I'm involved in a new initiative to try and help maximise the potential of digital media for community engagement. In recent weeks I've been working with Simon Grice, Steven Feldman and Hugh Flouch (Harringay Online) to set up BeLocal Consulting, starting with a series of workshops. Here's the blurb:
BeLocal Consulting contributes to the community empowerment agenda by helping local authorities, community groups and citizens to exploit digital media around community issues.
With a combination of expertise in community development, new media and service management, we help local authorities through the following process:
- Understanding the issues
- Establishing partnerships and building a strategy
- Supporting implementation of the strategy
- Assessment and review.
The workshops are planned to take place as follows:
- 30 April 2009, London
- 6 May, Bristol
- 7 May, Birmingham
- 13 May, Leeds.
More details.
I like your pie and flow charts for this topic. I have found blogging (digital media) truly does make a difference in empowering citizens with their government.
In fact, I was thinking about this in my last community/governement interaction. I personally removed 570 pounds of trash from a neighborhood forest. I was spured on by this work, in part, because I knew my my hard work would be recognized by the readers of my blog and governement officials. Recognition empowers people and digital media is an empowering tool. Would I have done all this work with out my blog behind me? I'm not so sure. I hope my blog story will run off on the community to bring follow-through in keeping the forest clean.
Good luck on your study. My forest post can be found at http://redmondblog.org
Posted by: Bob Yoder | Monday, 16 March 2009 at 17:35