Designing for Civil Society

A modest project in Teesside shows the way for e-democracy

I'm a long-time admirer of Steve Thompson, who has been a steelworker, writer of hit songs, and more recently inspiration and mentor behind many European-funded community media projects while based at the University of Teesside... with more here. The latest work he's developing in the village of Thorntree has the some lessons for the UK e-democracy programme.
Steve is working with Middlesbrough Voluntary Development Agency to combine the use of digital media with Planning for Real®. This is a technique for community engagement that involves people building a physical model of their neighbourhod as part of the process of exploring the issues that most concern them, and then deciding what to do.
What's new is that Steve is helping Thorntree residents add their images of the area, and their ideas and concerns through video clips. The TS3 site (it's a postcode) has a clickable picture of the base of the model, galleries for photos and videos, and several blogs.
The work has only just started, so click-throughs are limited, but to me what's important is that the project is giving a direct voice to residents using fairly basic tools and simple approaches - cleverly. I gather some of the video is done with webcams and a still camera. Where there's concern about directly showing a young person, Steve has asked them to draw a picture and talk us through that off camera. Residents are encouraged to do their own interviews - as you can see here (needs Realplayer). Steve is in the chair for once.
The approach developing in Thorntree will make it easy for people to add in other items, using their own cameras or phones. If a group wants to add to the system - which uses b2evolution - that's easy.
There are, of course, plenty of great community media examples around, some of them showcased by the Community Media Association - but I don't think there are many examples, if any, directly mixing model-building, interviews and other media. If there are, please let me know!
I think this approach could be important for e-democracy because, as I wrote recently, much of the work done so far in the UK is pretty top-down and institutional. A combination of "democracy" and "Internet" is not going to help bridge the gap of suspicion and mistrust between citizens and politicians unless the tools and approach used help start conversations around topics that interest people, in language they can understand. The TS3 approach could be a way forward.
You can see an interview I did with Steve a couple of months ago as part of some evaluation work for the Ourvideo project run by the National Computing Centre. As well as Steve, I interviewed other people who created videos for the project, and Diane Rogers from the Community Media Association.
Update: Steve emails to say that the b2evolution open source tool used on the project is being shaped by and added to with extra applications developed at the University by CMAD - the community media applications developers - "a small but very merry band". I can believe that - their online Community Challenge is particularly good fun.

Disentangling engagement, participation, democracy, with added e-

Public-spirited techies believe that social software will enhance democracy and help people do good things together, but are frustrated when the wider world doesn't get this. Facilitators specialising in offline participation and other engagement processes are beginning to think there may be something in the technology, but generally don't know why or how, so leave it alone.
Of course these are gross generalisations, and there are many fine people ably mixing people-stuff and tech-stuff to social benefit. I'm trying to do that too, and so find the need to explain to myself and others what the issues are. Here's some thinking in progress, with the hope that others may be able to improve. It's a bit heavy, but I need to clear my head and create a reference for some more specific examples to follow later. Conclusion: just adding 'e' doesn't guarantee improvement.

Beyond blogs, and wikis, and other hot stuff

Lee Bryant of Headshift has provided a terrific review of developments in social software over the past year or so in his piece Blogs are not the only fruit. Too much good stuff to try and summarise... it is a must-read. I confess to a little bias because I'm working on a new combined blog and wiki for my site, developed by Lee and colleagues - so I know they deliver as well as philosophise. More on that shortly. Lee's review also generously cites many of the key people in the field, which further enhances the network effect.
Over on the excellent Digital Divide site there are 10 reasons why nonprofits should use RSS by Marnie Webb.

Situation vacant: community media application developer

Community media is great in theory, with radio, video, web and so on now much easier and cheaper for local groups to put together. There are some great showcase examples, but not as much happening as might be expected from the general growth of personal media. What's needed, I think, is more help from institutions who have technical resources and support staff, and who are prepared to make technology fun.
So it's good to see a new burst of energy from the University of Teesside, where former steelwork and musician Steve Thompson is Community Media Coordinator. Steve is one of those people who just gets on and does stuff, and he's now recruiting student volunteers. One role is for Community Media Application Developers, where the aim is "to share experiences and to pool skills to develop applications assisting ordinary people to generate and/or publish content utilising opportunities afforded by new media but without the complications of having to learn programming languages."
I'm sure Steve would welcome offers from wider afield, if you want to share ideas. You'll find his personal website here, with MP3s of some of his songs recorded by Celine Dion, Sheena Easton, and Elkie Brooks.

Blogs and vogs may be the new community media

Lee Bryant has pulled together highlights from the blogtalk 2 conference in Vienna, including some fascinating ideas on how text, audio, video blogs (vogs or vlogs?) may evolve into a new form of community media. There are some useful tips and links, but discussion rather confirms my experience that putting together multimedia for a blog is time consuming.
One method is using SMIL - Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language - which is a bit like using html to mark up web pages. There are some Windows editors, but not as far as I can see anything for Mac OSX. I'm attracted by the scope for doing slide shows with added captions and audio, now possible using Flash-based programmes like SWF 'n Slide as something quicker and easier. I can see some events on the horizon where this could be a useful additional reporting method, which seems like a good excuse to spend some time experimenting. More later.
See also Ranting and reporting from WSIS

Showcasing community media

Just as I was thinking that the technology may be getting better, but content is not necessarily more engaging, the Community Media Association sent me a reminder of The Showcase "the world's first streaming media archive of radio, TV, Internet projects and training materials from the community media sector." This now has about 200 items of web, audio and video projects. There is challenging material on racism, human rights, mental health and social exclusion mixed with gems in the history section including "a compilation of largely unedited raw audio interviews about life in the Women’s Land Army during the Second World War, recorded in Leicestershire in 1988".
I particularly liked Transient Tales , a video of simple animations of folk tales made by children from different countries, now based in London. The languages used include Farsi, Romanian, Tigrinya, Spanish, Kurdish, Dari, and Armenian as well as English.
The CMA has made great strides on the policy front in campaigning for community radio licences, and projects like The Showcase suggest to me that digital media may well make more contribution to community development than mainly text-based community networking projects, and online centres. Of course we need both/all. But the buzz is shifting.