Community Action MK: Week 3 — Adapt and Reuse
This week has been one focused on getting our ducks in a row… Angus (Mosaic Digital) has continued to reach out to some of our local groups in MK to explore groups’ data needs and what they hope our new system can provide. This has paved the way for some initial exploration into digital solutions — there has been investigation into Google Forms / G-Suite , AirTable and Ragic. We are looking to further explore AirTable next week.
For us this week has been more reflective and looking back, that that we can explore ‘re-use’ principles. We have previously conducted and participated in various projects that have had a focus on understanding community needs. Not in the same way that this project hopes to coordinate the information, but deep dives into the types of information that communities share. Some of our audience might remember our past Community Mobiliser Programme and the QuickChat app that we used to record the insights from the communities during that project. With this in mind we have been looking back through how we have previously collected information, mainly finding a really huge data collection form! This was really useful for our team of Community Mobilisers in the past, but won’t be suitable for this project in its current form. So here comes our friend… adaptation. It has been really useful to see the information and how we have categorised or thematically logged stories and experiences. Themes range from public services, crime, community spirit, climate change, families, finances and many more. These followed by numerous key words and other vital details like locations and who is collecting information, will all need to be factored into our new system.
From the conversations we had in the discovery phase and the current conversations Angus is having, we know groups want a simple tool that can capture experiences. We also know that for information to be shared and used for the purpose of shaping policies there’s a level of detail that we need to capture. And finally, we know that — in the current challenging economic/ funding reality — we need a tool that is inexpensive and sustainable to maintain. This poses several challenges but ones we hope to overcome, both through using previous experiences of what has gone well, what information we have used for reports and also new, innovative ways of resolving some of these sticking points. We are looking at taking forwards our ‘issues, ideas, interests, impact’ as an overarching frame, as a quick capture of the sector, and then we can knuckle down into the detail. This is to be continued…
Next week we will be able to report back on how we have zoomed in and out on the ways in which we might be able to log information — but bearing in mind that depending how our consulting group finds them, always open to adaptation.
Word of the week — ADAPTATION!
See you next week, Anna, Julie and Danielle :)
