around the new West Midlands Police website by Digital Service Manager Stuart Davis
Working with the Community Safety Partnerships in Birmingham has allowed us to help partners start great conversations across the city.
In North Birmingham a whole host of police officers are now tweeting and community groups are starting to organise themselves online. In South Birmingham a whole spectrum of people from the Community Safety Partnership now blog & tweet to help inform their community of the things that matter to them. In East Brum? Well in East Brum we have Lol .
We’ve written about him before, but Lol Turstan is a resident who loves where he lives so much he hasn’t waited for any of the local partners to get online, he ran with it himself and created B26 Community – A hyperlocal website for the community of Sheldon, where Lol can help spread the message from his Neighbourhood Watch group.
Lol has been working to forge partnerships locally to make the most of his site for the local residents, including strong links with his local police team.
I caught up with Sgt Hanif of Sheldon’s Neighbourhood Police team to find out what they thought of Lol and working with the B26 Community Blog;
“Lol is a very active, influential, member of Sheldon’s community, and already has vested interest in our area, so when we saw the opportunity for our team to attend the social media surgeries he was an obvious choice for us to take along. When it was first suggested to him he couldn’t dream of being involved – he was scared his age would be a barrier to understanding the technology.
But he went along with some of our officers and a few weeks later when I saw him next I was just, well WOW! He’d set up a website and was doing everything he could to make it as useful as possible.
Every time we have a community meeting he brings handouts to promote the site and is always asking others to get involved. We’ve worked with Lol to share our messages and make other things happen in the area – but some credit has to go to our PCSO Steve McGrath too. He’s worked especially close to Lol to get things on the site.
Together they’ve coordinated local schemes like installing locks on residents sheds after a spate of break ins and and recruiting for the street and neighbourhood watch groups.
We forward everything to him not just police stuff but anything that’s relevant. It gets it out there and it works because people tell me they’ve seen it on the site – and this level of communication was especially important to us after a murder in a local public house.”
Reassurance
“The day after the murder took place, because of the nature of the incident, we had to get a reassurance message to the effected communities as soon as possible, and while technically it happened in our neighbouring ward residents don’t recognise those boundaries we had to act fast.
There had been a shooting, and a possible case of mistaken identity and we wanted to help allay any rumours. I was informed at 11am and within 2 hours we’d got key members of the community together at the station and gave them what information we could for them to share.. We had a time sensitive message to get across. We wanted community we had gathered together was to share that message with other people.
Lol used his website and the contacts he’s made there to circulate this for us. We know his distribution is vast so for us it’s a short cut to the community. An officer on the beat or any other member of the community by word of mouth may have only reached out to 20 people they bumped into – with Lol and B26 Communty we reached potentially hundreds in a short space of time.
Moving forwards, as his contact list builds we would like to work with Lol to use his website to spread other key messages – we can reach a much wider audience than before and as a result we have a better informed community – which means they can make safer choices for themselves.”
Direct Link to Local People
Hannah Fitzgerald, West Midlands Police East Birmingham Communications Officer had this to say about the usefulness of communicating through community websites;
“Having someone like Lol running a site like B26Community is really useful for Sheldon and East Birmingham as a whole. There is no really localised press coverage in that area so he’s a direct link to the people there.
He’s hosted our live webchats for us on his site. The last one we broadcast was around Anti Social Behaviour and as Sheldon Park has suffered from episodes of Anti Social Behaviour in the past it was good to be able to communicate directly with the community there.”
Richard Eccelstone, West Midlands Police Social Media Champion added;
“We used to promote our webchats on our Twitter and Facebook pages – but that would attract comments from the whole of the West Midlands even when we wanted to focus on a specific area – that would really dilute the conversation but by connecting to local blogs we were able to use their audience to focus the talk and make it more relevant. This is true of B26 and other hyperlocal websites across the midlands.
We are looking to focus more of our communications on a local level and working with hyperlocal blogs such as B26Community is a fantastic way of doing this”
What’s great about the approach the police are taking to local communication is how effective it is. Our work with all the community safety partnerships has proven that talking with local people using the tools they understand improves communication right across the neighbourhood and in turn improves the perceptions of safety in those areas and helps make things happen. The video below is of Safer Places Office Austin Rodriguez, he’s talking about how using digital tools to communicate locally has benefited his area – evidence that partners working with the community – talking to them at a local level, works.
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