Tag: Birmingham UK

Podnosh is based in Birmingham in the UK, so often we write about exciting things that are going on near us.

Jobs at WAITS

One of our earlier programmes on the Grassroots Channel was about a Birmingham based organisation called Women Acting in Todays Society. They have also been running the Women’s Empowerment Network in conjunction with b:cen.

BVSC tell me that WAITS has three jobs going: a community organiser, a BME women’s capacity builder and a Chinese women support and development worker.

Should anyone be interested you can find more details here and, unlike almost any other job applicant, you can also listen to Marcia Lewinson talking about WAITS here.

BBC – give us the tools and the space.

Richard Wilson at Involve has commented on the BBC’s tentative steps towards building public participation. “The BBC is stuck in 20th Century top-down parental thinking”, he says, continuing:

if the BBC really wants to support civil renewal it needs to give people the tools to make their own content without the aid of a studio or 10K camera. Yes support people understand what it takes to make a beautiful and inspiring documentary, but not in a way in which we are reliant on their filming or editing skills, but so we can do it ourselves, and eventually on our own.

My experience of BBC conversations about “user generated content” is that it is almost always perceived as something which will help create material for mainstream programming. The principal that the BBC has a role to advance democratic conversation by offering the freedom for people to have that conversation on their own terms seems to be rarely considered.Meanwhile Kevin Harris at the Neighbourhoods blog sets out some principals for wider involvement: Read more

"It takes courage to change…" Social Cohesion in Dudley and Youtube

What does is take to build and nourish social cohesion? I’ve often thought the term itself has been twisted over the past year, from an expression of a neighbourhood at ease with itself to a poor short hand for tackling extremism, including home grown terror of a variety of political, religious and philosophical hues.

Tomorrow four Whitehall advisers will be in Dudley to get a better picture of how the community tackles extremism in the borough. One thing they will see is this short video we’ve produced to try and capture some of the essence of the Dudley approach.

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