Tag: Birmingham

How to make the £50 million Facebook Application?

The photo of Katie Derham swaddled in bank notes is from the flickr part of the promotional package for the People’s £50 million. In the next two weeks the whole nation will be invited to vote on which of 4 communal projects should win £50 million from the Big Lottery fund.
I want the Black Country Urban Park to win cos the Black Country is an astonishing collection of industrial villages which have a future as a remarkable place to live and work. Also I’m a Brummie and what’s good for our neighbours is good for us.

But I’ve got a tiny stake in this now. After a very recent casual conversation with a couple of people from the Black Country, Jon Bounds and I put together a very most Facebook app/button to help the cause along – (in exchange for similarly modest number of notes and no – nothing like the ones Katie is wearing).

It links to the place where you have to register and vote and also helps you declare allegiance to the cause. Donato Esposito has already set up a facebook group to suport the campaign.

There’s two weeks of online voting culminating in a telephone vote extravaganza. Clearly a much broader online campaign needs to evolve – but how do you reckon we should improve the application as we head towards the end of the vote?

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Quinzone, Safe Haven and Community Policing – new podcast on the Grassroots Channel

PC Bernie Flynn has been working with young people in Quinton in Birmingham consistently since 2001, merging policing with youth work. For him finding the right people for the job and giving them time to show respect and earn respect is at the heart of good community policing. Anti social behaviour in and around his patch has fallen by 40% and in this podcast he explains how that has happened.

This is the most recent in a number of programmes on the channel about the link between policing, and community including the residents who run their own police station, patrol their own streets, those who had the courage to confront pimps and prostitution and how young people act as agents for safer streets.

 
Birmingham Community Empowerment Network

Quinzone and Safe Haven (dead link)

West Midlands Police

Briefing on Neighbourhood Policing as a pdf

Allotment Sense

Refurbishing allotments used as a fly tipping ground and making the plots available for schools is one of the best uses I’ve come across for the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund. Of course NRF was never about things the council should do (like maintain allotments), but at least this £39,000 spend has the potential to extend sustainable life styles in a neighbourhood and create a new space for community building among the 65 plots in Stetchford.

It’s also potentially a much better take on active young people than the toddlerobics I recently read about. See also the podcast below for a good listen on allotments and young people.