Federation’s collective action projects
During 2022, the Co-op Foundation supported by Luminate, awarded funding for three collective action projects led by partners on its current Federation programme. The fund was set up to encourage collaborative working with groups or organisations across Greater Manchester.
Use of collective action funding could be wide-ranging. The programme team looked for projects related to data and digital rights that raised under-represented voices, could provide opportunities for community action, or that encouraged participation in decision-making.
In this post we introduce the three collective action projects, which will conclude in spring 2023:
- Community Data Handbook
- Creating employment opportunities for young people with autism spectrum conditions (ASC)
- Collective action in underserved communities.
1. Community Data Handbook
Led by Open Data Manchester (ODM), the Community Data Handbook project grew out of their community-led data work with Our Streets Chorlton.
The handbook has a number of aims including:
- Helping communities to plan and carry out their own data collection projects, looking for what data exists, and enabling new data to be collected
- Helping make sense of the data and turning it into actionable insight
- Supporting best practice and giving the community ownership of the data
- Helping individuals and communities to feel more connected and empowered in relation to what is going on in their street and neighbourhood.
ODM is currently working with Walk Ride Whalley Range, a community-based active travel organisation, which is collaborating with a number of schools in the local area to measure the efficacy of a school streets pilot. Together, they will be running a number of user research and co-design workshops in early 2023.
2. Creating employment opportunities for young people with autism spectrum conditions (ASC)
Digital Advantage and SENDCode are partnering on a project, which aims to understand and create the conditions necessary for successful employment and retention of young people with ASC in the tech and digital industry in Greater Manchester. By doing this, they enable tech teams and the products and services they deliver to become more inclusive.
Currently, whilst autistic young people frequently have the necessary skills for employment in the sector, they are excluded from the workplace due to a complex range of institutional and systemic issues. The project addresses two main challenges:
- Many employers support neurodiversity in the workplace but are slow to adopt new recruitment and employment practices that lead to more employment opportunities for ASC people
- Employers are not geared up to identify and recruit suitable ASC candidates into employment.
The project has been researching, developing and delivering a campaign to raise awareness and opportunities with tech sector employers. It is currently underway, following a soft launch at the Manchester Tech Festival in October, with plans for a full launch in early 2023.
3. Collective action in underserved communities
This project is led by Federation partner Bassajamba. It aims to develop a community action forum to challenge the inequality that exists between underserved communities and wider society surrounding digitally enabled products and services.
As part of this, working with GM Change Network and local black leaders’ networks, Bassajamba is creating an audio series to raise the voices of underserved community leaders around the barriers to creating digital technology, products and services. It is bringing together underserved groups, and cross-sector leaders for interviews and discussions.
The series will cover approaches and responses to the underlying barriers, including financial, regulatory, organisational and social. The project is taking learning from these discussions into the design and creation of the community forum to enable discussions and actions to continue, highlighting the issues, approaches and solutions described in the audio series, which begins early in 2023.
We’ll be sharing more in our Medium publication about the progress of these projects in 2023.
