Tag: community

Community Lovers Tour of Birmingham

In January we launched the Birmingham edition of The Community Lovers Guide, 12 stories of of the ways volunteers, community and social enterprise are changing relationships in the city. – a simple  book of stories of the ways volunteers, community and social enterprise are changing relationships in the city.

The idea for the series was born at a railway station in Rotterdam and bought back to Birmingham, and now  tomorrow 12 Dutch visitors will be following in its foot steps and visiting places and groups the feature in our edition of the book.

The visitors are a mixture of professionals, researchers and civil servants from Holland  and they’ll be joining us as we head to Stirchley to visit Tom Baker at Loaf, to Cotteridge  for a walk around Cotteridge Park with Emma Woolf of the Friends of Cotteridge Park and finally a visit into the city centre to join us for the Central Birmingham Social Media Surgery.

We’ll be posting about their visit throughout the day tomorrow but if you’re interested in finding out more about the places they’re visiting before then you can read the relevant chapters of the Communnity Lovers Guide to Birmingham below.

Loaf – Bringing Back Real Food

Friends of Cotteridge Park

Loops of Generosity – The Social Media Surgery Movement

All chapters of the book are available to view online, or is for sale via Blurb.

Age isn’t a barrier! Birmingham East and Sheldon Community Website

At the same time as running the project we’ve been working on in South Birmingham with the Community safety team we’ve been engaging with communities in east Birmingham in the same way. In fact we’ve just wrapped up the first lot of surgeries in Shard End and it looks like we’ve had some great results with people coming to learn about twitter, facebook and blogging.

One of the patients who attended was Lol Thurstan.

Lol came along to a Social Media awareness session we held at The Pump on Kitts Green Road and subsequently attended our Social Media Surgeries at Shard End Library. Chair of his residents association and lead coordinator with his neighbourhood watch, He wanted to learn how to use social media to support his Neighbourhood Watch group

In just 4 sessions (including the initial awareness session) Lol has established B26 Community, A neighbourhood website for the Sheldon community that allows him to not only share Neighbourhood Watch news but can also involve other groups in the community to improve communication in the area –

By his own admission Lol was a late comer to starting to use technology but he came with a willingness to learn and as I think you’ll see from this video, age isn’t a barrier to learning something new and getting stuck in !

 

Birmingham Social Media Surgeries

Lynn Horsnett and Nick Booth
Lynn Horsnett and Nick Booth at Kings Norton SMS

Over the last few years the social media surgery movement has spread further than anyone could have imagined at that first (and supposedly one off) event back in 2008.  There are now surgeries held in 70 different towns and cities all over the uk, and further beyond, in Australia, Canada, Switzerland and even Nepal to name but a few.

But, in the birth place of the Surgeries, Birmingham, there has been another spread happening -less global and more local,  into our communities. In the last 6 months we have been working with partners such as the local strategic partnership and the police across the city and with their support there have been surgeries in:

as well as the continued support for the Central Birminham sessions.

These surgeries have been able to support people where they live and work, to enable them to get online to support the good work that they are doing in their neighbourhoods.

Like Lol Thurstan for instance, he came along asking for help distributing his monthly Neighbourhood Watch newsletter and we helped him set up a blog. Lol is now already exploring the possiblilities of sharing more than just hisNeighbourhood Watch news with his community – taking the idea of a neighbourhood magazine and reproducing it online, and there’s Sandra Turner. Sandra wanted some support promoting her community centre and finding out what was going on in her area. We sat with her while she set up a facebook page and later a twitter account so now she can do just that – it’s enabled her to share information online and make connections with others in her area.

And we’re not done yet. There are more dates already set and hopefully still more to come.  We’d love to see you there whether it to receive some support or to offer your help. You can visit www.socialmediasurgery.com to register to attend any of these sessions, or find one nearer to you.

 

Lorna Wills – How attending Social Media Surgeries helped me find my place in my community

I first met Lorna Wills at the Low Hill Social Media Surgery in January. Recently I caught up with her again to see what had prompted her to come to a surgery in the first place and what she’s done with her new skills since then.

Lorna Willis

Lorna moved into the area 2 years ago and didn’t know that many people near where she lived, so she came along to the surgery wanting to learn how to use the internet to find out what things were going in her area. Things  that she could get involved with.  She had been attending her local neighbourhood watch meetings, but when the group tailed off she realised she wasn’t sure what she could get involved with next.

” I first found out about the surgeries only just in time to attend the last session in Low Hill but the people there were lovely and welcoming. I sat with someone and they showed me how to use twitter. They knew there were lots of people and groups using it locally and that I could use it to find out what was on going on in my area ….

…I’ve since joined the local Crimestoppers group as a voluntary member. I talked to Mac the organiser on twitter and went along to a meeting to find out more.

I’ve since traveled to Rugby for my induction and to the Crimestoppers conference in Warwickshire, which is where I met Chief Constable Andy Parker. Talking to Andy we discovered we had a mutual acquaintance, we got back in touch I’m now arranging to meet him too!

Those conversations on twitter have been a catalyst for all this. I have met some lovely people and improved my social life. 

I was feeling dissatisfied in the area, it didn’t seem that friendly, I found it was hard to make new friends in a new place. I think I’d come to realise you have to stay somewhere  couple of years to find your community but I just couldn’t meet people I could relate to before but now I have both at the surgery and people I’ve met by going online.

I used Twitter to find out about events locally, which I’ve attended and now I’m even helping to arrange our own event on Low Hill for local groups to a showcase their organisations. The surgeries played a big part in my taking part in all this, it has boasted my confidence, I’ve always been active but in my own and now I’ve met some lovely people to be active with.”