Connecting Bristol » Momentum Meeting 13.09.06

Momentum Meeting 13.09.06

September 13, 2006 Posted by Clare in : Digital Challenge, Events, Momentum , trackback

For anyone who couldn’t attend, slides from the Momentum Group meeting can be downloaded here.

Dick Penny (Watershed) kicked off the meeting by underlining the importance of the Momentum Group to the Connecting Bristol bid - a key factor being to keep intelligence flowing.

The story so far:
78 bids were submitted across the UK, 12 from the south west. 18 of these went through to a national panel, which comprised of representatives from nearly every department of government, led by DCLG. On 12 July, Bristol was announced as one of the 10 national winners.

The government have now launched www.digitalchallenge.gov.uk - A place to build on the responses to the digital challenge (shortlisted and not) to network best practise and share ideas.

This is also being encouraged between the shortlisted bids, who have had two joint meetings so far.

Bristol’s strength is the Momentum group, as this means we are local authority partnered, rather than led. There is a flavour/quality in our bid that is unique - a people centred approach.

Stephen Hilton took over to discuss what is required of Connecting Bristol now we are at the second stage.

The prize
Central Gov are contributing £3 million to the final prize and industry is committed to supplying £4million of in in-kind support. So Connecting Bristol needs to plan how best we can engage with industry both locally and nationally.

The structure
The Momentum group is key to the success of the bid. The Bid Development Group will put more time and energy into the actual drafting of the bid, and a small executive group has been created to ensure we work efficiently with the council. This is chaired by the Barbara Janke, leader of the council. Stephen Hilton has been seconded full time to developing the bid.

The actual bid will contain four areas of work:
Connectivity - led by Helen Bream of Bristol City Council, Education Network and Internet Services Manager at Bristol City Council which will create a strategy for connectivity across the city, join together infrastructure and lobby for investment.

Co-production - led by Dick Penny of Watershed, which will focus on five showcase neighbourhoods, each with a different flavour and focus, to empower those neighbourhoods with the capacity and skills to become co-commissioners of their own content and services, and then share information and skills to roll out their learning across the city.

Skills and knowledge - led by John Bradford of Futurelab, concentrating on advocacy, mentoring and sharing skills, including looking at the positive role young people can play in sharing their skills in the digital world with others, and pulling together existing activity to see how Connecting Bristol could add value and join up what is already going on.

Coordination is final area of work, led by Stephen Hilton which will capture, coordinate and structure what is happening elsewhere and ensure the sustainability of the bid.

How you can involved:
At this point I took over (Clare, Watershed) to plug reading and contributing to this website, getting involved with Electric December and organising your own meetings. Whether this be at your place of work, a community event or hi-jacking another meeting to give this a plug, we want you to help us get the word out there. So do let us know what support we might need to give you on this.

We are really keen to start a Connecting Bristol podcast to document, capture and share events, what people are up to and the development of the bid. David Aston from BBC has been seconded one day a week to help the bid so get in touch with him if you have any ideas around this.

Finally we will be looking to tender out a new project around online skills sharing and to recruit an admistartive post for the team in the next few weeks. Keep an eye out here for more news.

The evening ended with questions from Mary Breeze from Bristol city council’s social services who was keen to promote the needs of older people. Mary’s excellent Companion project is one of the projects on the Connecting Bristol case studies pages. And from Kevin O’Malley who cautioned against framing the bid too much around the existing activity that is already going on in the city.

Keep checking this site for ways to get involved, and the events section for forthcoming dates, which have now been published.