Connecting Bristol Bid Feedback

draft feedback to draft bid

Introduction

My name is Sean Kenny, my background and experience is that I've worked as a Circuit Rider ( http://www.lasa.org.uk/circuitriders ) mainly in South Bristol since 1999, providing IT support and development services for the South Bristol development trusts and partnerships in Knowle, Hartcliffe and Withywood, plus numerous other youth and community groups across central and east Bristol. I was a founding member of the Bristol IT Co-Op and have been an active management committee member and volunteer for Bristol Wireless since 2003, and am currently working for Voscur as an ICT development Worker for the voluntary sector in Bristol. I'm very happy to be able to contribute some ideas and feedback to Connecting Bristol project bid.

As is probably the case with many organisations, the main organisations I work with, Bristol Wireless, Voscur and HWCP are all keen to be centrally involved in the Digital Cities bid and have lots of ideas about how the money could be used to underpin regeneration work in South Bristol, which the Bristol Partnership launch at the Colston Hall indicated was to be the central theme of the bid.

The primary concern of BW in all our work is to make a "material contribution to reducing the digital divide in Bristol", so any opportunity to extend our existing projects, or replicate our successes in other areas of the city, is of interest to us, which is why we have had representation on the Momentum group since very early on in this process.

Some constructive criticism :)

Personally speaking I think experience and research has shown that concentrating on young people is an easy way to show results, as they are quick to take up opportunities to access online services and facilities, and make a particular effort to find locations or devices where they can communicate. It would be hard to find someone in the 14-21 age bracket who didn't have an email address for instance! It's far more difficult for older people, the housebound, disabled, long term sick, people isolated within communities for whatever reason to invest time and money in learning about and using new technologies and accessing online services in a beneficial way.

For this reason I feel that the bid concentration on youth and young adults in general in South Bristol may be a mistaken approach and working with and supporting with a superb digital infrastructure, groups and organisations that are already working with isolated and excluded parts of the community, young and old, may have more of an effect.

Using existing community organisations and agencies working with these people to e-enable them, strikes me as much more worthwhile effort than a generalist approach targeting what amounts to the (already) "digital generation" whom the bid seems mainly to be aimed at. Although the harnessing of their pre-existing and quickly learnt skills for the benefit of the wider community seems worthwhile - this would inevitably require highly digitally literate youth workers, a sub group that might be thin on the ground outside the Knowle West Media Centre!

Some existing work in Bristol that could be fed into the bid -

Bristol Wireless

Bristol Wireless have piloted a number of projects in east Bristol, identifying groups of people who would benefit from, the supply of equipment, connectivity and training, and using innovative solutions (refurbishment of donated computers with open source software/wireless Internet connectivity, harnessing of volunteer support). Also we have supported the setting up of the project at the park in Knowle, Knowle West Web. Our community wireless network is identified nationally and internationally as a model for the building of a community owned and managed communications infrastructure.

Outreach and capacity building

Hartcliffe and Withywood partnership undertook a series of pilot schemes and research in 2001 under the umbrella "Wiring the Local Loop" that identified the need for IT outreach work with community organisations to improve communication and efficiency and to give regeneration related workers and volunteers the tools and the skills to develop similar structures to what the bid calls "digital neighbourhoods". Neighbourhood renewal groups in Knowle West and Southmead have used this as a model for capacity building in upskilling many older residents to e-enable them as participants in their groups.

Byteback

Recycling - although the WEEE directive implementation has been delayed yet again, it's imperative that schemes for recycling/ refurbishing/ and reusing equipment are supported and developed by any place claiming to be a digital city. Byteback in Hartcliffe has made incredible efforts to clean up the mess left behind by our massive consumer electronic consumption , and works hard as a social enterprise to ensure anything that can be reused is reused working with community groups across the city to sift the electronic gold dust from the slag - and to get rid of the latter in as an environmentally clean way as possible.

ChangeUp

The ChangeUp consortium, comprising the second tier Voluntary and Community Sector organisations across Bristol led by VOSCUR are engaged in a major investment to support front line organisations with their ICT needs. They are working closely with the recently launched National ICT Hub and the Community Information Systems Centre at UWE to really make a contribution to allowing small to medium VCS to access expert support and advice quickly and easily.

Living Landmarks

Network-South Bristol are currently involved in a complimentary £20 million lottery bid to transform both the physical and virtual landscape of South Bristol with a broadband radio (and possibly TV) network coupled with innovative large scale investment in South bristols green spaces provisonally titled "Living Landmarks". The co-ordinating group are already through the first stage and will be visited by bid assessors in April.