Grow Your Own Media Lab Evaluation Meeting

Access Space, Sheffield. Sunday 20th May

• James Wallbank (Access Space)
• Jim Prevett (Access Space)
• Clare Gannaway (Folly)
• Neil Smith (Animation Station)
• Dominic Smith (Polytechnic)
• Will Scrimshaw (Polytechnic)
• Dave Valentine (MediaShed)

• Introduction
• Mini report: GYOML history form JW
• People / organisations not present
• Problems encountered
• Way forward

A small community advice centre focused on green issues. It was based in a shop space in Pollockshields and was predominantly funded by a housing association. They were a hub for the community with only 2 staff and 4 recycled computers running Ubuntu. They worked like hell and provided a lovely shiny new space for people. Their workshops and events were fairly successful but they had little day-to-day involvement or help. They were the ‘providers’. Radius basically killed themselves in terms of energy in trying to keep themselves going.Perhaps the biggest success from Radius and the Grow Your Own Media Lab involvement was that a local Journalist who was setting up a local Community newspaper decided to use Open Source Software as a result of our workshops. The paper (G41) is still going in spite of the fact that Radius is not. Have a look at their website: http://www.southsidemedia.org/g41/

The area is not particularly exciting or dynamic area of the UK but because of this there is a fair bit of money for people who are doing ‘stuff’. Copeland Borough Council were eager for things to start happening and added more money than expected. They have money but nobody to deliver the activities. Dave from the art department of the local authority was very excited about taking this kind of model. The youth workers and providers were very unskilled and unmotivated.

We ran a eek long series of activities with 5 youth workers. Structured as a teaching the workers leading through to the workers teaching the kids. It was based in a building shared by three organisations

Housing association. Arts group. CA15 Community center management.

We found that they were far behind the level we expected and more importantly they did not trust each other as organisations.

Our main activity was to get these guys talking. We hooked them up with a LAN as one organisation had an internet connection and was not sahring etc etc.

Became clear that this community centre was not going to be the focus of a media lab.

Had loads of cash but little organisations in the area to apply and deliver activity. Our hope is that this can lead to other ‘Local Authorities’- can act as a ‘can opener’ to other funded authorities.

A small arts group based in Birmingham who were just setting up and looking for a space at the begginning of the GYOML programme. " dynamic guys, who got hold of a space in an old wine warehouse. They got this ‘deal’ where they could run stuff in the day and then it could be used as a nightclub at night and they could feed off each other. Unfortunatley this then fell through.

They had some great activities including work with the Clown Army.

They got hold of a bus powered by chip fat towing a caravan full of computers powered by solar power. They had a big problem in that they did not have a regular user base. They never managed to maintain a community of ‘users / participants’. Made us realise that a physical base is really important.

SCAN had big ideas and lots of promise but unfortunately have not delivered. Gave an introduction to Animation Station and we did some activity with them. It was proposed that we would work with Lighthouse in Brighton but unfortunately nothing came of this. SCAN are now going through a period of consultancy.

• The big problem of Money!
• Volunteer energy is not sustainable.
• Evaluation and budgeting is often underestimated.

Dave Valentine: management is a problem: individuals trying to work together is a real problem. Not enough money to keep everybody working continuously forever. Can you sustain the activity or use the recent spate of activity to draw down more money? Need managers and can’t afford to pay for a manager.

MediaShed has a different management structure to Folly - which looks really strong.

Dominic Smith: Polytechnic has exactly the same problem- need money for the ‘boring stuff’ such as accountants and management etc.

Jim Prevett: Access Space also have a management problem... we have realised that there is a ‘management’ hole in our staffing structure.

Dominic Smith: Can we run an organisation? We formed because of GYOML and it has been a steep learning curve in setting up. GYOML came too early for the organisation. A lot of the time it was just me trying to do a lot of stuff. Basically I worked too much and got stressed with lots of stuff, pressure and bad things happening in personal life. Leant what was good and what we were not going to do again.

We had to slow the pace down... so it all took a year longer than planned. Premises became really important for us so we spent time getting that right. Now we have a good space next to the Star and Shadow and we have a really good mutual relationship. We run their computer network and they in turn let them run events in their premises.

With the activities we ran 2 x Artists in residence. 1 in Throckley- where we set up a lab. Gave the offer of free training for the staff but they wanted us to run the workshops and they never took They just wanted ‘free’ workshops. Using the term ‘free’ is really dangerous. Associate some cost to them is the way forward for us because it signals intent and it is investing in the process.

Big mistake: following a traditional workshop method.

Our big priority now is to make the Poly feasible and then fun. Do this by moving away from technology. We have the Open cola project coming soon. Other activities... a resource to look at ideas... a project- doesn’t have to be about computers. We want to foster a different kind of approach and have an area where people can do something that they care about. Our location is good for that.

Dave Valentine: The location of MediaShed is possibly not in the right position.

Clare Gannaway: We currently have no place / no centre to develop continuous work in. We have an office space and because of our situation (betwwen premises) we have been working with a huge range of groups. Aim to work with a community over a period of time. trying to engage new audiences and to foster continuous links. This has been a little bit of a problem because there has not been the continuous audience.

We have developed Digiclub. Online activities- aim is to engage a core group of users. Had to work in partnership with other organisations.

Neil Smith: The management structure and events around SCAN have been disappointing. I am bnot really sure what the position is now. I have been wanting to follow up the activity but have found it a bit difficult to get answers.

• More connectivity
• Awareness of other organisation’s activity
• Encourage participant connectivity
• Meet more!
• Create knowledge base

JW: My big concern is that we can tranfer all of this activity to real people. Us lot here feel reasonably confortable and going to events like this one (Lovebytes) and getting together and talking, but the real value will start to come when our participants can start to move around the country. Where we can build a network of participants, because these are the people who will benefit the most from the opportunity of going to Newcastle and meeting other people like themselves.

DV: Yes... we have a few people at MediaShed who would love to come up to Sheffield and say hi.

How do we start to put this in place?

JW: Matbe some kind of structured activity like the 20×20 exhibition that we have at Access Space.

JP: I think it has to be more organic. Say- if we go and visit each other then we take a couple of ‘participants’ with us.

DS: Yes, and with our Datarama events, you lot and your participants are welcome to come up and show sopme stuff. I think that us generally talking more and having more of an idea about what each other is doing is a big start to creating a network.

JW: We should look out for funding and ways forward to keep the enthusiasm going.

JP: That requires somebody to take a lead and actively get the funding! and all of us are pushed for time!

CG: I agree, but we are always looking for future funding.

DS: Well we kind of have a network here!

JP: Just by calling ourselves a network we are... we start to talk about our ‘network’ in a positive way