‘Digi-tool’ archiving of the future community

This presentation will deliver findings and experiences of a University, Rural Community Council and community partnership project called Community21. As a co-designed platform Community21.org provides a range of ‘digi-tools’ for communities to engage in mapping and sharing data and experiences of social action to enable open-archives of neighbourhood development. It also explores how co-designed accessible technologies can help cross the generational and geographic borders between different sections of the community and neighbouring communities in the context of ‘envisioning’ their future. This sits within the context of radical changes in the UK National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF 2011) and the Localism Bill (DCLG 2011), which demand new levels of democratic participation in local decision-making and the collaborative design and understanding of place. The platform facilitates ‘grass-roots’, statutory development programmes (neighbourhood plans) which stimulates the documenting of community archives mediated through open, ‘wiki-GIS’, animated and characterised digital stories and visions – shared between communities as active, ‘multi-local’ societies (De Rita and Bonomi 1998, Manzini 2007). The paper will present evaluated, hybrid digital / physical repositories and archives including ‘augmented-reality, community tapestry’ (talking tapestry), animated storytelling (talking heads) and virtual environments (talking towns) that model collaborative visions for the neighbourhood. It will demonstrate how these can mediate between the narrow social profile of stakeholders and decision-makers and young people’s visions for the future in which they will live. (Bachen, Raphael, Lynn, McKee & Philippi 2008; Carpini 2000; Gant, Duggan 2013).