Your Community, Your Say, Your Solutions

There was a good turnout when local people gathered for "Your Community, Your Say, Your Solutions" on the 21st of May at The Sydney Russell School, in Dagenham, East London.

Over 25 people took part.

Great conversations were had and participants came up with 10 different projects, all listed in detail further below!"

Our Assets - What do we have? 1st conversation round

We answered this question in small groups of 4 people around a table and identified about 40 local assets!

Here is an example of a local asset (click photo to enlarge it):

You can find photos of all the assets here on Flickr!

Here is a spreadsheet with all the assets (Click here to download):

What do *I* care about? 2nd conversation round

Here is an example of the things that people who attended care about (click photo to enlarge it):

The photos of the writeups for all the Round 2 conversations can be found here on Flickr!

Here is a spreadsheet with all the Round 2 writeups (Click here to download):

What would it take for *me* to act on what I care about most? 3rd conversation round

Here is an example of what would motivate people who attended to take action (click photo to enlarge it):

The photos of the writeups for all the Round 3 conversations can be found here on Flickr!

Here is a spreadsheet with all the Round 3 writeups (Click here to download):

All in all, it was quite a busy morning. Thankfully, Bill Clarke the Community Development Manager made sure that there was plenty of tea on hand to keep people's strength up and there was a delicious lunch provided by a local pillar of the community that we got to eat in the glorious sunshine that we had on that Saturday.

Getting Things Done Together Open Space

Having gotten clarity on local assets, issues and motivations, attendees were invited to propose specific conversations around issues they care about and projects they would like to see happen. Here you can see some of the proposed sessions (click photo to enlarge it):

During the sessions, people wrote notes on flipchart paper, you can see a session note example below (click photo to enlarge it):

Photos of all the session notes can be found here!

The aim of all this discussion was to come up with specific project ideas and action plans to make them happen. You can see an action plan example below (click photo to enlarge it):

Photos of all the action plans can be found here!

Here is a spreadsheet with all the action plans (Click here to download):

Voting on Project Ideas Dotmocracy

Each project idea was summarized on a "Dotmocracy" sheet, that people could then use to vote on the idea and give their comments. You can see an example Dotmocracy sheet below (click photo to enlarge it):

Photos of all the Dotmocracy sheets can be found here!

Here is a spreadsheet with all the Dotmocracy sheets including votes and comments (Click here to download):

In the end, there were 10 project ideas to be further explored and developed. A couple of the most interesting ideas were:

1. An annual Festival of Culture in Parsloes Park to bring together the diverse communities and groups in the area.
2. An independently-run Anti-social Behaviour hotline operated on the community's behalf to bring accountability to how such issues are actually tackled in practice.

Closing comments from participants

• "Bringing things together!"
• "Kind of fulfilling from a dual perspective."
• "Sense of community - Feeling that I didn't know existed!"
• "Good work today - rewarding!"
• "Potential & people ready to take on vital work."
• "(A) few good contacts, first ripple in the pond."
• "Hope that things will be done."
• "Taking away new contacts."
• "Looking forward to working with people, working on ideas & succeeding on projects."
• "Nice event. Hope for the future."