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Digital Communities…by defaultAdam MicklethwaiteTinder Foundation12 November 2015

• 14 outreach and 4 internal sessions each week, 1000 people per year

• Community organising: since April 2012, 13 unique groups, 36 successful bids, £170k raised

Starting Point, Woodley, Stockport

• Digital health literacy in partnership with the community

• Social prescribing• Widening Digital Participation

programme funded by NHS England has helped 140,000 people since 2013

Bromley-by-Bow Centre, London

• Developing individual and community digital aspirations

• Digital as the platform for helping businesses grow and individuals find employment

Destinations@Saltburn, North Yorkshire

+All have in common…

■ Hyper-local community location

■ Community participation

■ Learner/user-led, informal environment

■ Outreach, bringing learning to people where they are

■ Digital first

■ Addressing local challenges, with a name local people will respond to

+The power of digital inclusion

■ Digital inclusion builds social capital■ 20,000 volunteers across the UK■ 52% of learners agree they feel less lonely and isolated■ 60% of learners are happier as a result of more social

contact■ Social Return on Investment evaluation of UK Online

centres to complete in December 2015

■ Can also be scaled: 5,000 UK Online centres across the UK

■ And is still a huge issue for social inclusion and the functioning of society: 12.6m people across the UK don’t have basic digital skills

+The opportunity

■ Digital inclusion creates an opportunity for digital public services designed to be used together: increasing social and economic impact and strengthening communities

■ Critical given pressures on public funding■ Tapping into the classic ‘social movement’ – but doing it in a

practical, open, collaborative way■ But this is not a mature market:

■ Digital community websites: eg. Streetlife – can lead to face-to-face community activity

■ Some pioneering local digital public services that are scalable: eg. FixMyStreet (mySociety) and coding initiatives: eg. Code for America

■ Signs that power of community involvement is being recognised: eg. Digital Government Review

■ But communities themselves insufficiently empowered or connected ‘as communities’ to digital public service user-centred design processes

+Building the market

■ How can we build the market so digital community services can be developed and scaled?

■ Identify the right kind of public value and stimulate demand and supply through public/community partnershipsServices that require or could benefit from:

Examples

Discussion with others • Embedding digital health• Applying for jobs• Managing money• Personal Budgets

Collective decision-making • Assets eg. park/playing field usage• Events that boost local economies eg.

carnivals

+‘Some sizes fit all’

■ Mixture of common and specific challenges

■ Managed community co-creation everywhere likely to be resource intensive

■ Dispersed model – potential to customise from a basic platform and toolkit

■ National or local government could create or buy in flexible platforms

■ Mixture of transactional and enabling services

+Making it happen

ConvenersLocations

Community User GroupsLocal, nationalFeedback, co-

design

Flexible Platforms Guidelines

Community OrganisingEmpowered to

propose/design Take to local

commissioners

Community Toolkit

Resources to create servicesWith support

Prerequisites:

Models:

Structures:

+Over to you

■ 5 minutes with the person next to you

■ Based on your own experience

■ Three quick things:■ A local challenge digital would help the community to

address■ The one thing digital could do really well to address it■ What you’d need to make it happen

■ Three examples from the floor

■ Email the rest to hello@tinderfoundation.org – we’ll share with our network