Bournville Village Notice Board

News from the notice boards is a great new regular feature that Dave Harte has introduced on the Bournville Village website:

One of the best ways to find out what’s happening in and around Bournville is to take time to read the notice boards on the Village Green. We’ll be making this a regular category on the website. Here’s some upcoming events and courses we’ve learned about…

Are there communal noticeboards in your area where people tend to put up posters about local events, courses and lost cats?  Think about posting updates from the information on them as a regular feature on your community website.

Something I’ll be keeping an eye on over the next few weeks is News Dash, a Say Hello project produced by Meshed Media.

News Dash is partnering up four community groups with journalists and social media experts to help them tell their stories.

The teams will have two weeks to complete the challenge with a simple brief: find the best stories and present them in the most effective way.

The teams might use blogs, social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or Youtube, or more traditional methods to present the stories. What they use is up to them, but the aim remains the same, to get the stories out there.

The three community groups recruited so far are all very different, which should make for a good variety of content:

Friends of Brandwood End Cemetery – ‘arose from a deep genuine community interest in maintaining this historic landscaped Victorian Cemetery, which is also a valued green open space within an urban setting.’  This group bought to mind the Friends of Redcar Cemetary, who developed their community website project through talk about local and created the awesome Digital Cemetary, where readers can virtually visit graves.

iCycle – ‘More than a cycle shop’, iCycle is part of Queen Alexandra College for people with visual impairment and other disabilities.  The college trains mature students to become cycle repair and maintenance mechanics, who gain work experience working in the iCycle shop.

Blaze FM – a community radio station for Birmingham, Solihull and the West Midlands that helps promote local community groups.

It will be really interesting to see the different stories that emerge from these groups, and how they are chosen to be presented.

If you would like to get involved in News Dash, either by putting your organisation forward to be used in the project or by simply telling them your story, visit their Get Involved page.

Today, the Birmingham Mail lifted the covers off  Birmingham Mail Communities, a hyperlocal area of the Mail website which we hope will bring us much closer to the city’s hyperlocal community.

We’ve been working on it for about a year and were determined to do something different. As I’ve said elsewhere, I’ve been convinced for a while that that hyperlocal sites and traditional media can work together – often, both share a similar goal. It’s just a case of finding a way to make it work.

While it would be arrogant to say we’ve found that way, hopefully we’re taking a step forward.

As Will Perrin has said elsewhere, the most important thing is that those working with us feel they’re getting something out of it which justifies taking part.

Through talking at length to people like Will, Nicky Getgood from Digbeth is Good and Paul Bradshaw, we’ve hopefully come up with a plan which appeals to people.

In return to allowing the Mail to use content in print (with correct links and credits), hyperlocal sites taking part can have access to Mail pictures (the ones the company owns the copyright for) and get prominent feeds to hyperlocal site content on the Mail site.

A fund from the Birmingham Mail Charitable Trust, the Mail’s charity which donates money to good causes in the city, will be allocated on suggestions from the hyperlocal and community sites taking part.

The Mail has also offered to run four workshops a year for the hyperlocal community – if those taking part feel there is something which would be useful for them.

We ran a trial with Lichfield Blog a few weeks ago, placing content from the blog in the Mail, with credits to the authors and links back to the blog. The reaction on Philip John’s blog was interesting – but convinced us that we’re going in the right direction.

There will probably be two main criticisms of what we’re doing. Some journalists will say this is proof hyperlocal sites will put reporters out of jobs. Others might point to the fact we’re not offering payment for content.

The first criticism simply isn’t true, and while it’s true that we aren’t paying for hyperlocal content, we hope we’re offering enough in return to make it worthwhile for all those who have signed up so far.

The parts we’ve announced today are just the start. We have ideas around collaborative data, commercial opportunities and shared investigations.

For now however, this is our plan – hopefully we’re on the right track.

Yesterday I was working at the second of two, day-long workshops for Retooled.  Retooled is a project begun by a group of ex-Rover MG employees who were made redundant when the company went bust 5 years ago and aims to become a resource for those facing or going through redundancy:

We believe the best advice is contained within real people’s experiences, not in official support packs. We also realised that no matter what your job or industry, lots of us do go through similar emotions when we’re made redundant.

Our aim is to grow Retooled into a really useful resource for anyone around the world who is going through redundancy, or who is supporting a friend or relative in this situation.

To work with the team on building the Retooled website, Antonio Gould and Lizzie Ostrom (who are producing the project on behalf of Maverick) pulled together a group of digital mentors to help with web development, graphic design, photography, content and social media.  I was their ‘social media person’, which just meant I introduced the group to some simple ways in which they can use the web to organise and communicate, with quite a few hyperlocal websites serving as examples of how to use easy social media tools to tell a community’s stories.

During yesterday’s session Retooled team member and ex-Rover employee Bob Oakley told us a particularly interesting story, about a quick-witted secretary who collected the names and details of everyone within her department before the factory closed for good.  The information she gathered effectively kept the community that had built up around her department connected and proved to be enormously useful – Bob himself said that he never would have found out he was entitled to an early pension (‘It was never announced’) unless someone he was in touch via the contact list had told him.

Community or ‘hyperlocal’ websites can be just as effective when based around communities of work as well as neighbourhoods, especially if the workplace that binds those people together is under threat.  Everyone on the Retooled team agreed that their network of contacts was invaluable to them when going through redundancy and looking for a new job.  A community website for the workplace could help keep that network intact after employment, and would be really useful in preventing isolation amongst workforces facing large-scale job losses.

Farnham Allotments

Try to feature some information and news about your local green spaces, be they parks, gardens or allotments.

Last August Clare White wrote a blog post that featured some of Britain’s garden blogs, such as the Patient Gardener’s Weblog from Worcestershire.  Are there any keen local gardeners that might like to contribute to your community site by writing about their hobby? If your neighbourhood has more than a few green-fingered residents you could build a feature around the best gardens in your area.

Oxford Road Community Garden

Are there any allotments near you?  These are thriving little communities in themselves and there are plenty websites out there if you’re looking for inspiration in writing about them.  Welsh Girl’s Allotment is one girl’s quite personal site ‘detailing my quest for an allotment, its cultivation and hopefully bountiful crops’, but there are allotment sites that serve their small communities, such as Farnham Allotments, which publishes news for all allotment holders – events such as a Growing Vegetables Winter Lecture and notices to advertise Free Horse Manure.

Is there a community garden in your area?  Perhaps one or some of the people involved in its development would like to chart its progress online.  Oxford Road Community Garden, a garden created with Section 106 money from local development, has a simple website with photos and posts that keeps everyone updated on latest news and activity and what’s growing on the site.

Talk about what’s going on in your local park.  Highbury Park Friends in Birmingham publish their newsletters and points of interest on their simple WordPress website, including the above charming film of the pond’s ducks.  Kings Cross Environment has a dedicated category for the local Bingfield Park, which features the hard-fought War on Squirrels.

Normand Park Trees, London W14

Is there a cause or campaign concerning your local green spaces your community website could help with? W14 & SW6 London held a campaign to Save Normand Park Trees from felling – website manager Annette posted a template preservation order request letter along with the relevant council officer’s name and email address, which made supporting the cause as simple as copying and pasting into an email.

Kingsley House Gardens

Another talk about local website for Kingsley House, set up by The Kingsley House Tenants Association to try and improve the  Bristol residential blocks, concentrates on the particularly sorry state of their council-maintained landscaped gardens.

Have a think about how you can include the local green patches and the people who help cultivate them into your community website, and if there’s anything you could do to help preserve, protect and develop them by talking about what they bring to the area in your online space.

Newcastle Rocks: Saturday morning prep at The Strand

For some simple and effective content, try posting some photos of your local area on your website, these can either be taken by yourself, contributed to you or something you’ve found elsewhere online.

Photos can be a local landscape, landmark or just something that really encapsulates local life, such as the above photo of Saturday morning prep at The Strand on the new Newcastle Rocks website (Northern Ireland).

BiNS Friday Photo: German Market by Karen Strunks

Birmingham it’s Not Shit made a nice little feature of local photos with its regular Friday Photo slot from photographer Karen Strunks.  Karen is also creator of the 4am Project – another way to gather some interesting images for your site by taking photos at the magical time of 4am!

Don’t worry too much about the quality or taking brilliantly artistic shots, no-one’s expecting you to become David Bailey, just tell simple stories with a pictures. But if you’re not a keen photographer yourself maybe you could ask for contributions from your readers, as many might be keen to bring their photo collection to a local audience?  Is there a Flickr group in your area, a little like Birmingham Flickrmeets Group, which holds monthly photo walks? If so, try joining and talking to its members to see if they might be interested in working with you on your website and publishing some of their images of the area on there.

Camp Hill Flyover, Birmingham, 1970 by Lady Wulfrun

Search Flickr regularly for interesting local photos – if they are not available for you to use under Creative Commons (follow link for explanation), contact the photographer and ask if they’d mind you using it.  As your site is a non-commercial venture for the community, nine times out of ten the answer will be yes, as long as you attribute the photographer.

And don’t forget to look for some older photos of your area to get reader reminiscing on how things used to look!  When I found the above photo of the long-gone Camphill flyover and published it on Digbeth is Good, people commented with their memories of driving over it.  People may have interesting old photos hidden away – you might like to look into scanning and posting those online to bring them to a wider audience?

So get busy with your cameras, ask those around you to help out by doing the same and start looking at what’s already being published online to add some lovely imagery to your site and really give your readers an eyeful!

Out of the Box exhibition

Try writing about any visual art that is on display in your area, such as in a local art gallery, museum or arts centre.  This could be a simple notice of a forthcoming art exhibition, as Ventnor Blog did with the Out of the Box photographic exhibition at Dimbola Lodge.

The Monolith

Or, if you or a contributor to your site visit the exhibition, why not take some photos and write about your perceptions and thoughts on the pieces?  You don’t need of be any kind of expert in art to have a reaction to it, I certainly wasn’t when I described a piece of abstract video art I saw in a Digbeth gallery as ‘Monolith Goes On Holiday’.

If you feel you need to know a bit more about the exhibition than is on the programme or factsheet, don’t be afraid to ask the gallery workers, they often enjoy the chance to have a conversation.

Sheep On The Road, Belfast

Of course, not all art will be tucked away in galleries or museums.  Are there any interesting or impressive pieces of public art where you live?  You could publish a picture with some information, which would delight readers who have often passed it and wondered what the story was behind it.  Alan in Belfast didn’t stop at just a write-up of one piece of public art in his city, but did a whole tour that took in various sculptures and cathedral spires.

Bishopthorpe War Memorial

Perhaps there’s a piece of public art that has historical significance, such as the local war memorial. Bishopthorpe.net wrote a lovely post about the recent cleaning of the Bishopthorpe War Memorial.  There is also a very touching post featuring the men on the war memorial and one’s life story.

As One: Welcome to Brum

It could be that there is art in your local area which is not really meant to be there at all – street artists have used Digbeth’s walls as a canvas, which made for a nice post about one of the most prolific culprits ‘As One’ on Created in Birmingham.

Take a look around your area and see what local art and sculpture you can feature on your website.  If you have local art galleries, museums and arts centres, see if they will put you on their press release list, so you are emailed information and images for forthcoming exhibitions. When you visit the shows, be sure to take your camera, pick up a factsheet and have a good long chat with the gallery workers to give your write-ups some serious insight. And don’t be afraid to talk about your personal interpretation – people like a human touch and even if they disagree with you, at least you’re starting a discussion on a local issue!

Check out the local council website for information on public art (Birmingham City Council have a dedicated web page), or give them a call to see if you can find out more.  If the artwork you’re reviewing is some graffiti or street art, try searching for the tag name to see if the artist have a website, blog or Flickr account.

cream teas and handmade crafts on The Parish Post

Often local people will try to get the word out about their news, event or call for help by putting up posters in the area on places such as lampposts, bus stops and notice boards in local pubs, clubs, churches, foyers, etc.

Missing cat on Meowseley

You could help bring the poster to a wider audience by simply taking a photo of it and publishing it on your community website, or merely by writing down the information and typing that up in a post if you do not have a camera to hand when you see it.

Dublin Gospel Choir poster on Drimnagh is Good

There will undoubtedly be posters up in your area about a range of topics, such as:

Lost property/pet/person

• I put this notice on Digbeth is Good when I saw the poster for a missing man in the area.
• Birmingham local pet website Meowsley publishes lost cat notices it finds.

Advertising an event, such as a music gig or community meeting

• If you see an event or gig poster, write a post about it, just like The Parish Post have done for an afternoon of Cream Teas and Handmade Crafts at a local farm.
• If you see a notice for a local community meeting then post that up too, like Karen Strunks did when she saw an Open Forum would be taking place on her estate Wake Green Park in the residents’ newsletter.

Merely sharing a piece of locally relevant information

• When someone in W14 London saw a sign for a local office closure, they let residents know by posting the notice W14 & SW6 community website.

A bit of local history or heritage on your site makes for some lovely content that often gets people reminiscing in your comments box.  You could try including an element of this in your site by:

Talking to a local resident or ex-resident about their memories of the area and publishing this online, either as a film or sound recording, or simple write-up of what was said if you do not have recording equipment.  Above is an interview of pub landlady Anne Tighe talking of her memories of Birmingham, which was published on Digbeth is Good.

Do you have any old local newsletters or parish magazines lying around? You could try publishing a picture of these online, like Hayes People’s History have done with the Clarion Club Newspaper.

Do you have, or can you find any old photos of the area? Post these on your website as Pauline Sargent has done on Drimnagh is Good: ‘Drimnagh in the Old Days’.  Ask your readers if they might have any information or memories associated with the image to encourage feedback.

If you are going out to enjoy a local play or concert, why not write a review of it on your community website?  Take a look at these links for inspiration:

• Pits ‘n’ Pots’ Tony Walley reviews the Stoke Christmas panto Dick Whittington.
• The author of Birmingham arts website More Canals Than Venice gives us her thoughts on a new art exhibition.
• A review of a Battle of the Bands competition gig on Ventnor Blog.

Try contacting the venue or organisers beforehand to see f they might be able to arrange a complimentary ticket for you – you don’t ask, you don’t get!