November 2011
Sea project nominated for a UK Public Sector Digital award
We're so pleased that our project The Big Design Challenge has been shortlisted as a finalist at this years UK Public Sector Digital Awards in the Best Example of Citizen Engagement category.
The Big Design Challenge was a Dott Cornwall project sponsored by the Technology Strategy Board. The aim was to empower people across Cornwall to address some of the biggest challenges facing their communities and support them to do so with information, design and business mentoring.
We created a crowdsourcing website which encouraged people to come forward with the challenges that mattered most to them and have ideas for solving them. The platform enables individuals and community groups to share ideas and collaborate with each other.
The project also used other communications such as text messaging, social media and community outreach events and activities to make sure as many people as possible could participate. A prize fund was offered to community groups who could successfully collaborate and turn their ideas into sustainable solutions.
During the three months since the project launched in November 2010, the website saw 90 challenges and 180 ideas submitted. It was successful in building trust between citizens with regular discussion took place via the website and associated social media channels. The @bigcornwall twitter gathered a following of 1,000 plus followers.
Mapping tools enable users to tag a challenge or an idea to a specific location.
Dott programme director Andrea Siodmok said: "When you want to create a big revolution it often starts with small changes. We wanted to empower people to come forward with good ideas, whether it's someone in the street or Cornwall Council's chief executive, and begin to make the small changes that can have a real impact. The world is changing so let's seize the opportunity. It was fascinating to see how the big design challenge evolved and moved forward in ways which we could not predict."
The project successfully encouraged hundreds of people set community challenges and come forward with good ideas for solving them. Kick starter funding was awarded to three community groups who succesfully collaborated to turn their ideas into sustainable community enterprises.
Matt Barton - Assistant Head of Strategy and Communications at Cornwall Council said "Building on the success of the Big Design Challenge, Cornwall Council is now developing the digital platform as part of the NESTA Creative Councils programme. Sea Communications is helping us to develop a strategy for the project which will use digital tools to support enterprising people with whatever they need to make change happen in their community"
http://www.twitter.com/bigcornwall
Technical features of the website:
- Categorisation & filtering of challenges and ideas relating to five different themes spanning social, economic and environmental issues
- Simple log in functionality using existing social media log ins such as facebook and twitter
- Tag clouds to enable quick search
- Ability to plot location of challenges & ideas on Google map
- Ability for visitors to add images and video to challenges
- Automated twitter functionality (challenges & ideas get tweeted when added)
- Automated charity fundraising pot linked to challenges and ideas
- Films depicting the hidden challenges that lie beneath the beauty of Cornwall
