Just a quick note to thank Terry Holland at the Mere Green Neighbourhood Forum for adding the Grassroots Channel podcast to their clear and comprehensive website.
Mere Green is in the north Birmingham constituency of Sutton Coldfield and the regular news updates on the forum site show the current public interest in plans to redevelop the main shopping area. The site includes a poll on the proposals.
A few evenings ago I was chewing over some ideas which might make a good punt for the 21st Century News Challenge. As you do with these things I was getting a little giddy.
Wouldn’t it be fantastic, I thought, if you could map a neighbourhood by how people feel? It would not only give people living there a sense of how their neighbours are, it would also give public services valuable information on what lifts people’s moods and boosts security, and what provokes fear or anxiety.
I was toying with with technology involving mobile phones – perhaps a neighbourhood text line, where you could send a smiley (or the opposite), which knows the location of the phone? Extra text could be added as tags.
So a quick Google found Christian Nold’s work on Bio-Mapping. (hat tip to architect Rob Annable.) Christian is an artist who combines skin sensors which detect mood with global positioning kit and mapping software. Anyone wearing his kit can walk through their neighbourhood leaving a trail of emotion which can later be viewed on Google Earth. They can also add information about specific places – which may help identify why they felt what they did. Those taking part are in my mind a new form of citizen journalist – the ultimate mood blogger.
The potential for this as a means to get under the skin of a community is enormous. Refine or revise the technology and you can offer an almost instant mood exchange among people.
Would this be insanity – a more insidious version of cctv – or a new way to measure and influence social cohesion and or capital?
On Remembrance Sunday we meet two people who’ve put 18 months of effort into building a community group around their local cemetery in Birmingham. The Friends of Brandwood End Cemetery have found an unlikely way to build a community in their neighbourhood and Anne Courbet and Barrie Simpson tell us about the link between history, heritage and our sense of togetherness. We also hear about a film which is taking one of Birmingham’s active citizens to Holland and you can see in December at a b:cen event called Activists & Authorities – Collision or Cohesion.
Birmingham Community Empowerment Network (dead link)
Here’s something I’m going to watch closely. Micki in Auckland in New Zealand has set up a blog called Volunteer Evolution. She is using it to ask people to help her raise $20,000 dollars to allow her to stop paid work and instead volunteer for a year in her local community (wherever she happens to be).
This has similarities to students looking for financial support for voluntary work or gap years. However it’s seems a touch different, I think new – because (if genuine) it’s entirely bottom up – drawing its potential power from a network created online. So I emailed Micki to find out more and this is what she told me:
I’ve only just launched the volunteerevolution website this past week so I’m still waiting to see what kind of support I get before quitting my current job (which is customer service for a company that makes environmentally friendly household cleaners & bodycare products). The community I live in is much like any other large city. Auckland has about 1.5 million people including a large number of immigrants. There are big problems with urban planning, I don’t think the city can cope with the growth it’s experiencing which leads to transport problems and social conflicts. Non-violent crime is common (I just had my car stolen last week) and there are definite racial divides between middle-class and poor.
For my first project, I am currently training with RMS Refugee Resettlement and will be volunteering with a new refugee family over the next 6 months to help them adjust to life in New Zealand. It’s a fairly big challenge since they come from Burma, have lived in non-western society their whole lives and don’t speak English. They will be living in state housing which will give me some more insight into the problems faced in these low-income areas.
I’m really passionate about addressing people’s basic needs. If people don’t have food, shelter and healthcare they’re not going to be interested in environmental, political or other issues, so that’s what I’m focusing my work on.
Now Micki has no charity status, I don’t know her address and I have absolutely no recourse if Micki takes the money and swans off on holiday. So given all of that – I’ve made a donation.
Why?