Hyperlocal highlights: LoveTees, crowdfunding, surviving and learning

This week saw us celebrate with some of the good folk of Teesside who we’ve been working with to tell the world more about the great cultural life of their locality.

It’s been a fun few months during which this group (and others) have held photography challenges, created videos, held the first Twitterthon and many more activities aimed at artists and art lovers since the initial launch at our annual unconference last autumn.

They’re now the proud owners of a blog which is soon to be upgraded to a fully-designed magazine style website (sneak preview of how that looks below) as well as getting active on the Twitter stream @LoveTeesMe.

We’ve been working on this in partnership with Emma Bearman of Leeds’ CultureVultures, and been supported by the Arts Council.

It has been inspiring to hear the group use words like ‘joy, ‘fun’, ‘knowledge’, ‘honest’ and ‘cool’ about their local cultural scene.

Sometimes people attach the tag ‘hyperlocal’ exclusively to news-based sites and blogs, but the cultural life of a place can just as easily (maybe more effectively?) define a place and help people to connect and get the most from their locality. We’re sure you’ll all want to welcome LoveTees to the extended Talk About Local family.

Hyperlocal survival

As was widely tweeted earlier this week, Nesta has just published this Survivor’s Guide, written by the Kentishtowner publication. Passing on their experience of moving a largely cultural site toward sustainability could be invaluable. It’s worth reading Damian Radcliffe’s post on this initiative and also Cardiff University’s Mooc on his blog here. (William and I have been very pleased to provide some input to those classes too.)

Crowdfunding for sustainability?
In the quest for sustainability, crowdfunding’s been a big conversation point recently. I joined Ian Wylie of JesmondLocal and the Northern Correspondent along with Adam Cantwell-Corn and Alon Aviram from The Bristol Cable to talk about the issue. You can listen to, or download the Podcast here.