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Conversations and Connections

A new paper from Social Tapestries reports on attempts to use internet-based tools to encourage participation and involvement in local issues. While the project has been deemed a failure, the process provided some interesting lessons for policy makers and practitioners.

A new paper from Social Tapestries reports on attempts to use internet-based tools to encourage participation and involvement in local issues. While the project has been deemed a failure, the process provided some interesting lessons for policy makers and practitioners.

The research groups Social Tapestries and Proboscis worked alongide the Havelock Residents' Association on the Havelock estate in West London, aiming to deploy a range of tools, based around knowledge mapping and sharing, to encourage connections and participation within the community.

While many of the project's initiatives were offline, forming a committee, creating printed materials and attempting to raise funding for the community shop, some of the more interesting initiatives came through online activity. A committee member had spent some time cataloguing faulty lights on the estate. Proboscis responded by entering geo-spatial data into their mapping system, to create a system similar to the MySociety Neighbourhood Fixit application.

They also created a number of video interviews with residents, cataloguing their experience of living on the estate, from which a DVD was produced. They also created two 'StoryCubes' (pictures and text arranged in three dimensions to illustrate an issue or a theme).

Next they developed a public authoring system - bringing together maps, data, knowledge, images and video - using Blogger, EditGrid, Google Maps and flickr to assimilate the information. The results are at http://havelocktapestry.blogspot.com.

Sadly, the project was felt to be a failure by the group. The account given in the full report is a catalogue of unattended meetings, unwillingness to volunteer and tensions between the committee itself, whereby a younger committee member who demonstrated an affinity with the IT resources became alienated and left the project.

The report concludes with a number of policy messages or lessons from the project. Foremost, the premise that voluteers be put in a position that ought to be provided by official sources is weak. People's energies run dry and commitments take them elsewhere. Second, such projects need to be extremely sensitive to the local 'orgscape' - the existing relationships and opportunities that exist within a community. Third, a wide variety of types of input need to be provided to find the widest reach for their influence. Lastly, "community development has to be taken seriously by local partners, and not delivered in a piecemeal and half-hearted way."