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.

Digbeth is Good: Week of Breakfasts

If you are going out to eat, be it for breakfast, lunch, a spot of light dinner or a slap-up meal, why not write a review of it for your community website, like Ventnor Blog did for The Hillside Hotel?

London SE1 encourages restaurant reviews from its forum members, and collates these into a map of restaurants in the area.

If you have a little cluster of eateries in the area, why not do a little pit-stop tour of them all, such as I did for Digbeth is Good with a coronary inducing Week of Breakfasts in a selection of some of the many local cafes.

Last but by no means least, be mindful of where you stand legally if you intend to give somewhere a poor or negative review, double check what you’ve written is clean, reasonable and legal by reading our simple guide to resources on defamation before hitting the publish button!

A great way to pull in local content for your site is to do a regular search of YouTube for your postcode or area name and see if there are any relevant videos on there that you can embed into a post on your website.

I subscribe to searches for YouTube videos tagged ‘Digbeth’ (via RSS) and this comes up with some great little films that I simply wouldn’t have come across otherwise, such as this video of someone playing the organ in my local church.  When I let the organist know I’d put his film onto my website by commenting, he came along to Digbeth is Good and left a nice comment on the post.

When new community website The Moretonhampstead Hub searched YouTube for local videos, they found this lovely clip of the local school choir singing.

You might also find using YouTube in this way means you’re pulling in content from young people, who often upload videos taken with their cameras or mobile phones.  I loved this film of night out at the Custard Factory and the young film-makers loved that I bought it to a wider audience.

William Perrin of Kings Cross Environments found there was such an abundance of clips relating to Kings Cross, he created the dedicated website Kings Cross TV to house them – splitting them into channels such as Books, Current Affairs and Harry Potter at Kings Cross.  William’s discovered some real local gems here, but my personal favourite is this one of a Flash Snog at St Pancras.

'Dove is in the air' at Parwich.org

A little local wildlife can bring a lovely bit of colour to a community website.  Take a look around you – are there flowers in bloom, ducklings waddling along the canal towpath or a pet kitty prowling the neighbourhood?

Kings Cross Environments Springwatch - Collier Street blossom

Take a photo of the local fauna and flora and put them onto your website to really warm the hearts of your readers.  You might even get a few comments along the lines of ‘Awwwwwww’ or some photo contributions of their furry friends for your troubles.

Spring on Oakfield Road, Birmingham B29

Jane B at Parwich.org is obviously a keen ornithologist and often posts some lovely pictures of birds onto the village website.  William Perrin at Kings Cross Environments has made a feature of local wildlife with ‘Springwatch’, posts featuring the spring coming into bloom.

Where Are The Best Bluebells On The Island? asks Ventnor Blog

If you’re in a particularly urban area, don’t think that means there isn’t local wildlife to feature.  Are there local parks or community gardens?  Is there an abundance of pets, like the large population of cats in Moseley, Birmingham that spawned Meowseley.com?  Or a mad guard-dog like Digbeth is Good’s Guardoggy?

Digbeth is God's Guardoggy

And it’s not as if the wildlife needs to be alive, in the strictest sense.  Something tells me the mole Karen Strunks found in Wake Green Park is likely to do any serious damage to the estate’s gardens.  In fact, I think most of the animals featured on the Digbeth is Good Faunography Trail map of Digbeth animal life were either sculpted or painted.

Mole found in Wake Green Park!

So keep your camera on you and a keen eye out for colourful blossoms, feathered friends and cold noses to get some lovely content for your site that will really put a smile on your readers’ faces!

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.

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.
• The Birmingham Irish Heritage Group contribute regularly to Digbeth is Good, which helps bring their activity and a taste of their events to wider audience.
• 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!

We have now closed the nominations for the Talk About Local UnAwards categories and will make final decisions as to which of the categories we are going to open up for nominations over the Christmas & New Year break.

The highly coveted UnAwards will be presented at a ceremony which will take place a little later than we first said and somewhere other than the West Midlands.

We have been speaking to a sponsor for the next Talk About Local UnConference and we are currently investigating some venues in the the North of England for an event in the first quarter of 2010.  Once we have got a confirmed venue we will give you more details.  The UnAwards will be presented at a glittering ceremony after the UnConference.

All that remains is for William, Nicky, Clare and I to wish you a very happy Christmas & New Year.

Busker by Dan Green

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.

I can think of few from my neck of the woods, Digbeth, off the top of my head.  John Tighe, landlord of my local The Spotted Dog, who won Birmingham it’s Not Shit’s Brummie of the Year 2007 for his fight against a Noise Abatement Order.  His finest hour on Digbeth is Good is a film of him getting his head shaved for charity. Adam Crossley, author of Keep Digbeth Vibrant and Chair of the Digbeth & Highgate Residents’ Association, is always organising great local events with John and starting up quirky local websites.

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’.