A community around using social tech for social impact
Time to try joining up traditional community organising with the new hyperlocal?
Is there scope for more joining up between the local community campaigners who gathered their strength through traditional organising in the last century, and those now using "hyperlocal" social media tools? I just blogged this item on socialreporter. Would it be useful to have a get-together of the various interests? Well, interesting anyway ...
The Civic Trust was an important force for conservation and local pride for 50 years, with a network of campaigning civic societies and an awards programme. I found the Regeneration Unit in particular great people to work with on a number of projects. But earlier this year the Trust ran out of money, and closed ... and I confess I didn't even notice. That shows how far I've given up reading magazines, and moved online. It may also show how little visibility the Trust had in the new online world.
Thanks goodness my friend Kevin Harris has kept in touch, and now reports on moves to create something in its place. As he says "The Civic Trust was precisely the kind of organisation of which it might have been said, if it didn't exist they'd have to reinvent it". The Civic Society Initiative has just published the report on their consultation... and if I may quote from Kevin's piece:
"Among the main findings:
Hang on .... this is all very networky, facilitative, bottom-up, open .... just the sort of values that people in the new hyperlocal movement I've written about before are following. The recent Talk About Local event in Stoke on Trent, Community Voices programme launched by the Media Trust, Local 2.0 at the Young Foundation all show how the tools of social media - combined with more traditional methods - can give local people a powerful voice and help the organise. The RSA is going in the same direction with its Citizen Power, Connected Communities, and Social Media projects.
I wonder if the two tribes know each other? There could be great synergy if the Civic Society Initiative people were prepared to embrace the new organsing tools ... and the hyperlocal folk could connect with a wider range of interests.
My co-authors and I in the Social by Social book (using social tech for social good) have just created an online network based on earlier work with the hyperlocal groups, and hope that may be one place where some joining up could take place, as Amy Sample Ward explains here.
However, what's really needed is a few calls, followed by a good face-to-face meeting if people are interested. I wonder if the RSA might oblige in helping organise? The energetic chief exective Matthew Taylor has said in the past that he wants the to 250-year-old organisation to be "the RAC of civic activism", and the projects I've cited show some movement along this path (although I have my doubts about the RAC analogy). There's a good fit with the Charter the RSA Fellowship has just launched.
Or maybe the Civic Society Initiative would be interested in organising the meetup themselves? Umm - contact us leads to an admin email address and web form. Still, I'll have a go.
Anyone got other ideas for some oldstyle-newstyle joining up?
The Civic Trust was an important force for conservation and local pride for 50 years, with a network of campaigning civic societies and an awards programme. I found the Regeneration Unit in particular great people to work with on a number of projects. But earlier this year the Trust ran out of money, and closed ... and I confess I didn't even notice. That shows how far I've given up reading magazines, and moved online. It may also show how little visibility the Trust had in the new online world.
Thanks goodness my friend Kevin Harris has kept in touch, and now reports on moves to create something in its place. As he says "The Civic Trust was precisely the kind of organisation of which it might have been said, if it didn't exist they'd have to reinvent it". The Civic Society Initiative has just published the report on their consultation... and if I may quote from Kevin's piece:
"Among the main findings:
- Civic societies want to be less reactive, work more in partnership and be more campaigning in their outlook.
- There is a refreshing openness within civic societies about their shortcomings and their mixed reputation – ageing, negative and out of touch but also locally knowledgeable, actively concerned about the future and wanting to connect more with their community.
- The movement lacks confidence in itself and others can appear to value it more than civic societies themselves.
- Civic societies seek a unifying mission and purpose for the movement. This is likely to be based around issues of place, pride, identity and community.
- Separate voices to being a collective movement
- Hierarchical to being more networked
- Dependent to being more independent (especially financially)
- Organised top-down to being more federal.
- Providing information, support and advice to civic societies
- Facilitating civic societies to network and cluster together
- Being a national lead and voice for the movement which provides inspiration and direction; lobbies and campaigns on its behalf; and raises its profile and influence.
Hang on .... this is all very networky, facilitative, bottom-up, open .... just the sort of values that people in the new hyperlocal movement I've written about before are following. The recent Talk About Local event in Stoke on Trent, Community Voices programme launched by the Media Trust, Local 2.0 at the Young Foundation all show how the tools of social media - combined with more traditional methods - can give local people a powerful voice and help the organise. The RSA is going in the same direction with its Citizen Power, Connected Communities, and Social Media projects.
I wonder if the two tribes know each other? There could be great synergy if the Civic Society Initiative people were prepared to embrace the new organsing tools ... and the hyperlocal folk could connect with a wider range of interests.
My co-authors and I in the Social by Social book (using social tech for social good) have just created an online network based on earlier work with the hyperlocal groups, and hope that may be one place where some joining up could take place, as Amy Sample Ward explains here.
However, what's really needed is a few calls, followed by a good face-to-face meeting if people are interested. I wonder if the RSA might oblige in helping organise? The energetic chief exective Matthew Taylor has said in the past that he wants the to 250-year-old organisation to be "the RAC of civic activism", and the projects I've cited show some movement along this path (although I have my doubts about the RAC analogy). There's a good fit with the Charter the RSA Fellowship has just launched.
Or maybe the Civic Society Initiative would be interested in organising the meetup themselves? Umm - contact us leads to an admin email address and web form. Still, I'll have a go.
Anyone got other ideas for some oldstyle-newstyle joining up?
Tags: civicsociety, civictrust, hyperlocal
Views: 3
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Steven Clift on -
"Time to try joining up traditional community organising with the new hyperlocal?"
Yes.
Our take: http://pages.e-democracy.org/Inclusive_social_media
I know David is always looking for the "new, new," :-) but my sense is that if our multi-tech Issues Forum model was created today (and not 1994) it would be the "new, new" because it allows involvement in an integrated way through Facebook, Twitter, blog-style web feed, web forum, and e-mail (looking for iPhone and Andriod App options now). You cannot expect success in a very local place IF the potential audience is disconnected from one another based on technology - you need a lead online space that is then delivered to people based on their preferences. You also need to leverage popular services like YouTube so people who go to all that work only need to upload once while also making photo sharing as simple as knowing how to attach a picture to an e-mail.
If you really want to use traditional community organising, then you must reach people where they are. In our case, that means signing people up on paper forms and delivering hyperlocal online community to them without ever requiring them to visit the website if they do not want to do so. To me, real inclusion requires that level of outreach or we might as well reserve local online communities for top 50% of the economic ladder and write off the rest.
P.S. We'd love to work with a neighbourhood in the UK bold enough to use.... :-)
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Permalink Reply by David Wilcox on
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Thanks Steven - points well taken. I've suggested over here that Mark Walker might be well placed to report on experience from Brighton and Hove. And if you pop in to the Community Voices group, do say hello to Kim who is doing outreach with Media Trust and might have ideas on connections.
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Permalink Reply by Kim Townsend on -
Just to add to my comments over on the Community Voices group, I love what Steve says here about even getting communities to sign up on paper without having to ever visit the site if they don't want to. This is really refreshing to read! The goal at the end of the day should be community engagement and cohesion. This absolutely must be done on their terms. Its not going to work if technology is pushed onto them when they're not comfortable with using it in the first place.
The winner of the Commmunity Voices Inspiring Voices awards this week is a village website called Bishop Monkton Today. They encourage people to write into the site and even take submissions by letter (posted letter that is!) and then type them up! I love that! - fully inclusive. Have a look http://communityvoicesuk.wordpress.com/award-winners-2/bishop-monkt...
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