Roundtable reflections: place-based community innovation
Last month, we brought together a roundtable with members of our community of practice to explore and understand what place-based community innovation is, and how we can best support it.
We divided our session into four thematic groups: neighbourhood scale innovation; infrastructures for place-based innovation; community missions, and; cross-sector collaboration.
What is community tech?
Community tech is technology built with, by and for communities, that is locally accountable and creates local value.
It is important to note that ‘community’ does not need to be place-based. Community tech can be tech which enables communities of interest to network and connect.
Furthermore, contributors noted that the definition of ‘place’ is shaped by external, second-hand perceived structures – which may not fit naturally with where communities actually connect and exist.
Nonetheless, place-based approaches to community tech can also provide significant benefits. By grounding innovation in a specific area, it can help to generate greater legitimacy and longer-term success than a top-down approach
Neighbourhood scale innovation
The group discussing this topic found themselves asking, “what do we mean by ‘innovation’?” The term left a sour taste for some, associated with ‘newness’ rather than effectiveness. Yet we found that this could be a positive too – innovation could mean new ways of doing things, rather than creating something new. Innovation could be iterating on top of an existing project, or learning from mistakes to make something better.
Any approach to place-based innovation must recognise that not all communities have equal access to technical skills and social capital. An effective strategy to support community tech initiatives should help communities to collaborate, share knowledge, and overcome imbalances in social capital. This is particularly important amongst the climate crises we face, which will have a disproportionate impact on underserved and marginalised communities, and therefore the need for urgent, locally driven technologies may not be met with the supply of skills to build these.
Infrastructures
Infrastructure is closely associated with power, as members of the roundtable noted and, in turn, funding. The power imbalances in communities make developing sustainable community tech more difficult, particularly if funding is not readily accessible at every stage of development.
These power imbalances can be exacerbated by geography, with universities often seen as the ‘infrastructure of default’ when investing in place-based innovation, particularly from central government. There needs to be greater investment in non-profit groups who are building and spreading community tech, particularly in areas which are not reached by, or overlooked by, academic partners.
Collectively, we suggested ways in which community tech could become more financially sustainable. For example, smaller organisations could collaborate together to become more investable, and the ‘tech for good’ movement could be a route for supporting this. Others suggested that the co-op movement could be a route to encouraging the sharing of support to hyperlocal tech partners. By sharing comparatively abundant resources in this way, we may be able to address some of the power imbalances that come with the sector.
Community missions
How do you unite a community around a shared goal? That’s the aim of a mission, which one participant suggested should be “a statement of that which is obvious.” Their apparent power is that they can move people from being uncertain alone to being uncertain together.
Missions are in vogue right now – yet there is a risk that the laudable goals they set out could get stuck at a national level. We shared how community missions could help to tie top-down with bottom-up approaches, for example by building coalitions and movements of smaller tech initiatives under a common umbrella.
Once again, however, power imbalances will impact the effectiveness of missions. For a community mission to succeed, it needs to be defined by people who know their community or area, and they need to have the tools and resources to actually address said mission.
Cross-sector collaboration
Creating equitable structures for knowledge sharing will be critical – both for community missions and the success of community tech initiatives. We need to find ways to break out of university-centric funding models for innovation, particularly to ensure that we build social capital and power in traditionally underserved areas and marginalised populations.
Participants also noted the significant advantages that could come from embedding community organisations into longer-term funding plans. Not only would this provide community groups with financial stability, it was argued that they can offer significant untapped knowledge to strengthen academic funding bids.
This, however, has been complicated by the loss of social infrastructure – libraries, post offices, co-working spaces – over the past few decades. To develop long-term collaboration, we will need to find new routes to rebuilding these tech-enabled spaces and making them (financially and environmentally) sustainable.
Conclusion
This is an area we’re continuing to explore through our partnership with Power to Change. You can read more about and get involved in the community of practice here.
