Creating Community Conversations - Gallomanor

Champions in distress

We first got involved with The Scarman Trust a couple of years ago during the development of CampaignCreator.  They were tasked with coaching members of the community on how to campaign and how to use the site.

Since then I've got to know them and their work in the South West a little better.  At the moment we're producing a marketing campaign for a series of guides they have produced to help communities help themselves.

Another cornerstone of their work is in dispersing small grants to creative and energetic members of communities to help with community cohesion.  It is a programme called Community Champions.  Unfortunately the DfES, before it was reorganised, decided to stop funding the programme and The Scarman Trust are working hard to save it.  They have started a petition to save community champions on the Number 10 Downing Street site and I've signed it.  I hope you will too.

The petition copy reads:

National Care Leavers Week - Sheffield LifeSwap

We've been talking with Sheffield City Council for a few months about running LifeSwap.   During National Care Leavers Week on October 24th 2007 five Care Leavers from Sheffield and five senior officers and members from the council will take a photo every hour on a mobile phone camera and send the pictures with captions to the LifeSwap site.  A snapshot of those ten lives will build over the day and if our previous experience is anything to go by a fascinating contrast in lives will show.

But that is just one small part of the effect of the event.  Sheffield are putting as much into and getting as much out of the preparation for the event.  A group of young people are responsible for organising the event.  They will decide which care leavers and which council people will take part.  The Corporate Parenting Panel of councillors have shown a lot of interest in signing up to the idea and it's raised lots of questions about what their role and responsibilities are towards Care Leavers.  Deciding to run LifeSwap is acting as a catalyst to generate awareness about children in care even before the event has taken place.

Which of course is going to be needed when the June 2007 White Paper, Care Matters: Time For Change comes into effect.

Nomenclature (or "what we call things")

Nick Palmer is one of the more online MPs in Westminster.  Nothing too flash but he does write a regular email to 2,399 constituents in Broxtowe, Notts. 

This week he talked about the "niceness" of small town America and compared it to Europe:

When I lived in  Switzerland, I was struck by how much people said 'we' about public projects (e.g. "I see we're building a new hospital"), where in Britain people usually say 'they'. People felt personally integrated and involved with their communities in a way that I see when I go on holiday to a Northumberland village, but really don't see much either in Nottingham or London. Hand in hand with that, people in small communities seem willing to be more helpful to others, to an extent that would be viewed with some suspicion in an urban environment ('why is this stranger offering me a lift out of his way?').

Andrew North, Chief Executive Officer, of Cheltenham Borough Council was kind enough to write a comment on the Flood-Driven Innovation post from last week.  He tells us:

We know for example that residents rate individual local government services highly but not the councils that deliver them.

Perhaps it is the council (as an organisation), the bureaucracy, the machine, the system, that distances people from their local government.  Or is at least a factor.

On this subject though one particular little bug-bear of mine is the way that in the UK the person, like Andrew, who heads up the organisation is called the CEO.  That implies they run In the US the equivalent person is commonly called the City Manager.  In the UK the person manages the council, in the US they manage the city.  A touch inward looking I think.

Disengagement from power

The scourge of Bristol City Council, The Bristol Blogger, has written a powerful piece outlining one of the reasons why political engagement has declined.  A Dispersal Order on College Green (home to Bristol City Council) was made without the elected representatives for the area being told.  they first heard about it in the local paper.  As The Bristol Blogger says:

So there you have it. A whole series of our elected representatives, directly responsible for the area in question, all against the dispersal order and what happens? The dispersal area remains in place!

And then they wonder why people don’t vote. Perhaps it’s got something to do with the fact that our politicians don’t have any power? Instead they’re given access to newspapers to issue some kind words, handed very expensive publicly funded debating chambers to hang around whinging in and then, presumably, they just hope nobody will notice they don’t actually do anything whatsoever?

People will engage with politics if they feel it can make a difference, but if politicians become disengaged from power then even fewer people will engage with them.

Flood driven innovation

Cheltenham Borough Council have been driven (or perhaps a creative employee has taken the opportunity presented) by floods to innovate with their communication strategy using some key web technologies.

Due to the fear that Council servers and workers would be flooding and stop working the council decided to launch a Flood Updates blog to keep a line of online communication going.  Peter Riley the Council Web Development Manager started Flickr (photo sharing) and YouTube (video sharing) accounts to help embed pictures and video into the site.

The rate of blog posts is impressive.  Pictures, videos, contact numbers, updates and general information have all found their way onto the site.  The council has requested people to let them know about flooded properties and have used it to spread good news stories.  Naturally some enterprising types have used the comments section to spread sales pitches.  Err thanks Ernie as they say in Cheltenham.

The site continues to be live with 2 posts today.  Wouldn't it be nice if perhaps this excellent innovation was continued by some of the senior staff at the council to keep people up-to-date with some of the more mundane but still important things that councils do.

(Hat tip to Kable)