The third and final stop with our guests was at the Central Birmingham Social Media Surgery.
The surgery was in full swing by the time they arrived so Nick took them out onto the terrace to tell them about how the Social Media Surgery Movement started while I got on with managing the surgery…
You can read Nick’s chapter in the Community Lovers Guide about it here:
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.
All chapters of the book are available to view online, or is for sale via Blurb.
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 !
Keith came along to a few of the Social Media Surgery sessions at Blakenhall Healthy Living Centre in Wolverhampton to receive some help with communications for 2 charities he supports. After receiving help from our surgeons he returned a 3rd time to offer support himself.
Here he tells us why: