Client
Carbon Makeover
"It is because I got so fired up working with Robert and the Media Centre that I've actually gone on to being a digital champion with Martha Lane Fox's peoples' task force. But if you'd told me a couple of years ago that I'd be stood telling people they should be using digital media and how it would change their lives, I would have laughed at you. Those conversations with Robert totally transformed me."
Mil Lusk, Knowle West resident
This is a great story from a person who, when we first met her, was a reluctant workshop participant, professing no interest in digital media at all. That changed dramatically, and Mil became a passionate convert. This has enabled her to use her own experiences, help promote the use of technology, to improve the life chances and choices of others. And she credits Robert both with firing her initial enthusiasm and supporting her since.
Imagine if you could scale up this approach to digital inclusion, on a national scale. It's certainly not impossible and in bridging green issues with a dynamic digital inclusion agenda, Carbon Makeover has become one of the country's most successful community environmental awareness and action projects - "the jewel in the crown" of the DC10 (Digital Challenge 10).
It won the 2010 National eWell-Being Awards for Building Community Networks. It has been recognised regionally, nationally and internationally, with the EU Commission describing it as ‘a win-win project and the most interesting example we saw of community work that demonstrates environmental sustainability and social cohesion'.
Sea has played an integral part in that success. Misty Tunks, the Project Coordinator, says:
"Their involvement has been completely pivotal. No other member of the team here had the level of understanding of how important digital technology could be in a project like this."
Carbon Makeover was set up in 2008 by Knowle West Media Centre - "a centre which uses arts, design and media activities as a platform to involve people and provide a community glue" - to reduce the social and economic impacts of a deprived community with a high carbon footprint, Knowle West.
What begun as a ‘green' campaign soon demonstrated wide-ranging social benefits as well . For instance, Sue, a local Carbon Makeover champion, had been housebound for 20 years. She says:
"Because of my poor health, I had lost motivation in life, but running ‘Team Fab' has given me a goal. It keeps me going...It's an opportunity for me to get back into the community and challenge environmental behaviour."
The EU commission plaudits recognizing this broader dimension invited KWMC and Sea to a ‘Social Fairness in Sustainable Development' conference in Brussels, where Robert described how digital inclusion had fostered social inclusion in a deprived neighbourhood. ‘Carbon Makeover' was among just six projects internationally - and the only one from the UK - selected as ‘exemplary initiatives'.
Since 2008, Sea have played an important role in the digital development of Knowle West Media Centre, and helped them to deliver other projects with digital inclusion at their heart. This has helped the Media Centre to create the platform for deprived communities in South Bristol to have a better future. Knowle West Media Centre is recognized as a pioneer in the digital inclusion debate.
