Digi Civics 2020 Blog Entry 2

This week we met with Jayne Hopkins, our project partner from Best of Bensham, with which we discussed our project brief and gained a greater understanding of the area of Bensham and its community.

We addressed the challenges and opportunities within Bensham as a starting point for our project focus, some of which included:

Challenges:

Lack of financial resource amongst large proportion of population.

Inaccessibility to shops for residents who don’t have access to a car.
Unclean streets (Littering/ Vacant lots).
Best of Bensham is unclear of its unifying theme.
Best of Bensham is set on an asset-based approach but there is a lack of understanding about what this is.

Opportunities:

Bensham is a very diverse area.
The population possess many valuable skills (especially its affluent residents)/ knowledge.
There is a large opportunity to achieve results with the locals within the next 12-18 months due to the current motivation surrounding the topic.
There is a great interest in the creation of more outdoor spaces within Bensham, specifically focusing on garden areas for growing plants/ vegetables.
The group ‘Best of Bensham’, is well-resourced regarding grant funding; can give 10 grants of up to £250 to smaller organisations (e.g. To churches running Christmas day dinners for those who don’t have family to share it with).

After identifying the challenges and opportunities within Bensham we established a key issue for us to concentrate on, which was to help the residents of Bensham express their needs and aspirations for their community.

We then discussed potential stakeholders in the project, which we identified consisted of a few main groups:

Gateshead Council; Including Neighbourhood Management Services.
Local Community Groups/ Voluntary Organisations.
Business Owners and Private Landlords.

Our stakeholders influenced the next steps in our project, which were to determine a number of activities which would help us in developing our research further. We decided to arrange some next steps regarding our project plan which were to organize a series of interviews/ meetings with known residents and community members who are involved in the community activity in their area, and one member of the council. These include people such as, Dave Andrew, Phil Donovan and Robert and Marilyn Rae. The aims of these meetings are to gain knowledge about residents’ opinions of Bensham, relating to the challenges and opportunities we have discussed and learn their thoughts on residents’ ability to express their opinions about the community, as well as the councils point of view regarding the matter.

There was also some mention of conducting a workshop which the general public of Bensham could get involved with to share their opinions on the matter. This approach was considered to be potentially more effective than individually questioning members of the public on the streets yet would be a challenge to organize.

We also decided it would be a good idea for some of us to conduct a site visit and take photographs of the area so we could better understand the characteristics of the location, such as the amount of green/ outdoor space in the area, number of vacant lots and the levels of litter throughout the streets.

Here are our mind maps regarding the challenges and opportunities identified within Bensham, our stakeholder and process map, and our initial suggestions for project actions.

Digi Civics 2020 Blog Entry 1

Welcome to the first blog entry for TCP2031 Digital Civics. Today we had our first seminar where we all met each other and Sebastian – who will be our module leader this semester. Our team is made up of urban planning students and architecture and planning students. In our group we have me, Juliet from London, Jimmy from Germany, Hadrien from France, Lois from Canada, Mindaugas from Lithuania, Patrick from York and Angus from Alnwick, who unfortunately could not make the first seminar.

After introductions, we took a look at what our own strengths and weaknesses are and shared this with one another, from doing so we realised that overall we have a collective strength with visualisations and are individuals with an eye for detail and that we all have the ability to do research and analysis but we prefer to work with visuals and design work mostly.

During the seminar we discussed the project brief, covering what the overall aim of the project would be and talking about the area of Bensham in Gateshead; where our project is based. We looked at the area on Google Maps seeing its location to us at the University and also some of the statistical information such as deprivation levels, employment, and feeling of belonging. We had to set out some aims and objectives to what we want to achieve through the project this semester, our main objective is to produce an app or website that supports an issue that we will identify with our project partner so that we can help the locals of Bensham. This highlighted to us that the purpose of the module is to enable a connection between people and their community digitally. Lastly, we had to prepare some questions we would ask our project partner (when Jayne from Best of Bensham comes in) and to residents of Bensham.

Here is a list of some of the questions we have prepared to ask Jane next week so that we are informed on the needs and wants of Benham and the Best of Bensham group.

What groups of people is Best of Bensham comprised of?
What led to the formation of Best of Bensham?
What are the key issues that Best of Bensham feel are present in the area?
What is the typical method to event promotion by the group?
What groups of people are most in need of help?
What kinds of community involvement are already in place?
Is there a main meeting place for locals to speak with those working for Best of Bensham?
What groups of people live in Bensham?

Juliet

Week 3- Team 2- Chase Park

In this week’s seminar we have been deciding on what research methods would be best to use when thinking about our project on Chase Park. Using our current stakeholders we would like to do an interview with Alan on behalf of Friends of Chase Park to see what they want to get out of it, also an interview with Holly from Kick the Dust to get an understanding of how the secondary school students use the park and finally we want to do an activity with the children of Front Street Primary School to get their ideas on paper instead of making them sit through questions that they may be too shy to answer.

The activity with Front Street Primary School will be split up into smaller groups of around 4-6, with the activity lasting from an hour and a half to two hours. For a starter activity we want the children to draw the rough guidelines of the park, maybe noting down where they spend most of their time or what parts they miss out and forget about. After outlining the park, using stickers and colouring pens we want them to identify their favourite parts of the park. Having discussions after to engage the class and other ideas, writing these reasons why it’s their favourite area on post it notes. Then we want the children to use their imagination and scribble down ideas of how they want the park to improve or things they may want added, potentially incorporating activities they could do in the park as Friends of Chase Park seemed to be keen on the idea of having activities for the kids.

SIA week 3 Log

Log 3

This is the week 3 log for SIA. This week we have been working on user research for our stakeholders including Nigel Todd, David Webb, Jude Murphy, Katrina Jordison and the local residents of the Wingrove area. The two methods we chose to use to collect our user research are door to door surveys and interviews with local residents and the project partners.

Door to door survey: We have chosen to survey the local residents as surveys generate quick statistical data about our chosen sample. Surveys can be very useful in this sense as they will help us understand the big picture and provide us with statistics that can help to inform the direction of our project. Since we are obtaining this data in a door to door format, it is critical that the survey is short and questions are concise to ensure we capture the main opinions we are after.

Interviews with project partners: For the project partners (Nigel Todd, David Webb, Jude Murphy and Katrina Jordison) we chose to interview them informally. With these interviews, we can interchange views and ideas and hopefully collect information that will enable a deeper analysis of a given problem. Hopefully we will engage in a lengthier conversation which touches on their current aims for public engagement and digital platform and the issues the organisations deal with on a neighbourly basis.

What insights we hope to gain:

From our user research, we hope to gather a much more detailed insight into the project. We chose these two methods as they will help us obtain information on opinions and perceptions on a local and professional level. By collecting this data we hope to gain knowledge on how the area is managed now, and how residents are made aware of events and developments within the community. From the interviews with the organisation members and David Webb, a senior lecture in town planning and also a local Wingrove resident, we hope to gain knowledge of how they feel on an organisational level, as well as a paralleled local level, about how the area currently engages with projects and events, and how they think this could be improved for the future. In addition, we also hope to gain a wider image of their vision for the future of the area.

Questions we have come up with for…

Local Residents:

How do you feel about community interaction within the area now?

Do you think this could be improved?
Could this improvement be in the form of a digital platform? If so what would you like to see?

What is your experience of the current use of the facilities in the area?

How did you hear about the reuse of the building on Arthurs Terrace?
Would you engage with the building after its refurbishment?
Any ideas for the building?

Do you think that interest in community connection is focused on by a certain demographic? (one of our stakeholders being schools).

What do you think to using the primary school as a main stakeholder?

Project Partners:

What is your role and background, in the area/community?
How do you feel the area receives information and communicates internally now?
How do you currently attempt to engage with the public?
What are your aims for the area? And for public engagement?
Could public engagement be progressed by the involvement of a digital platform?

David Webb

What is your role and background?
How do you feel, as a local resident, information is distributed now between the community? Is there a social space for the residents?
How do you feel, as a professional, the area is managed by the different organisations? Is there anything that could improve this for future progression?
Do you have any opinions on the current use of social media to connect the different events/organisations within the area?

Below are photographs of our session together in which we brainstormed different questions and ideas for the user research process.

Week 3 Log – NUTC

Log week 3

Hello, this week we decided upon our user research methods. We believe the best method for us would be to participate in detailed (structured) interviews with stakeholders and the general public, and also to take general observations of the areas usage. Within the seminar we came up with some brief questions, following this we met as a group to expand upon them more.

Planned site visit

This week we contacted Ali to try to organise a meeting with her, Mark (computer, tech side of the project) and Julie (environmental/health side of the project) although Julie wasn’t able to make the dates suggested, so we have agreed to try to meet up next week with them where we will be able to ask them more detailed questions about the project. As we cannot interview them this week we have decided to make a site visit instead to Heaton Road, to try to interview some of the locals and the stakeholders. We realise that we need different types of interviews for each set of people, some needing to more open and others more specific and closed to only certain groups of people who would know the answers or have experience with the questions asked. We would like to talk to a few of the people below, although we have been warned due to local elections to not focus on them too much. These would be users such as:

Residents (both alongside Heaton Road and nearby neighborhoods)
Cyclists
Stakeholders

Examples of our “open” to all questions – resident, general public etc.

What is your main usage for Heaton Road ?
What are your usual methods of transport when on this road?
Do you find parking spaces easy to find and are there a good amount of them?
Would you find travelling along Heaton Road a positive experience, and why is this?
What would you change, if anything, about Heaton Road if you could?

Examples of our “closed” for certain people questions – Mark, Julie, Ali, Space for Heaton etc.

What is your main usage for Heaton Road?
What are your usual methods of transport when on this road?
How do you feel about parking along Heaton road?
Do you find spaces easy to find and are there a good amount of them?
What would you change, if anything, about Heaton Road if you could?
Do you believe the changes would be beneficial for the area?
What incentives would you think would lead people to want the changes made?
What are the main reasons you believe people are against?

From these questions we hope to gain a greater insight into how people feel about the project and its outcomes, hopefully helping us to understand our project end goal a bit more, and the process in which we will develop our prototype to which will help us achieve this goal. We realise the reasoning behind why our research activities should be individual as to be the fact that many people should be be approached differently and we aim to get a less biased view of these things, alongside this the elections that Ali told us about play a large role in us needing to keep open questions as we wouldn’t want locals views to be changed due to our influence.

Additional Research

Streets for people ; Heaton and Ouseburn 1

Streets for people : Heaton and Ouseburn 2

After researching further into the Streets for People which is a local research method that has already been collected by the local groups, we found these two links which lead to posters including information on pedestrians, cyclists and drivers. This information showed us that pedestrians held the highest percentage of travel (42%) and cyclists came second with (34%) driving came in with the lowest percentage out of the three options (13%). We also took note that 51% of the people wanted a segregated cycling route, proving to us that this was a slightly more prefered option and our project is more favoured.

Week 2- Team 2- Chase Park

A diagram from talking to a couple of the stakeholders.

During seminar two we met with a few key stakeholders of Chase Park. Within this meeting, we got to know Clare Ross from Gateshead Council, as well as Alan Scott and Ken who are involved with Friends of Chase Park. During this session as a group, we found talking to Clare, Alan and Ken most helpful. Clare focuses on communities as well as being involved in Friends of Chase Park. Alan is one of the key founding members of Friends of Chase Park. Ken is also involved with Friends of Chase Park and is their chancellor.

During the session, we mapped out the stakeholders in order of their priority as well as discussing the main issue: creating pride and ownership in the park. Talking to Clare, Alan and Ken we came up with a list of stakeholders and prioritised them in order of influencing ability and how important they were when it came to achieving our team goal. The stakeholders with the highest priority were; Gateshead Council, Friends of Chase Park and Front Street Primary School. Those who classified as medium priority were, Local residents and Kick the Dust. Members of the bowling green were seen as low priority when it came to achieving our team goal.

At this stage in the project, our long-term goal is to provide an app or video prototype which will be aimed at young people to encourage them to use and respect Chase Park. In order to meet these goals as a group, we are going to look round Chase Park with Ken in order to give us a better idea of what we are dealing with. As a group, we will also be attending a Friends of Chase Park meeting in order to explain what our intentions are and if they have any advice or opinions on the matter. Clare and Ken are also preparing for us to go and talk to year 5 students within the local primary school. At this moment in time, it is unclear how we are going to interact with the children around the subject of Chase Park. As a group we are unlikely to interview the children as there is a large number of them. Instead, we are likely to split them into groups and get them to do an activity to produce information which will, in turn, help us to produce our prototype. By setting short term goals of going to see Chase Park, sitting in on a meeting of those involved in the Friends of Chase Park and meeting children from Front Street primary school, the hope is that we can make a prototype specific to the needs of our stakeholders.

Week 2 Log – NUTC

Log week 2

This week we have welcomed Ben and Miki, who has become members to the NUTC. We also met with one of our project partners, Ali Lamb, who is the Engagement officer at Newcastle City Council. She talked a bit about her role and the project proposal for Heaton Road, as well as informed us about where it stands today. We then asked a couple of questions regarding the project and got together to identify the main stakeholders and the long-term goals what we want to achieve through a number of objectives.

The main stakeholders

With the help of Alis intel, we have done a mind map that presents the main stakeholders as well as their opposition towards the project proposal. The colour ‘Red’ represents the group that disagrees with the proposal, ‘Green’ represents the group that agrees with it and ‘Yellow’ represents the group who still remains undecided.

The stakeholders that disagree with the project proposal are:

Residents along Heaton Road
Services and facilities, such as Heaton medicals and Rugby/Cricket Pitch (University’s Sports ground)
The Corner House Pub
The People’s Theatre
The churches, e.g. St Gabriel, and the mosque

One reason to this has to do with them losing a number of parking spaces they will be facing. The stakeholder that would benefit from this cycle route project, and hence agree are:

The primary/secondary schools, who look for safe alternatives for their children to get to school, e.g. St Mary’s catholic school

Freeman Hospital
The Tax Office HM Revenue & Customs, who has over 10.000 employees
Cycling groups
Streets for people
The elective counselors important stakeholder, who also have the final say on which scheme goes forward, they support this project. Although, they are also heading towards an election so the project will be presented to the public afterwards.

Aims and objectives

Within our last blog we questioned what the actual form of the project would be, the state of the current situation and how connected it will be in the end. These were all answered by Ali and she helped us to understand the objectives of the project more along with the main aims.

Aims:

Advertising a cycling route for all and not only the existing minority of cyclists today
Convince the resistant stakeholders of the advantages with this project

Objectives to achieve the aims:

Site visit
Read findings report
Find other alternative transportation/parking options
Start with the concepts

Next Steps

Based upon the latest lecture we believe our next step is to focus on user research and how it would be more effective towards the outcome of the project if we have a plan for it beforehand. After speaking with Ali Lamb we have concluded that the website common place and the public platform streets for people will be the best way for us to conduct our research and gain a greater understanding of the public’s views on the subject matter.

Another next step we have considered is participating in a site visit to Heaton Road and beginning to survey some of stakeholders within the area, for example the local church, schools and businesses.

Using this diagram we intend to analyse the stakeholders and see their weighting within the project and see how we should act upon their perspectives on the project.

This week helped us to truly understand the main goal of the project and how we will play a role in the final outcome. Besides the research and site visit we now hope to also develop an understanding of what the best approach would be towards our users and how to get the most beneficial outcome from anyone involved in the project.

SIA Week 2 Log

This is the second log by SIA for the Wingrove project. This week we met with Nigel Todd who is a local resident and City Councillor, as well as Chair of the Greening Wingrove CIC and Secretary of the WEA Green Branch. The WEA Green Branch undertakes activities such as courses and workshops that can help community groups understand sustainability and work better as a community. With his various roles, Nigel gave us a greater insight into the project and helped us understand what aims and goals the WEA Green Branch has for the task.

This week we made a mind map that discusses all the different stakeholders involved in the project and the various links between them.

Mind map:

We began by naming the main stakeholders such as families, local residents, community organisations and WEA Green Branch, then branching off from these, connecting in other local groups. We discovered that the WEA Green Branch would have a link with the Greening Wingrove Community Interest Company and also with investors (who provide grants for events and developments). Volunteers and students from Newcastle University were also interlinked within this group as they would help provide support for many of the events done by WEA and Greening Wingrove. Another connection was found between the WEA and schools in the area, as education centres are a central hub for community connection. We felt having schools as one of the key stakeholders would help disburse information more effectively. Lastly, from schools there comes a link with families, the police, businesses and the council, therefore creating a bridge between the different interest groups within the area.

Stakeholder Groups:

Below are the three main stakeholder groups (the council, local residents and community organisations) we have found for the project:

In order for the project to be a success, each group’s wants and needs must be taken into consideration. Therefore communication with the three will be very important when working on the project.

Indicative Project Aims:

After speaking with Nigel, we found that the primary focus of the project was to develop ideas for community uses of the new buildings on Arthurs Hill Terrace. He mentioned existing ideas included a café, offices and potential for a music studio in part of the building. There was also a plan for rooms in the building to hold children’s activities and youth projects. However, the council and community organisations were open to any new/different ideas. Finding ways of enabling neighbours to get to know each other and feel comfortable about interacting is another of the key project aims. From the talk with Nigel it is clear that finding an appropriate use for the building will be a key stepping stone in creating public togetherness and community cohesion in the area.

There was also discussion of creating a digital platform for locals to interact with each other and finding a platform (such as an app, website, etc.) that would be suitable for everyone.

Next steps:

During the discussion, questions of how we could involve as many people as possible in the project arose, as it is unlikely every user or stakeholder group will agree on the outcome of the renovation idea or digital platform. Nigel himself did hold some reservations towards a larger digital platform, as different groups in the community may exploit it by uploading or sharing inappropriate or negatively opinionated content. At this stage with his hesitance, collecting user research from the local residents would be a natural progression.

Therefore, out initial next steps are to visit the Arthurs Hill Terrace building and the area of Wingrove in general. We are planning on going to the open day at the Arthurs Hill Terrace building on the 16th February where the future use of the building will be discussed. Visiting the area and building will help us collect user research on possible uses of the building and find out which digital platforms locals would be interested in for information distribution and social connections. It will also enable us to get a better insight into the project as a whole, understanding the people and area we are working with.

SIA Weekly Log 1

Week 1 Log (Wingrove Connected Digital Neighbourhoods):

Social Interactive Agency
Members: Sophia, Tham, Alex and Zhaodong

This is the week 1 blog done by Social Interactive Agency for the Wingrove Connected Digital Neighbourhoods project. Social Interactive Agency consists of Sophia, Tham, Alex and Zhaodong. Our group has a range of different skills and backgrounds, with the group having both urban planning and architecture and planning students. We also all bring different skills to the group such as creative visualisation, planning knowledge, research and analysis and collaboration. We feel as though these different backgrounds and skills will help with the project as we will have different ideas for tackling the issues and this will help produce the best outcome.

The project allows us to connect with a real neighbourhood and enables us to use what we have learnt whilst being at university in practice, such as designing for public engagement, planning to improve community organisation and improve environmental awareness as well as practicing sustainability. Being able to meet with clients and listen to their requirements needed in order to enhance the planning and organisation of the area is another aspect which will be invaluable experience for future client interaction and meeting client briefs.

The Wingrove Connected Digital Neighbourhoods project has the aim of enhancing neighbourly cohesion in order to create new public awareness of new developments happening in their locality and improving environmental and social sustainability locally. By creating a local social platform for users to post on and respond to, the project will not only expand the efficiency of data and information distribution, but also connect their area into an integrated and tight-knit group.

Neighbourhood activity and communication is a vital part of modern social life. Digital civics allows for easier and faster distribution of information, response to issues and a flourishing social hub of interaction.

We believe having Creative ideas is the key to the solution, and with technology we can fulfil the need of client directly. This project requires a lot of responsibility and time. This week we had a conversation relating to social interaction and we came up with an official group name. We want our project to be done professionally and expecting to further our career of this project in the future. We are confidently saying that Digital Civic is an important fraction in planning as now we have step into technological world. Therefore, we will be focusing toward the quality of the outcome by utilise our existing resource such as social platform for the best solution and importantly, it is free of charge. However, we must’ve considered minimising our budget in this project and ensure it is low-risk but high returns as in case this project require an extra money.

Initial questions:
• What are the current major downfalls of how they connect and share developments as a neighbourhood?
• How actively used is the current Facebook page for Sidney Grove and how many people currently use it?
• How would we initially promote our prototype so that locals know it is there?
• What can we do to ensure that only locals have access to the model?
• When would we carry out market research?
• How often do they have interaction with each other?

Week 1 Blog – Team 2 – Chase Park

Hello,

This is the first of our blog’s for our project, ‘Engaging Young People with Video’, with our focus are being Chase Park. We are a team of four, Laura, Kathryn, Louis and James. We believe that the four individual skill sets we possess will allow us to work effectively as a team. We believe that, together, we can produce a successful project and also learn and develop new skills from each other along the journey. Between us, we believe we have strong presentation skills, creativity, great organisation and a useful understanding of the digital world.

We chose the Chase Park project as, the use of video in the planning world is something we all found innovative and wanted to learn more about. Furthermore, the project itself is something, as a younger generation, we feel we are informed on and potentially have an advantage when deciding what does and does not work.

The stakeholders in our project are widespread from Gateshead Council, to the Friends of Chase Park Group to Front Street Primary School. We are excited to meet the stakeholders as we feel they can give us a more informed idea of what is required of us and how we can meet expectations.

The main aims of our project include

– Making the park a more attractive place to visit, central to this we will explore the vandalism problem currently in the park
– Making the park accessible to all age groups, ensuring no group feels they are unwelcome there
– Using video to express our ideas and encourage the surrounding community to make the most of their available green space

The next step in our process is to meet the stakeholders. We are intrigued to find out more about the park itself, the community it serves and the priorities the community have for their park. We believe this next step will leave us in a better position to make our plan of action for the project.