Notes from the Big Society Research Workshop

Last week I took part in a workshop hosted by Lancaster University and the University of Central Lancashire to look at some of the issues around community development and technology. It was the first in a series of four themed workshops bringing together academics and non-academics from a range of disciplines to collect together relevant research in one place. I should add that the research was non-political – a point which seems to need re-iterating due to the use of the term ‘Big Society’ in the title which now seems tainted with a particular ideology in some circles.

I’m sure many of the ideas/themes discussed will be on the agendas of other groups and organisations up and down the UK, so this blog post is intended to capture some of my notes from the two days. Widening the circle of debate in this area would seem to be a productive move but I’m certainly not going to attempt to draw conclusions at this point.

Two of the identified research areas that particularly struck a chord with me;

1. How can the value of a community project, intervention or technology be assessed?

Underlying all the work being done across the country for these so-called Big Society initiatives is a need to be able to quantify some of the activities being proposed.

The diagram above shows a prototype for a Social Innovation Scorecard which the group I was part of came up with. We were looking at the research question: What is the evidence of benefits for social innovation?

By using the sliders at the top of the page, the idea is that different weighting of measures identified as important could be demonstrated through the visualisation.

2. How do we ensure that people who don’t want to be, or can’t be, involved in technology are not disadvantaged?

The group looking at this attempted to start identifying people who aren’t engaged such as those who can’t for various reasons such as disability, poor rural connections etc. and those how won’t such as people who don’t see the relevance or who are part of a system that already works for them.

Some interesting ideas ensued including having street champions to keep people connected and the importance of having a central space in the community for gatherings/conversations.

Other questions considered during the two days; What is the role of technology? What are the guidelines that already exist?

Some of the work being carried out involves identifying existing research in this field. The following are a few which would seem particularly relevent to those of us involved in community journalism;

Further reading
Networked Neighbourhoods. Hugh Flouch 2010.
Contested Worlds. Martin Philips
But we knew that already – a study of the relationship between volunteering and social capital. Davies A 2001.
‘Bespoke’ increasing social inclusion through community journalism. Egglestone P, Rogers J 2010