2023 Roundup: Growing a Community of Practice
Participants taking part in a group activity at our Manchester Autumn Gathering. Photo: Roseanna Dias
In May 2023 we launched the Community Tech community of practice in partnership with Promising Trouble. Our mission was to create a network and programme for anyone (from any background, sector or experience level) who was interested in how technology could benefit their community. Since then we have enjoyed meeting with individuals, groups, organisations and businesses, collaborators and partners, funders, researchers, freelancers and others.
Here are some of the highlights from a year spent connecting and collaborating with those working in, and curious about all things, community tech.
A Celebratory Start
We officially launched our community of practice in Bristol at Knowle West Media Centre in May where over fifty people joined us to hear how they could get involved. The Pervasive Media Studio in Watershed also hosted us for a talk which you can watch back here. We also travelled to Manchester to speak at Stir To Action’s festival Playground For The New Economy, which brought together community organisations and activists seeking change. It felt good to get out and about meeting folks.
Regular Meetups
This year we’ve run five Online Monthly Meetups exploring Collective Care; Tech for Social Good with special guest Lesedi Bawley from The Engine Room; How to Support Collaboration; Defining The Conversations That Matter To Us; An Open Space style session.
The meetups focus on checking in with one another, meeting new people, and having meaningful discussions in break out rooms, and as a whole group, about community tech. During meetings we share our challenges, learnings, and offer support to one another. It’s an informal space where people can come along as regulars or drop in as a newbie. Sometimes we have fifty folks and sometimes fifteen - it’s a really great flexible space for us to touch base each month.
Through these meet ups we've co-produced a living Collective Care Charter (which lives on Discord) which we check in with at the start of any community of practice online or in-person gathering. The charter helps guide our community. Key behaviours and qualities members want to see and to bring to our community include Collaboration, Radical Transparency and Avoid Jargon, amongst others.
Making It Official
In September we launched a signup process for joining the community. This webpage talks you through what’s on offer, what’s expected of you and how to get involved, with links to apply for bursaries, find out about opportunities, and sign up to a bespoke online community space.
Continuing Conversations
In October we went live with our Discord server - our online community space for gathering in between meetings. Over 140 people use the space so far and we welcome all who are interested in contributing to the conversation around community tech - you do not need to be an expert and we have seen that the questions people pose can be as powerful as answers.
On the Discord, conversations and exchanges range from nitty gritty tech questions to ideas swaps about tech stack mapping, research into Global Majority (or Black, Indigenous and People of Colour) women in leadership, what FOSS (Free Open Source Software) members are using, as well as opportunities and funds that they’ve come across.
It was a tough choice for us to go with this particular platform but we feel it’s working well for many people at the moment as you can engage as much or as little as you want to. We’ve just started doing a weekly round up too, for those who want to pop in and see highlights.
We also began an Action Learning Set this Autumn which saw seven people from our community meeting every month for 2.5 hours for a group coaching session, facilitated by team member Rachael Burton. The group presents their current challenges and opportunities related to community tech and takes time to think through potential approaches and commit to actions they will take. Action Learning is a powerful tool for building community, connection and solidarity.
Exploring Inclusion
This year, I’ve been working as an Inclusion Research Producer focusing on how the community of practice can be as welcoming, useful and flexible for as many people as possible, especially those who experience marginalisation and/or racialisation. This has involved meeting with many different practitioners and organisations, and attending events and groups across the UK, getting to know what people want and who is already in the space, and who isn’t. This has been an iterative process with learnings applied directly to the project as they surface.
Many of those conversations highlighted a need to gather as Global Majority practitioners working in tech justice and inclusion to discuss how things currently are, what we’re dreaming of and what we need to do our changemaking work. It also surfaced our yearning for opportunities to connect and share practices. In response, in November, we ran an online roundtable discussion exploring these themes alongside nine incredible Global Majority practitioners, the results of which will be shared next year.
Funding Community Led Innovation
We collaborated with Power To Change on their new funded programme called Discovery, which invited community businesses in England to apply for £10k to explore the feasibility of a community tech idea over a six month period. The fund focused on supporting under-represented groups and community businesses that are tackling marginalisation, recognising that the best of this work is often led by members or groups from these communities.
In September, twenty organisations were awarded the funding and have been working on their ideas in a supported environment (with partners CAST and Third Sector Labs providing bespoke training) whilst feeding into the wider community of practice. It’s been amazing to see the cohort flourish and we look forward to seeing what the final three months of their research and development time brings.
Look out for community tech explorations that support restorative justice practices (healing from oppression in communities), diversifying the fintech industry (financial services), and tailoring tech services for people with Autism and ADHD, among many other areas.
Over the last ten months we’ve also been working with ten community organisations from across the UK who are creating and caring for community tech as part of a similar programme called Makers and Maintainers. They are exploring everything from community led care, cooperatively run local journalism, and providing refurbished tech to Refugees and Asylum seekers. You can read about their community tech journeys on our new Case Studies page.
Resourcing Each Other
Across the various ways we’ve all been connecting, partners and community members shared a range of resources, including:
A set of AI Tools for Neurodivergent Folks, which was shared by Richard Amm who runs Project Billinghurst that develops tech for disabled activists in the UK and beyond.
The Community Tech Library which is an inspiring database of people making and sharing digital things for collective benefit, which was shared by CAST.
We published the Green Tech Handbook, designed for community tech practitioners interested in building or maintaining sustainable, digital technology alternatives.
Knitting It All Together
In November we held a sold out in person event at Stretford Public Hall, Manchester. Our Community Tech Autumn Gathering saw 70 community members from across the UK come together to connect and share. Attendees heard from Promising Trouble’s Executive Director Rachel Coldicutt OBE about how Community Tech is more important than ever in the context of the big tech monopolies around AI. Her talk looked at opportunities for community data (as an alternative to ‘big data’) to play a significant role in shaping our places – and putting power in the hands of communities as a force for change.
After we ran eight Open Space discussions on topics crowdsourced from our community. These topics included a strong focus on Access and Inclusion; Power Sharing; Community Accountability; and Sustainability. Find the full list of conversations and notes from these chats on our Autumn Gathering Notion page where you’ll also find a recap of Rachel’s talk.
What’s next?
We’re looking forward to what 2024 brings! What we know is coming up:
Our next few Online Monthly Meet Ups are happening as usual on the last Tuesday of each month at 11.30am-12.30pm.
We’ll be sending out a survey to our community to understand better who we are / are not catering for at the moment.
We’ll be publishing findings from our community tech roundtable exploring abundance for Global Majority communities in the context of community tech.
We’ll continue to be keeping in touch with each other on Discord.
We can’t wait to see what topics and themes emerge from the community of practice as we keep growing and connecting with one another. Let us know your highlights and see you in the new year!
