Knowle West Media Centre meets Drop Media
January 22, 2007 Posted by Roz in : Digital Challenge , add a comment18 October 2006
I joined Sandra and Dani in a ‘Drop Media’ session they were running with young people. The group of young people, aged 9 – 12, were all very busily engaged in different activities. I observed the group as they rehearsed a video they were making about the food that they eat at school, and the lack of chips that is currently causing much debate. After the rehearsal they returned to the script and the storyboard to refine the plan and the content for the video. The young people told me that they enjoyed using the camera, and / or being in front of it.
Other young people were writing scripts for different videos that they wanted to make, and others were making music and images.
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Knowle West Media Centre meets the Knowle West Walkers’ Group
Posted by Roz in : Digital Challenge , add a comment30 October 2006
I went to the Health Park to meet with the walkers’ group. The group had finished their walk and were sitting in small groups at the Health Park café having their lunch. Caron introduced me to different members of the group.
The first people I spoke to were Irene Luxton and Alice Pearce. The first thing they told me was that they didn’t want to lose their local post office. We talked about how such local spaces are being closed down as a consequence of more people using the internet to do things like buy their car tax. Irene and Alice thought that the amount of local community communication that takes place when you just bump into people at the post office, when collecting your pension or what ever, was really valuable and that it would be difficult for such communication to be replaced, as it is often through chance encounters that we think to pass on certain information. They also were concerned that as pension books and similar mechanisms were outdated and no longer used, they need to remember numbers, which can be quite difficult. They said that the updating of such processes means that many people are left behind, for example, because they don’t all have a bank account. Even if people do have a bank account it is still very difficult to then get to your money once it’s been put in your account, because there are no banks or cash dispensing machines locally, so you would have to travel to get to the bank to get your money.
Irene and Alice said that they thought that one thing which really needs to be improved, especially if people are forced to travel to banks to get their money, is the bus service, across Bristol, and if there is any way that digital technology can improve the current situation that it be important to do so.
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Knowle West Media Centre meets James Edwards and Tony Monks
Posted by Roz in : Digital Challenge , add a comment15 November 2006
I met with James Edwards and Tony Monks. James is a Sports Development Officer and Tony is a Senior Sports Coach. Their jobs are about building relationships with disaffected young people using sport as a hook. However, their funding was originally focussed on sports activity, but due to changes in their funding they are now able to extend upon their remit, and therefore upon th type of work that they have already been doing using new media and linking with other local organisations and opportunities. James said that in effect, the way the funding is focussed has caught up with the way they were working, which is through a multi agency approach. He said that it is important that people work together to realise aims that are common, and that he has witnessed this happening increasingly in Knowle West, but that more support to ensure that it happens and to extend upon it was also important. James highlighted how, through working together, a range of interlinked opportunities and can be facilitated, sustaining involvement with local people and supporting them to develop their skills beyond one area or level. The more links there are the more able people are to identify the specific skills they want to realise and ways in which they can develop them.
James explained how he’d come to use new media through first using video. He explained how the young people he works with have made a video with him and KWMC called ‘Strength of Belief’ and that it is a very powerful film about a local football team who James works with. The video also maps the progress of the football team’s year. The team ended up getting to a final of a big tournament that was held at Bristol City Ground. James told me that there is a section at the beginning that is about setting the ground rules and that at the end young people talk about their experience, with one young man saying that what’s important is having a sense of belief, and trust in the (youth) workers. James explained that this is where the title comes from and how, by working in this way, whereby the title and the content of the film are led by the young people involved a meaningful involvement is established that can nurture a sustained engagement.
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Final bid submitted today
January 19, 2007 Posted by Clare in : Digital Challenge, Bristol, News, Connecting Bristol , 2 comments
Connecting Bristol’s final bid was submitted today to the Digital Challenge team in London.
Hand-made in Bristol, the bid was submitted in a specially designed box which also featured a poster of the city’s vision, an audio summary and a ten minute film.
An electronic version of the full bid and all of the enclosures can be found on the bid page.
Thank you all for your input and support during the last months. We will keep you updated on the bid’s progress and send out dates for the next Momentum group meeting soon.
Image: Stephen Hilton and Jane Porter set off to London with the bid, Evening Post