Barry IdeasBank: Lessons and a way ahead Jennifer Owen with contributions by Andy Green Report funded by ESRC Acknowledgements Special thanks to all of those that gave up their time to be interviewed for this report, and to Jackie Le Fevre, Gareth Loudon and Martin Williams of the Flexible Thinking Forum for providing great insights and guidance. Gratitude must also be extended to Andy Green for introducing the researcher to the world of Barry IdeasBank with such passion she couldn’t fail to be inspired. Jennifer Owen Contents Executive summary Page 2 Introduction Page 3 The Barry IdeasBank story Page 4 Phase 2 - the Plan Page 6 Phase 2 - the Reality Page 8 IdeasBank - guiding principles Page 11 Insights from Phase 2 Page 14 Successful ideas and tangible products Page 27 The need for co-production Page 31 A potential and scalable model - a 21 Point Page 39 Plan Conclusion Page 51 Bibliography Page 52 1 Executive summary The Barry IdeasBank is a project run by social enterprise, the Flexible Thinking Forum to initially address the question of ‘Where do you go if you have a good ideas for your community?’ With the support of the Royal Society for Arts, Manufacture and Commerce, Barry Town Council, the Vale of Glamorgan Council, Pride in Barry, and Newydd Housing the project began a Phase 2 in October 2014 as part of a one year project to explore new ways of engaging the local community in Barry, in the Vale of Glamorgan. On one level the Project has generated a useful collection of ideas, along with some significant results for partner community groups, from using its resources of the Forum’s team, a web site, Twitter feed and programme of networking and events. On another, perhaps more profound level, the IdeasBank project has generated valuable insights for tackling the crisis on a major, yet largely unrecognised social problem - the decline in Social Capital in our communities. The project shows a new way forward on how IdeasBanks can offer a critical resource by creating off-line and on-line connections with community activists, to nurture their confidence, capability and connectivity to boost what is called their ‘Social Collaborative Capital’. According to the UK-wide Understanding Society research just 5% of a community are civic engaged in being active with a voluntary association with just further 10-15% are likely to get further involved. Volunteer rates are 80%. If communities rely on just small numbers of committed citizens, with the trend indicating diminishing civic engagement, it is vital these committed individuals, as well as other potentially engaged individuals are connected and supported. Lessons from Phase 2 of the IdeasBank project have identified a potential model to make the operation of ideas banks sustainable and scalable. This shows a potential way ahead, through a potential Phase 3 of the Project, to realize a vision for every town or city across the UK to have their own community ideas bank. 2 Introduction - the story of how the Barry IdeasBank evolved Barry IdeasBank was created by the Flexible Thinking Forum, a social enterprise which works to promote applied creative thinking skills in communities. It has a vision that every town or city the UK should have an IdeasBank - somewhere to go when you have an idea to make your community better. But how can you make a community IdeasBank work? How can you make it sustainable, scalable or transferable? The Barry IdeasbBank through its pioneering trials has provided some answers and a promising way forward. Barry, in the Vale of Glamorgan, is Wales’ fourth largest town. The place is a paradox: it boasts outstanding natural scenery, notably its five beaches, yet is also home to heavy industry around its docks, chemical works and industrial sites (back in 1915 Barry Docks boasted being the world capital of coal exports). The Town has suffered from a run-down tourist infrastructure, with a former Butlins holiday site closed in 1980’s still not fully regenerated. It has a legacy of a poor brand image, and what many commentators observe as a ‘glass half empty’ culture among many local people. Yet Barry has demonstrated a community spirit that has overcome major obstacles. Whether it is the local community rallying around its football team, Barry Town United, (which successfully kept the Club alive by launching a legal challenge against the might of the ruling by the Football Association of Wales to exclude the town’s club from its Leagues), to numerous cases of local people doing amazing things; Barry provides a microcosm of modern-day Wales and Britain. This report aims to capture a moment in the evolution of the IdeasBank idea, to record the lessons of the Project’s Phase I and Phase 2. This report hopes to be a source of guidance going forward, proof of the project’s merit to funding bodies for a Phase 3 where it can serve as a potentially replicable model in towns across the country. The research conducted for this report, consisted of semi-structured interviews with 13 individuals. It was limited by a short research time frame. Given more time and resources a survey of all users of the Barry IdeasBank might provide even further fruitful and important insights. 3 The Barry IdeasBank story Phase I The Barry IdeasBank was established in 2012 as a result of the frustrations felt by the Flexible Thinking Forum’s founder Andy Green, a Barry resident. Andy attended numerous regeneration consultation events across the UK. Ideas were generated but never used or kept for future reference. Could you not create, Andy thought, a local bank, a repository of these ideas for the community? Andy had a fortuitous encounter with Crowdicity, one of Europe’s leading providers of open-source innovation software. (They produce community idea software for the United Nations and the World Wildlife Fund among others.) Crowdicity generously providing their on-line facility for free, which led to the creation of the crowdsourcing Barry IdeasBank website - later labelled Phase 1 of the project. During Phase 1 the concept of the IdeasBank evolved from being a mere repository of ideas, to an active forum for capturing, engaging with others, and nurturing ideas to realize their further potential. The Phase I trial of the project between November 2012 and May 2014 featured an online website, two innovative ‘Barry Kucha’ community events, inspired and adapted from ‘Pecha Kucha’ meetings, where a collection of seven speakers talk for just 7 minutes each. There was also a Twitter account designed to promote the two ‘Barry Kucha’ events. Each of the ‘Barry Kucha’ events attracted over 80 people, with key community figures present at both events, including Jane Hutt, the local AM and Cllr. Liz Burnett, the local authority Chair of Regeneration. Phase 1 was run on a shoestring budget of £2,000, with numerous favours pulled-in for volunteers, professionals gifting their services, or creative contra deals. (Andy Green for example, produced a Business Plan for a community digital production company in return for their filming the events.) Phase I had some profound learning: ideas banks consisting of online facilities for collecting ideas for a community don’t work. They fail to generate engagement beyond a core group of ‘usual suspects’. The BarryIdeasBank conformed to the Online forums 1:9:90 Rule: 1% of the online community will post and contribute original content. 9% add to existing content, while 90% just observe. The majority of an online forum do not actively contribute or engage with the forum. The project did generate however, incidental learning with profound potential. 4 Unexpected and chance encounters at the Barry Kucha events led to new connection being made between speakers and members of the audience: for example, the mother of the speaker from Barry Town United started volunteering with the Barry at War Centre who were also speaking at the event. The hairdresser who was paying tribute to his father coming to Barry 50 years earlier as an immigrant and then created a hairdressing dynasty in the town - inspired to his son to organize a benefit gig for the speaker from a Barry-based charity helping the developing world, and so on. It demonstrated that ideas don’t exist in isolation. You need flesh and blood to make them happen. Individuals alone cannot change things. You need teams, partnerships, networks to realize the potential of any vision The IdeasBanks Phase I experience is not to dismiss the role of online forums. Indeed, they have a crucial role to play, but cannot function in isolation. They need to be integrated into a ‘blended’ programme of an online facility supporting offline activity. At the end of its Phase I @BarryIdeasbank had over 1,080 Twitter followers. The Twitter activity also generated some unexpected learning. Originally designed primarily to promote the Barry Kucha events, the @BarryIdeasBank Twitter feed sparked two key insights: • Most people won’t write a letter to their local newspaper - or submit an online post, but may Tweet an idea or register a ‘Like’. • Twitter also had the potential to identify potential volunteers. Ask people to step forward to volunteer, and most take a step back. Twitter uncovered numerous individuals who by the very fact of being on Twitter were demonstrating they were social media active. If they demonstrated a propensity to retweet would suggest their inclination or potential to get further involved in their community. What could be done with this learning? 5 Phase 2 - the plan The Flexible Thinking Forum obtained further support from the Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce Catalyst Fund (RSA) with a £5,000 grant which was conditional on receiving a further £1,000 contributory funding from a local authority partner.