This site is still active although RIS is not - unless you have any ideas!
Martin Dudley has been working as a volunteer with local residents in his own neighbourhood in collaboration with researchers from the University of Sheffield Dwell project. Dwell is a three-year research project, which has been funded by the UK Research Councils (EPSRC, ESRC, and AHRC) to investigate how the design of houses and neighbourhoods can facilitate mobility and well-being – for current and future generations. Over the last year a group has worked on ideas, and talked to local people and specialists about what might be done, and tested a number of ways of finding out. We have looked at physical re-design, movement and access, learning, facilities and housing needs, and planning changes, in meetings and by talking to local groups, schoolchildren, retailers and businesses. We have put on an interactive display at the Village Show, distributed fliers, and published a brochure of ideas about how to improve the village centre for all. The brochure is available below. With neighbourhood planing (NP) under way through a recently designated Forum, the Dwell work not only contributes to the overall research project, but may also contributes thinking to the NP process.
We worked with a Local Level team for Joseph Rowntree Foundation over 2014-15, advising on and evaluating community development, social media and digital inclusion activities in Derwenthorpe, York. Derwenthorpe is a new mixed tenure development established by the Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust, and as it takes shape and the homes becomes occupied, it will be possible to explore residents’ levels of confidence with social technologies, and to study how that in turn influences relationships in the area of east York. A recent collaboration with Kevin Harris has produced a new publication Lost Possessions. A richly illustrated essay it explores the curious tradition of picking up items dropped by complete strangers in public places, and placing them - in routine acts of simple anonymous generosity - on fences, walls or branches to make it more likely that their owners will recover them. More detail on Lost Possessions can be found here. RIS has completed a new web site for Kevin Harris at Local Level. We have worked with Kevin over the years, reviewing services, helping developments at local level and within organisations.
The Local Level web site is at www.local-Level.org.uk. We have been working with the street reps in Shipley, and helped them put together a new web site.
The people we have worked with is a constituted group working in the Windhill area, although there are a large number of reps scattered across the Shipley area of Bradford. Supported to date by the local area Council office, and with help from Groundwork, the reps have achieved all sorts of improvements to their areas. The Windhill group has had plenty of support from the council, and also from Local level. |
AuthorMartin Dudley is open to new enquiries. Archives
January 2021
|