Ladders to the Cloud: Connected Communities Project

Prof. Chris Speed, Dr. Peter Matthews, Rebecca Bailey & Dr. Martin Phillips

Summary of the Ladders to the Cloud AHRC project funded under the Connected Communities theme.

Executive Summary

This paper reports on the design and development of a physical and virtual network that extends a practical enquiry into the role of social media, history and community journalism within and across communities. Initially developed in response to concepts of Big Society and Government 2.0 which offer selective interpretations of social networking for fostering better communities, the research developed critical technical strategies to support community engagement and empowerment through an engagement with local history, contemporary news and the reporting of events.

Based in the Edinburgh suburb of Wester Hailes, the team of academics, community organisations and local activists have been exploring the affordances of social media to construct 'bonds' and 'bridges' between and across existing people and groups. Design outputs include the installation of a four metre digital totem pole with QR codes that allow residents to connect to services and share resources, a CodeBook that supports guided social history walks from the Healthy Living Centre with associated social media resources, and the development of a community newspaper (online and offline) that integrates the many voices of the area and restores a local community newspaper that was lost to cutbacks.

Researchers and Project Partners

The project was led by Chris Speed (University of Edinburgh), with Peter Matthews, (Heriot Watt University), Rebecca Bailey and Philip Graham (RCAHMS), Martin Phillips, (University of Leicester), and Amadu Khan (University of Edinburgh). The project was undertaken in collaboration with Eoghan Howard, Wester Hailes community activist, Alan Farmer, Alison Reeves and Jennifer Jones (WHALE Arts Centre), Tracey Lee (West Edinburgh Time Bank), Roy Mccrone and Caroline Richards (Prospect Community Housing), Wester Hailes Health Agency, The Dove Centre and Gate 55.

1 Background

During 2011, “Community Web2.0:creative control through hacking” (http://www.communityhacking.org) project sought to explore whether concepts emerging in relation to the Internet could usefully be applied to understandings of off-line contemporary relations and practices. The project particularly focused upon the role of hacking as a characteristic of contemporary online practices and how this is mirrored in aspects of actual life within and across communities.

The project was largely based within the Wester Hailes area of Western Edinburgh, where a network of residents and community based organisations worked alongside the academic team to establish design methods that put into practice the theoretical framework that had been developed through the project.

Using storytelling as an initial method with which to investigate social practices, the team identified the principle of ‘writing back’ to a subject as a form of hacking. Subsequently the team ran a series of workshops that encouraged community members to ‘write’ their memories of the area on to photographs that were taken from the archives of a local newspaper. As a result of this formative work, the team (including the community partners) developed two design interventions for the area that would offer ‘write back’ facilities as constructive hacking platforms: firstly, a four metre carved totem pole featuring QR barcodes that would become gateways to cloud based material relevant to the location of the pole. People can scan one of the labelled tags and access and contribute to historical photographs, stories, video and audio clips. Secondly, the Wester Hailes "Code Book" is a 24 page A6 pocket booklet produced for use in conjunction with the local Health Agency's series of guided social history walks throughout the estate.

Aims of the project

At the point of closure the Community Web2.0 project had the totem pole carved but not installed and the code book ready for distribution. The Ladders to the Cloud project offered funding to install the pole, distribute the code book, develop a technological infrastructure for both systems and begin to foster content through community engagement.

Subsequently the Ladders to the Cloud project sought to achieve three primary aims:

1. Provide ICT and physical infrastructure – a single portal to a variety of local and national web resources (through their APIs) accessed through totem poles with QR codes and Wall Plaques with QR codes on buildings. These would provide physical read-write links for people to access archive material (including the RCAHMS and local history archives) and news stories about the neighbourhood and the ability for residents to add their own content.

2. Community development and research – the outcomes for the academic partners would be to understand if social history can be used to reimagine a community both for existing residents and throughout the wider city and the role social media can play in this. Firstly, as a community development tool and secondly to challenge the stigma associated with deprived neighbourhoods. To make Wester Hailes a “normal” neighbourhood with a “normal” history. 3. Foster a model for community journalism – through the mentoring and training of local residents in the use of media and digital skills and cross platform storytelling, the project aims to provide the Wester Hailes community with the facilities to recover the Sentinel community newspaper through the creation of their own content. Through the combined web / QR platform that manages the receipt of articles and classified ads as well as distribution, this community journalism could offer a process of personal and collective connection.

Design and implementation

Core to the Ladders to the Cloud project was the development of infrastructure to operate as a platform for community engagement. Through a series of design meetings at the outset of the project it was decided that the platform would consist of a range of physical components: 1. The totem pole, 2. The code book, 3. Wall plaques for buildings, and that all three would be linked across Wester Hailes to an online service that would come to be called the 4. Digital Sentinel.

1. The totem pole: designed by local residents and carved by a Scottish artist, the pole required additional work prior to installation including layers of weather proof coating and the laser cut QR codes attached. The installation of the pole was a vital but ambitious dimension to the project that took the team a great deal of time to achieve with meticulous planning requiring the support of community members, academics, contractors and the Edinburgh City Council planning departments. Ultimately the project team wildly underestimated how long it would take to install the pole and in the end it took place after the research project had actually finished.

Led by managers at WHALE Arts, Allan Farmer instigated the planning permission through Edinburgh City Council and the project was finally granted permission in May 2012. The process was delayed through local elections and the project was slowed significantly. By June, Alison Reeves (replaced Allan Farmer at WHALE) was able to secure installation of the pole from Morrison Construction Ltd. for no fee. During 2012 and 2013, Morrison’s were constructing the new Wester Hailes Healthy Living Centre as part of the Scottish Futures Trust Hub initiative, and were happy to install the pole as a social benefit if an engineer developed a method of installation and a risk assessment carried out. With an engineer commissioned in September the final installation method was drawn up and the Risk Assessment was carried out in October.

The pole was finally installed on 5th of December 2012, followed by a formal opening by the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, the Rt Hon Donald Wilson, on the 10th of December.

2. Code book

Designed through the Community Web2.0 project, the decision was made to distribute them through the Ladders to the Cloud project as the totem pole became a part of the Wester Hailes landscape. Throughout the summer of 2012 Eoghan Howard, community activist and local resident who led the design of the Code Book engaged with a series of community groups to take interested parties on short walks.

Eoghan worked with staff at the Wester Hailes Health Agency to develop content for the books and has updated this throughout the Ladders project: https://sites.google.com/a/whhealthagency.org.uk/home/physical-activities/walking- group2/social-history-walk-details-and-further-information

3. Off The Wall - wall plaques

Aware that funding further totem poles was ambitious, the community and project team became very interested in further ‘physical’ portals to the developing online system. One solution appropriate to the urban nature of Wester Hailes was the possibility of attaching wall plaques to existing buildings. The wall plaques were initially a local response to the more exotic English Heritage ‘Blue Plaques’ that highlight a connection between a famous historical person with an architectural location. Given the amount of change that Wester Hailes has seen over the past 40 years, the project plaques would offer local information that for many people represented a recent history of the place. The project team settled on the title of ‘Off the Wall’ and their development was led by Roy McCrone (Prospect Community Housing) and Eoghan Howard (Community activity / resident). Roy and Eoghan worked with Edinburgh College of Art graduate Kevin Allen to develop a design for the plaques. Each plaque was designed to feature a QR code that connects to a Facebook page containing historical information about the site. The Facebook content was developed by Philip Graham at Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) and allowed visitors to see historical photographs within the online image database ‘Canmore’ that is maintained by RCAHMS.

The project team had limited resources to develop actual wall plaques so a pilot was developed for the side of the Prospect Community Housing building and is awaiting commission and installation.

4. Digital Sentinel http://www.digitalsentinel.net

The name Digital Sentinel was coined with reference to the community newspaper that was established in 1977 The Wester Hailes Sentinel; latterly the West Edinburgh Times. This ceased publication in 2008 when the City of Edinburgh Council withdrew funding for all community newspapers. Despite the loss, the newspaper remains a vivid memory of community led activism, giving the community a voice to represent their activities and articulate a critical perspective on the political, social and environmental news in the area. The social history Facebook site developed by Prospect Community Housing from the archives of The Sentinel, From There to Here (http://on.fb.me/FromThere) with 1,600 likes demonstrated clearly how important it had been.

In order to tie the physical ‘nodes’ including the totem pole, code book and wall plaques together, a virtual platform was needed. This became known as the Digital Sentinel and continues to take the form of a community newspaper that is developed by local interest groups but also links to local Facebook pages and totem pole to offer hyper-local information. The technical infrastructure has been developed by Amy Guy (University of Edinburgh), whilst the editorial make-up of the platform is led by Alison Reeves (WHALE Arts) and Jennifer Jones (consultant employed by WHALE to facilitate community engagement through journalism).

Key features as defined by Alison and Jennifer through a community workshop are:

1. The core will be a ‘news’ element, with articles, photos stories, video and audio created by trained citizen journalists, reporting news of direct relevance to the local community from the perspective of residents.

2. A ‘community noticeboard’ element, with a ‘What’s On’ guide, RSS feeds from local agencies, small ads, notices and special offers – some of this content will only be available to view by connecting to the site via a QR code on the Totem Pole.

3. An ‘archive’ element, with articles highlighting social history work in the area and links to sites hosting social history collections to projects created in response to archives.

4. Anyone who lives or works locally will be able to post content. Training will be made available for people who would become a core team of citizen journalists. The platform is complete and ready for the community to build, and as of winter 2013 an editorial framework has been established and workshops are being organised by WHALE through the spring to begin use.

Conclusions

There is no doubt that the sixth month period originally planned to achieve the ambitions for this project was far too short. Whilst every aspect of the project has been delivered, the timescales for achieving them were far slower than anticipated. The critical component being the totem pole, because it represented the physical interface to the Digital Sentinel and was installed five months after the completion date of the research project. Despite setbacks such as this the academic team and the community partners retain a confidence and collaborative spirit that is proud of what it has achieved to date. The installation of four metre pole, directed by a partnership of local community organisations, accompanied by a sophisticated technical infrastructure that is now ready to support a viable community journalism project is precisely what was intended. The fact that the project elements have taken longer than the intended research window is an irrelevance as long as the community is in a resilient position to proceed with its use.

During the project Peter Matthews (Heriot-Watt) designed and managed a Community Engagement Evaluation programme to better understand the success of the project. The programme involved Amadu Khan (University of Edinburgh) interviewing five of the key community stakeholders in the work in Wester Hailes covered by the “Ladders to the Cloud” umbrella – WHALE, Wester Hailes Health Agency, Prospect Community Housing Agency, Wester Hailes Library, the Dove Centre and a local community activist.

The report aimed to surface the “programme logic” held by the partners – what do they think the project will deliver? What do they want it to deliver? What are the barriers to delivery? The report outlined this and suggests some possible ways forward through additional activities or a slight change in project direction. To date it remains as an on- going discussion of the projects’ aims and processes. A series of things stood out from the study that continue to direct the attention of the investigators and project members:

Getting the audience right: Through the evidence collected there was not a consistent view on who the audience for the project was and who people wanted, or expected to, be engaged. What there was consistency over was a fear of people not engaging at all and the project failing to get impetus. Following the installation of the pole and instigation of the Digital Sentinel, members are beginning to find the focus through the association with the old community newspaper.

People excluded through lack of technology, cost or knowledge: This was a very real concern among partners, especially given the poverty experienced in Wester Hailes. As a barrier this was highlighted most effectively by Wester Hailes Library who in May 2012 reported their computers with internet access were the most used in any public library in the City. All partners also felt that a lack of knowledge would also exclude people. In April 2013 the Library opened its Connect Centre which offers a hub to the Digital Sentinel and a local history group. The library is also investigated printing out web content from the Digital Sentinel to include in packs of books they deliver to borrowers who could not otherwise access the library building. Long term resourcing: Prospect Community Housing Association raised concerns about the resource cost of staff time around editing and moderating online content. This is linked more broadly to a concern around the long term sustainability of the project and financing. During the grant two applications have been made for more money by WHALE Arts: NESTA Research and Innovation (turned down) and are waiting on a decision from the Carnegie Trust/Big Lottery. A bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund for an associated photography project at WHALE Arts was successful. The Digital Sentinel has been adopted by the University of West Scotland as a pilot for community journalism.

The primary issues remain core to the research that continues to be carried out in Wester Hailes. As the Digital Sentinel now moves toward running a series of community journalism workshops the physical elements that constitute the Ladders to the Cloud: the totem pole, plaques and code books suddenly become critical elements within the Wester Hailes landscape. The current period of austerity, with reforms such as the “bedroom tax” and reductions in many state services are creating similar circumstances to those in the late 1970s and 1980s that led to the community activism embodied by the original Wester Hailes Sentinel. While the Ladders to the Cloud project has had these quantifiable outputs measured above, the qualitative, and perhaps greatest impact of the project has been to act as a catalyst bringing a range of community activists and organisations together and focused on a project that has resulted in the development of a new, digital community newspaper. References and external links

Links to press articles: http://www.guardian.co.uk/edinburgh/2010/dec/09/edinburgh-wester-hailes-sentinel- 1995-anniversary http://local.stv.tv/edinburgh/magazine/205192-history-meets-technology-as-digital- totem-pole-is-launched-in-wester-hailes/ http://www.communityhacking.org/news/ http://hailesmatters.wordpress.com/2012/12/13/the-totem-pole-is-open/ http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/edinburgh-college-art/news-events/news/oct- dec-2012/digital-totem-pole http://www.hw.ac.uk/news-events/news/totem-pole-connecting-communities-to-digital- cloud.htm http://www.hubsoutheastscotland.co.uk/media-centre/press- releases?actv_news_news_id=298 http://www.localpeopleleading.co.uk/on-the-ground/back-briefings/1540/ http://www.whalearts.co.uk/news.htm

Links to project resources and documentation: http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/Funding-Opportunities/Research-funding/Connected- Communities/RG-Highlight/Pages/CC-case-study-one.aspx http://connected-communities.org/index.php/wester-hailes-totem-pole/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NY-LAyjShcI http://www.chrisspeed.net/?p=1003 https://www.facebook.com/FromThereToHereaWesterHailesStory