Tag: Youtube

I told you so….

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As you might gather I’m keen to see lobby groups, charities and the social sector using social media, but tone of voice is everything. I found this film through John Hemmings blog. There’s something about it that troubles me. It follows an Ofsted report highlighting important failings with the court support service CAFCASS.

The video is discordant. The combination of the emotive images (I imagine none of which show actual abuse by cafcass?) and the ‘told you so script’ grates.
So congratulations to Mothers for Justice for having their case supported by Ofsted. But please think again about how you convey your message. It’s now time for action, so tell us what you want to happen or tell us a story which will give legs to the campaign for change. Pressure groups are well placed to tell stories of real people’s real experiences and that’s where the emotional impact should be found when using social media.

Podcast: The Saint of Street Racing?

Masood Ajaib of Commpact in Washwood Heath

Is there a solution to street racing in Birmingham? Masood Ajaib of the Washwood Heath based community enterprise Commpact thinks there is. He has signed up for an experiment to find a communal way of turning a dangerous Saturday night on Landor Street into a peaceful pastime somewhere safe. Listen here for the conversation or watch here for a sense of the problem:

Birmingham Community Safety Partnership

Digbeth Trust (dead link)

Commpact (dead link)

Podcast – cracking crime in Kingstanding, one fridge at a time.

Kingstanding Neighbourhood Forum Birmingham

There’s an established link between grime and crime, which is why Kingstanding Neighbourhood Forum is using public money to crack crime one fridge at a time. This podcast and the youtube video you can see here or here explain how the forum has been using £10,000 from an experiment called the Neighbourhood Performance Reward Grant.

Run by the Birmingham Community Safety Partnership and the Digbeth Trust, this pilot has just come to an end. The reward is that meeting targets wil release a further £15,000 grant. Sustainable? Credible? Well listen and see what Les Smith and Rita Griffiths make of six months of the experiment.

Also see what’s happening in Sparkbrook.

Podcast : residents controlling the cash in Sparkbrook

A short film and a podcast, all part of a series of four pieces on an experiment on in Birmingham which is allowing residents a more control over how public money is spent. Here you can see and hear Neville Davis of the Sparkbrook Neighbourhood Forum talk about the pro cons and a huge effort they made to clean up rancid sites in their neighbourhood – all with a £10,000 grant from the Birmingham Community Safety Partnership and it’s Neighbourhood Performance reward Grant.

The reward in all of this is that if residents hit targets with the first £10,000 then a further grant of £15,000 is to hand.

The four-neighbourhood pilot is currently being evaluated by the Digbeth Trust.