Camp Hill Flyover, Birmingham, 1970 by Lady Wulfrun
Every so often I find myself emailing people who have requested links and/or information about creating community content around a particular subject or issue. I’m thinking it would be better for me to share that information with everyone, so I’m going to start copying it into blog posts here. One topic I get asked a lot about is local heritage, and how bringing this online can generate discussion and get people sharing their memories. When people ask me about heritage, I usually send them the following:
People really react to a bit of local history on a community website. Look at the comments on this post of a photo of 1970’s Digbeth. People remembered the flyover and reacted with their own personal stories about it. Similarly with William’s post about the Beaconsfield Buildings in Kings Cross – people started commenting about their families’ connections to the building, and people tracing their family trees are now coming to this post via genealogy forums.
Old photos and interviews with older residents who’ve witnessed changes over the years are always popular. Rescue Geography is a project all about collecting and curating people’s memories of a place, you could explore that for some ideas.
Another interesting site is: http://ourhistory-hayes.blogspot.com: ‘A site dedicated to the work of Hayes Labour Association, Hayes & Harlington Labour Party, Hayes Communist Party, Trade Unionists, and working men and women of West Middlesex.’
Last but not least Seaside Voices is a project talk about local are delivering in partnership with Community Media Assocation, People’s Voice Media and UK online centres. We’re working with four UK online centres in seaside towns to help facilitate an online discussion of their town in its past, present and future. The Seaside Voices websites for Bridlington, Morecambe, Newlyn and Shanklin are examples of sites that will not only look back at the history of a place, but also delve deeper to highlight current activity and look ahead to what’s in store in the future.
If you know of any other good examples of heritage sites, or local heritage content on community websites, please share and comment!
Crime and anti-social behaviour are the most challenging topics local websites have to tackle. But most local sites don’t want to add to local fear of crime by just reporting incidents – we want to publish results and support our local criminal justice professionals in the police, crown prosecution service, courts and prisons. Finding out what is going on in local courts would be very useful.
Ante-diluvian court processes combine with the minefield of contempt of court to make it tricky to write about local justice being done. As a local web publisher in an area with a long, tragic history of ASB with a sizable local audience I’d like daily court results and timetables posted to a courts website, preferably with an RSS feed. After all, you can go to the court and watch from the gallery or see the screens. So this little noticed (by me) excerpt from a Ministry of Justice green paper earlier this year seems wrong to me.
‘210. It is clear that there needs to be a balance between providing communities with information on court outcomes, which is in the public domain, and the need to ensure that such information is not misused. This issue is particularly pertinent because of the power of the internet to collect and make available information from a wide range of sources, and the difficulties of regulating the way in which such information is stored and reused.
211. We believe that it is not in the public interest to facilitate the creation of uncontrolled, privately held databases, and therefore intend to place the following restrictions on how information is accessed: Access to court outcomes online will require registration at level 1 of the e-Government standards66 to provide substantial assurance that the registrant’s identity has been verified. Registered users will be able to choose to see results for two courts of their choice; changing these preferences will require application to the systems administrator. Users will then be able to search all results from these two courts from the past four weeks. Information on the website will be copy protected so that it cannot be copied and pasted into other documents.
212. A prototype of the website will be made available for the duration of the Green Paper consultation.67 This will report specifically on the outcomes of knife possession cases tried in the adult magistrates’ courts, supporting the current initiative on tackling knife crime. Comments are invited on the level of security and accessibility of information. We will also look at how we can link this website to the continuing development of crime maps, to support the aim of ensuring that members of the public can get the maximum information about crime, policing and justice in a joined-up way from a linked set of sources, at as local a level as possible.’
I appreciate the argument about long term rehabilitation and spent convictions, but this piece suggests that websites are different from newspapers, which are now almost wholly online. If say The Times or the Islington Gazette reports an individual arrest, charge or trial in progress in the paper, it also appears online. At no point do the articles link forward to the outcome of the trial if the subject is found innocent. They effectively create a primitive unregulated database online. And whilst i enjoy working with the police, even the best forces would admit they have a very long way to go to publish criminal justice outcomes in a way that reassure local people.
What do people think of this position – is it reasonable or is it out of kilter? Is it worth lobbying to change it? Do we think that the senior politicians who recently gathered in Downing Street to talk open data are aware of it? As it is a green paper from Ministry of Justice, this usually means that minds are open and can be influenced.
I guess i must share some blame for the Ministry of Justice position as I had worked inside the system up to that point (declaration) but i feel this doesn’t stick to the principles of the power of information work i was involved in.
On Saturday me and Mike were lucky enough to enjoy a day in the sunshine in the name of work, giving something of a mini social media surgery under a tent in a field. We spent the day introducing people enjoying Fulham Fest to the new community website for the London W14 & SW6 neighbourhoods, a ning site which manager Annette Albert has built up into a fantastic local resource that covers local events, news, groups and information.
We got a fair few signed up to the site and many got cracking with adding to it straight away by poll voting, posting events, starting discussions and joining groups. What was most rewarding was inducting people who initially had reservations, either because of a fear of the technology or because they could not see how it might be used. It was just a few simple steps to show people how easy the site is to navigate and discuss issues important to them that the site could help with.
Getting people there who were at first quite reticent enthusiastic about the site really highlighted the benefits of holding a social media surgery as part of a larger, community event. Many of the people I met on Saturday wouldn’t have come to something solely about social media or using a community website, but by being part of a fun and informal family day we were able to teach in a relaxed, ‘non-training’ atmosphere and get past preconceptions they may have had.
So now I’m all for a social media tent becoming a staple part of local fetes and fairs. Next time you’re organising a community festival or gathering, think about making space for a couple of laptops next to the face-painters. It’s a great way of raising awareness of a new hyperlocal site and you’d be helping people discover something new, get involved with local activity and carry on communicating long after the party’s over.
I was pleasantly surprised to discover an old friend from my home town of Cardiff, photographer Dan Green, has started a brilliant local photography blog Big Little City – ‘a window into the lives of those people who help give cities their unique character’. The site was born out of his first major exhibition, Cardiff Characters, which he has developed in his online space with pictures of people who epitomise Cardiff and reflect its ‘unique vibrancy and soul’.
The focus will be on highlighting communities and the people who make them tick be they a rugby star, a bus driver, a lollipop man or lady, an artist, waitress, café owner, musician, dancer, or eccentric.
It got me thinking about how people really make a place, and most communities have a few characters that you couldn’t imagine being without – be it because they’re local heroes, a bit eccentric, or just that they and what they do is such a long-standing local institution.
And then there’s Mr Ralph. Mr Ralph is something of a Digbeth institution, invariably found in one of the many Digbeth pubs, peddling customised goods from his battered old suitcases. Rumour has it he holds the last existing Birmingham pedlars license. I found Mr Ralph quite fascinating so I wrote a blog post about him after he kindly agreed to it, including photos of him and his Mr Ralph branded goods.
Do you have any key local characters like this? People who really make your neighbourhood what it is? Talk to them, see if there’s a way you could present them and the great stuff they do online somehow – be it with photography, film or just writing about them with passion. Perhaps they’d like to contribute themselves, either on a regular basis or as a one-off with a story they want to tell. Try getting them and their voice onto your site, either by letting them speak for themselves or, if they’re a little shy, by telling as much of their story as they’re comfortable with. That way your site starts talking about ‘who’, as well as about ‘where’ and ‘what’.
By far the most inspirational talk I heard at Open Tech 2009 conference was from Robin, a member of Space Hijackers, who spoke about ‘Community and Democracy in Hijacked Space’. I’d recommend you listening again if you have the time.
It was a great to hear about play being used as a surprisingly effective and disruptive method of protest. Space Hijackers, who attempt to ‘corrupt the culture of architecture, and destroy the hierarchies that exist’ by staging hilariously anarchic happenings, got me thinking about putting the fun back into local campaigning, which many hyperlocal sites find themselves involved with.
Obviously, justifiable anger and reasoned argument about issues causing serious damage to the community is a great and worthwhile thing, I’m not denying that. It’s just that sometimes you’re met with problems so ridiculous the best option may be to fight like with like.
For instance, Birmingham pub The Rainbow has recently faced closure after Birmingham City Council served a Noise Abatement Order in response to complaints from one lone tenant, who lives in an apartment block built long after the pub was. The council seeing fit to threaten this renowned live music venue because of one complainant, but aspiring to develop the area’s cultural character in their Big City Plan, seemed kafkaesque enough to warrant a game. After hearing Robin speak, I was pondering on some noisy, twisted version of musical statues, or a loud complaints choir outside the council house.
The fun doesn’t necessarily have be physical, you can have it in your online space too. Keep Digbeth Vibrant do a great job of tempering their obvious frustration with Birmingham City Council Environmental Health, with quirky creations like the spoof Stella advert above and The Digbeth Whisperer newspaper.
On my site Digbeth is Good, when Birmingham City Council Leader Mike Whitby commandeered a Big City Plan public consultation bus from my neighbourhood for a photoshoot on the other side of town, I initially responded with righteous indignation. My emails and calls to the press office were met with a wall of silence until the fantastic local satire site Lolitics helped to bring it to a wider audience. Soon after a lolled image of Mike Whitby appeared, closely followed by several of a walrus bemoaning the loss of his bus, I received an apologetic statement from Director of Planning and Regeneration Clive Dutton. The increasing amount of attention from other sources the incident was getting seemed to make them realise ignoring me was not making me go away.
So next time you’re met with local plans, politics or problems that would be funny if they weren’t so angering, perhaps just try highlighting the funny. Point out the silly and match it. The results this approach gets from The Man may be limited, as he’s not known for his sense of humour, but it will make engaging with the issue much more fun for your readers, and give you a bit of light relief from feeling just plain mad.
This documentary of one man’s journey into the derelict Birmingham Battery building is one of the best YouTube films I’ve ever seen. Not because of the production skills of creators Living Proof Films (great though they are), but because of the quite emotional narration. You really do see inside the iconic building from the photographer’s perspective:
You begin to see the building as having a life of its own. It has characteristics and charms, like a person does. I must admit, I felt an attraction to the Birmingham Battery.
Although you do learn some things about the building whilst watching it, you are not left feeling you’ve been told all its facts and figures, instead you go on quite an intimate journey with the narrator and learn how he feels about the space.
Expressing a personal preference like this is far from a bad thing – buildings and spaces are not only special because of their architectural or scenic merit, they become special to people because of the responses they illicit or what happens within them.
For instance, many born and bred Brummies I know get quite nostalgic when walking past Snobs nightclub, a nondescript building which contained many a night of youthful abandon and coming-of-age episodes. During a recent pub conversation no sooner had one person mentioned Snobs than everyone else enthusiastically chipped in with their stories. It ended with plans to take a group trip there, to share more memories that walking through the nightclub might bring to mind. That’s the great thing about expressing your reactions to a shared space like that – others will be compelled to join in the conversation with their own tales about it.
Jon Bounds highlighted the importance of sharing personal stories about spaces when he created his Campaign for Real Heritage blue stickers, encouraging us to see that what we feel is important about a place holds as much value as the National Trust’s seal of approval, and should be duly marked:
‘…the real people have history too. It deserves recognition, YOUR history deserves a blue plaque.’
Ben Whitehouse spoke of creating a tour of alternative Birmingham landmarks, asking for suggestions of stories rather than traditional tourist spots.
I’d like to put together a list of places around the city (preferably the city centre) that hold personal resonances for people who’ve visited Birmingham, people who live, work and play here.
I’ve been running my own hyperlocal blog Digbeth is Good for just over a year now and, although it initially just contained local news, events and reviews, as my confidence grew it also unashamedly became my own personal journey through the area. But I found readers reacted rather well to this, sometimes responding in kind with their own take on things. For instance, an early post about Guardoggy prompted Bobbie Gardner to comment with her encounters of the dog.
So don’t be afraid to get personal with your site, and convey to readers your own reaction to the area as well as news and infomation about it. You never know, it may encourage readers to chip in with their own stories and your site could become more than an information hub, it could be a place where a community feels free to express itself.
Jack Wallington from loveclapham.com talks to TAL about building his site.
I’ve lived in Clapham for most of my adult life (so far!) and like most people running local sites, became disappointed at the quality of the local press and the lack of online representation for the vibrant Clapham community. LoveClapham.com was born!
Setting up the site was the easy part, involving a couple of weekends to set up Wordpress and create a design I was happy with. The hard work started with the creation of content and getting the local community involved.
One of my personal priorities was to help local shops, restaurants and bars survive the biggest recession we’ve ever known – it would be a terrible loss for the area to be overrun with just known brands. I don’t charge local businesses to promote things on the site as long as the residents benefit from it too. However, getting local businesses involved has been incredibly difficult. I’ve launched the Clapham Awards 2009 as an incentive to help awareness and to reward them.
Other things we’ve tackled in the site’s short life are reporting on major developments and raising awareness of a campaign by residents of Clapham Junction to stop oversized tower blocks. Clapham also has many large events throughout the year, like music festivals. Love Clapham provides a guide to all of these events including travel, nearby amenities etc.
Another thing I really wanted to do with the site was open up channels of communication. In London too many people have issues but don’t know how to deal with them. Top of my list of things to do was to meet and interview members of the local council and other important organisations. It’s too easy to criticise councils, but we’re lucky to have passionate councillors in Lambeth, I’d rather be a conduit to work with them than against them.
My top tips for setting up a local site are:
Design. Content is undoubtedly king, but I think it’s important to make the site look lively and exciting too. Not over the top, but although we’re discussing serious issues, it doesn’t mean a site has to look serious too.
Write about the area and local issues – find out what matters to other people and get them involved. Be fun with it, again, there will be serious issues, but local communities can be fun!
Make sure you’re listed in search engines like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! (there’s a lot more to search, but listing is the first step).
Tell all your friends about the site, and ask them to tell their friends.
The likes of Twitter and Facebook are indispensible at reaching out to people – starting a Twitter account or Facebook page isn’t enough though, you have to seek out and start conversations with people. I found Twitter the easiest, because you can search for your local area (e.g. “Clapham”) and then find people in the area that way.
Get out and about! I spent an entire weekend delivering hundreds of home printed leaflets to local businesses. You might not get a massive response, but at least it’s free.
Interview important local people. It’s relatively easy, but extremely high value content. It also opens up a dialogue with the organisation you’ve interviewed.
Local sites are fairly cheap, but there’s still a cost to buying a domain and hosting. I highly recommend adding Google Adsense to your site (https://www.google.com/adsense/). You can change the layout and colour so they don’t look too intrusive and while you won’t make your millions with them, you will cover the cost of hosting across the year.
There’s some great innovation out there in hyperlocal publishing in both content and technology. Talk About Local wants to showcase and support that innovation. So we have created hyperlocal labs (actually it’s just a web page with some bright ideas on it…) and our first project goes live today.
As our first project Jon Bounds has created a customisable hyperlocal news aggregator for Birmingham’s local sites. You can read about the pipes based aggregator here and Jon explains how you can do it for your area.
Other small projects will follow over the coming months – any bright ideas, or if you have seen anything good send it in to info@talkaboutlocal.org
Rubbish and tipping is a prime issue for an ultra local site. It is a simple information problem – if you know where the litter is and can tell people, especially the council, it will usually get cleared up. This was a basis for starting my own community site in Kings Cross.
Reporting stuff to the council is often much harder than it should be (count the number of clicks needed here). Especially in urban areas, a good ultra local site will have details on its front page of the local councils’ service for reporting street or public space problems – phone line, email and weblink for getting broken things on the street fixed or trash cleared up. In some areas this can be a complex exercise with differing layers of government and multiple phone lines in the council. Readers often appreciate you re-organising information and setting it out from the customers point of view.
But you can also use and link to the excellent fixmystreet.com website. Fixmystreet will send details to any council and cuts through the complex layers of government and bureaucracy by giving you one place to report problems. It can give an RSS feed direct to your website of people reporting things in your area – as I have in kings cross. (I declare an interest in having helped set fixmystreet up)
People want to read about crime – mainly to be reassured it won’t happen to them. Every Council ward in England and Wales should now have a Safer Neighbourhoods Team and a Panel that gives the team direction. This is a return to the old school Dixon of Dock Green approach. I am a member of my Safer Neighbourhood Panel – it is a remarkable experience to sit down with your local sergeant, the constables and the police community support officers, discuss problems and set their priorities for the coming months. I like this post from We love Larkhall on the SNP – not least for the superb poster I have borrowed above.
As crime and fear of crime has sadly become a national obsession, which makes it a grim but necessary source of material for an ultra local website – you can keep people informed about what is going on, help the police communicate (something they aren’t naturals at) and provide links for the community to online police material. Just Google up your local police force and their site front page normally has a link to a Safer Neighbourhoods page. This will often have a phone number and a direct email that you can link to or provide in a permanent side bar or little text box on your own page. Brixton SNP has its own blog here. Otherwise the internet landscape for SNPs and SNTs is errrr, diverse – the police seem to have gone for an unplanned ‘thousand flowers’ approach (see here)
People also cover warnings about criminal activity that come around all communities by email and text (though check a little first to see if it well founded). It is possible to get some striking images – like this one sent in by my councillor or this one of a moped fire – when i see smoke in the neighbourhood i grab the mobile and start dialling 999, grab a camera and run for the scene while i go through the operator screening process. The urban area I write about has many big yellow incident boards – a photo of one accompanied by writing up the details and appeal or witnesses can help the problem and makes for a striking post.
