Conversations & Connections
Proboscis Lead: Giles Lane
Collaborators: Kevin Harris (Local Level), Bev Carter (Partners in Change) & HIRO (Havelock Independent Residents Organisation)
Partners: Proboscis, Local Level & HIRO.
Funding: Department of Constitutional Affairs (Electoral Policy Division Innovation Award)

Outline
Proboscis has recently been awarded a grant from the Department of Constitutional Affairs' Innovations Fund – a programme of the Electoral Policy Division. Social Tapestries: Conversations and Connections aims to enhance democratic engagement at local level by stimulating the habits of participation.

The project develops our ongoing collaboration with HIRO and the residents of the Havelock Estate in Southall, west London, where we will be working closely with Kevin Harris of Local Level and Bev Carter of Partners in Change. Between April 2006 and February 2007 we will be introducing to local residents a range of techniques such as Bodystorming Experiences, and tools such as StoryCubes, DIFFUSION eBooks and the DIFFUSION eBook Generator and, of course, the new Urban Tapestries system now nearing completion.

From our project proposal:
"By stimulating many more interactions and therefore a habit of participation in a low-income neighbourhood where insufficient numbers of people are geared-up to contributing, we expect to develop new forms of engagement with democratic decision-making processes. Our project aims to enable local people to build up an organic and accretive knowledge base of the issues and concerns at the heart of the community. This will encourage the conversations and connections that will engage residents to participate more fully in the democratic processes of managing their estate, relationships with the local authority and more broadly.

Our uses of different media, including emerging technologies and more traditional media, are designed to make the visibility and communication of these relationships and the knowledge and information they connect transparent and tangible to the participants in the project. By reflecting the needs and capabilities of the residents in choosing the types of media whereby they can contribute and access knowledge to start building the connections between them, we aim to encourage the widest possible participation.

In developing this project we will also offer a demonstration of the kinds of cross-sector thinking and transdisciplinary methods used by Proboscis and Local Level, and our role as critical intermediaries between people at grassroots and government policy."

One of the key challenges we will be addressing is what counts as democratic participation, who defines this and why. Our aim is to gently propose a richer and broader understanding of what participation can mean (beyond voting in a formal election or residents meeting) by working with different age groups and interests to reflect a variety of strategies for making a difference in the local environment. Specifically we will be focusing on what might be seen traditionally as cultural activities (music, video and image making) as vital and potent forms of democratic engagement.

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