PLAY BOOK 1
Contents The Story
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Lessons & Values
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Why we chose it & Methodology
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Events that have happened
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Groups & Organisations that have used OPN
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How Open Project Night has spread
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Research & Findings
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Resources & Conditions
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Reflections
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Next Steps
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What Could Open Project Night Be?
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The Story Impact Hub Birmingham was an idea built in the open for 2 years through social media, workshops, coffee meet ups, dinners, online blogs, visits to other spaces, a festival and so much more, even before the space, building and community had a physical manifestation. The Impact Hub went on to be crowdfunded by 100s of people, with 1000s sharing, supporting and informing the campaign. The opening of the physical space was co-designed and co-built by many of this energetic, excited and motivated community. The opening festival, Demo B, acted as a crucial point to reignite this conversation with the city and reconfirm our desire to keep generosity and openness as structural elements of our values. Demo B showed us there was a need for a platform and space to allow people to come together, discuss, debate and explore a whole host of issues, opportunities and challenges. We learnt through TEDxBrum and Impact Hub Birmingham that making things in the open is about more than intellectual property, data, governance or even transparency. In fact it is about a new method of convening, inviting, making, designing, organising, collaborating, contributing and being held accountable. Fundamentally it’s about making and getting involved with the workings out of an idea rather just consuming a final project, whether that’s a new line of clothing, a new restaurant, a new 4
political party or activist group, or even a knitted woolly hat. Often, the final destination, the product, the thing, the production, the check points and the journey is unknown and scary. Doing this by yourself in your bedroom, local library or coffee shops can be exhausting and damaging to your output. Open Project night was our way of creating stepping stones and opportunities for others to move forward each day, and allow them to take lots of people along with them, as we have on our journeys. Our experiences over the last few years have made us think quite deeply about what conditions are required for a large group of people on this journey, what is required in building a platform, convening a community and creating the spaces to allow this to flourish. We aren’t certain of it yet, but know that trust, empathy, collective investment, enlightened generosity, and embracing of the open ended is at its core. It’s easy to invest in single ideas, but what we are interested in is investing in collective purpose. Further reading Making things in the Open: Opening Festival Demo B: Kickstarter:
The Ambition In September 2015 Impact Hub Birmingham launched Open Project Night, an initiative that embedded our key value of generosity within a bold, creative and courageous vision. It’s purpose was to support the people of Birmingham, both members and non members, to take that next step to make their ideas and dreams a reality. OPN is therefore not just an initiative, it is an approach to engage people with our key values and our shared mission. Mission Birmingham seeks to build a diverse and supportive community where your goals and talents - your “mission” - can flourish and thrive. Together, we want to build a better Birmingham, one that is fairer, more democratic and more inclusive. In order to do this, we believe we need an environment whose physical and social habitat reflects the community it serves. For us this is a welcoming and malleable space where eclectic individuals can collaborate to tackle some of the most wicked problems we face as one.
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Lessons & Values What we have learnt through our journey so far is that whilst building a dream that’s big enough to fill the rest of your days is exciting, what is crucial to progress is taking that very first step outside of your comfort zone. Our team and many of the wider community have been involved in multiple open making experiences, from TEDxBrum to the entire building and growing processes of Impact Hub Birmingham. Here a few things we have learnt and ideas principles we have used to inform Open Project Night.
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Lessons & Values
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Start with an open question
From the unknowns of building the first TEDx in the city, to raising a rather ambitious total on Kickstarter, and most recently building the Impact Hub with nowhere near enough cash, lots of generosity and the helping hands of many, one of the most important lessons to date has been that there isn’t a magical checklist that makes this all happen. Sometimes you need to put the big question out there and find out who else is interested. Taking the first step will lead to the next step and having others along for the ride make those steps that follow easier (and more fun).
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Lessons & Values
2. Open planning
Co-design, collaboration and a whole host of cowords are thrown around so often nowadays, but truly unlocking the potential of collective wisdom starts with open planning. Asking people what they want and actually acting on their opinions draws people into the process and gives them a sense of ownership, as well as authorship, of the shared narrative.
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Lessons & Values
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A love of the outcome not the attribution We have also found that the typology of person this invitation attracts is most likely to be those that are interested in the outcomes, the mission and the higher purpose. They care less about individual attribution and instead the collective progress of the group or enterprise.
We have worked constantly to ensure the efforts of individuals aren’t lost, and that the wider mission helps the individual to progress, but have revelled in a community that cares less about the ‘I’ and constantly more about the ‘we’.
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Lessons & Values
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Harnessing and building your crowd
Generosity as a key value runs across a whole host of assets. Whether it’s being generous with your time or contacts, growing the collective capability requires an abundance mindset, one which understands that ideas grow richer and deeper the more widely they are shared. This moves beyond the idea of a sharing economy and instead moves into a giving economy - one where the more you give unconditionally, the more we all have; where ideas are not put at risk when they are shared, but are enriched by the sharing process through the addition of new skills, new feedback and new contacts.
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Lessons & Values
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Open accountability and loose tie governance
Accountability is too often thought of as a checking process and one which is done to make sure that things are progressing as planned. Moving to an open model means that it’s more important not to let the crowd down rather than your to-do list of procedures. This gives the community a chance to direct and inform strategic direction, actions and their subsequent accountability.
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Lessons & Values
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Love what you do together
Love must exist in the whole process; the initial interaction, the movement building, the conflict, the outcome and the following iterations that follow. We have learnt that growing this, first and foremost, will remain the sole focus of our culture. Without it, we have seen that things can’t grow authentically. Using these insights led to us to start Open Project Night – a home to build this community, learn, grow, build momentum and our collective mission together.
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Lessons & Values
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Generosity
Open Project Night is available to our community and beyond, every week apart from public holidays from 18.30 - 22.30. This is often something many people especially those looking to organise OPNs ask us about. There is a simple reason behind this, OPN grew out of our discovery that so many spaces across the city weren’t fit for purpose for making ideas happen. They were either not open late enough, didn’t have enough space or resources, were expensive, were not inclusive or safe for many communities. So, generosity of our space, timings, resource, always being free at point of access were a key founding and organising principle. This is something, we agreed never to veer from.
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Open Methodology As we have previously mentioned, Impact Hub Birmingham was built upon a spirit of openness and generosity. As soon as we opened the doors we knew having a physical space gave us an asset that small groups and those starting out might not otherwise have access to. After the ethos and success of the Kickstarter campaign, we knew we wanted to be able to offer a way to be generous to those who might be at the start of their journey or might not have the resources to host their meet ups or needed to broaden the scope of who they were talking with. Alongside this, we were aware that there was the potential for a subconscious bias to creep into our decision making if people came to us asking for space. We might be more inclined to help those we knew but not offer similar deals to a wider network, so we needed a mechanism which was truly open, beyond individual judgement calls and internal networks. That’s why we chose to launch Open Project Night and set up a very loose methodology.
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Events hosted at OPN
Learning Community The #RadicalChildcare Learning Community was a 21st Century multimedia book club to digest and interrogate current thinking, academic research, TED talks and podcasts in a supportive informal community of learners, experts and the curious. The Learning Community met fortnightly at Open Project Night and covered a variety of topics including mothers of innovation, the role of experts and childcare & the creative industries.The ethos of the #RadicalChildcare Learning Community 16
was to kick-start peer-to-peer problem solving, making it ideal for the Open Project Night setting. It promoted an open-minded, ambitious and reflective discourse based on constructive criticism and celebrating great practice, and has built a permanent resource of reports, articles, videos and more to inform the #RadicalChildcare work, as well as bringing in perspectives and ideas from the community that has led to the development of a Mission Birmingham Parent Membership and more.
Events hosted at OPM
TEDxBrum is an independently organised and volunteer led event, showcasing talks from thought leaders alongside inspiring performances. This year’s theme for the event was #PowerOfUs, centred around connecting the city across public, private and civic sectors, and the event was held in Birmingham Town Hall. As part of Open Project Night, an initial Open Meeting was held, inviting anyone to shape the event by suggesting potential speakers,
finding out more about joining the team in various roles and to hear more about the theme, venue and plans in place for 2016’s event. Subsequently, weekly meetings were held by the TEDxBrum team at Open Project Night to plan and organise around all aspects of the event, including programming, guest experience, and communications.
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Events hosted at OPN
What’s next after Brexit?
In a special edition of Impact Hub Birmingham’s Town Hall conversations, Impact Hub Birmingham and Beatfreeks co-hosted a workshop and discussion focusing on What’s Next After Brexit? They asked “how are you feeling and how as a community do we take an intentional step forward and continue to discover our role within the city?”
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This was an exciting Open Project Night space for people who want to build, create and respond to the outcome of the EU referendum in a positive and systemic way.
Events hosted at OPN
Birmingham City Council Leadership Hustings Open Project Night was the setting for the hustings around the Labour Party in Birmingham electing a new leader, following the resignation of Sir Albert Bore. Over 50 people joined us for these historic hustings, to see the candidates in action, hear their policies and plans for the future of not just the council,
but the city of Birmingham too. Everyone was welcome, councillors of all parties, MPs, media, online bloggers and the public, creating a rich and lively discussion at Impact Hub Birmingham.
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Events hosted at OPN
Herstory As part of Open Project Night, local spoken word artist Aliyah Hasinah hosted Herstory Live, a night of poetry, music and storytelling exploring the themes of historic stories of the underrepresented diaspora. Herstory Live explored ‘history, herstory and our stories’ through art and conversation across a monthly series of events, as well as creating a library of artefacts. Performers here included music 20
from local talent Mahalia and more, alongside powerful spoken word performances from local and national artists. The event has since spread out to other venues across the city, as well as the artivist community organising around the Black Lives Matter movement to lead a series of #BLMBrum interventions, including a silent demonstration and a touring photography exhibition.
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Groups & Organisations who have used OPN Artivists Basic Income UK The GAP Arts Project Birmingham Humanists netsquared Midlands Beatfreeks POCzero - Village Talk, Seedbank Spaghetti Jams RSA Engage Brum Pound Number 11 Arts Speak Up Creative Entrepreneurs Club B. Excellent Change 24 UNMUTED BABWorks Turmeric Sports U. Lab
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Afrofutures UK Individuals Business Development Birmingham Food Council Song Writing Circle Southside Producers Chinese Society Downtime Music Sofar Sounds Art Against The Grain EdHubBrum Birmingham Partners Anti Austerity by Compass UK LGA U-Neek Walls Homeless Period First Class Legacy SSE LIving Streets Birmingham SOUP
How Open Project Night has spread We’re now delighted to see the Open Project Night concept travelling around the world, with other communities in the Impact Hub global network adopting the idea proudly launched in our city to do good in theirs. All nights use the same open hashtag, making #OpenProjectNight a rich feed of connected events, energy and conversations across the globe.
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How OPN has spread “We came in for free space and came away with contacts, ideas and energy for our project.”
Impact Hub Brixton Weekly, Monday nights 6.30pm - 10.30pm Running since April 2016
Open Project Night at Impact Hub Brixton is a free incubator for good ideas that change the face of Lambeth’. Here attendees can host events, trade skills, network, work together, find mentors, find inspiration and get feedback on ideas all with support from experienced connectors and facilitators. So far Open Project Night Brixton has been home to Brixton Green, an affordable housing cooperative; The Rastafari Movement; Brixton Energy, a renewable energy initiative; A Bank for Lambeth; a crowdfunding campaign for a community fridge; a planning meeting for It’s Your Local Market; fundraising work for a local community space and an impromptu conversation on what makes us generous. 24
How OPN has spread
“Come to co-create a better Boston.”
Impact Hub Boston First Monday of every month 6pm - 10pm Running since November 2016
Impact Hub Boston host a monthly Open Project Night, inviting the community ‘to host small events, co-work, network, trade skills and get involved with projects that change Boston for the better.’ Projects include continuing conversations from their Co-Creating Economic Mobility event; designing the first Venture Cafe themed around social impact work in Boston, and provide a space to share constructive feedback for pitch practices with local entrepreneurs who don’t otherwise have access to workspace to work on their projects.
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How OPN has spread
Impact Hub Ottowa First Monday of every month 6pm - 10pm Running since March 2016
At Impact Hub Ottowa a monthly Open Project Night has been set up because “this city is full of incredible people who are working to bring their ideas to life – and we want to support them in their efforts to create social change and impact.” Sometimes there will be a special theme or curated topic, with a discussion or activity led by a Hub member, and this is shared on their facebook page in advance. 26
“It’s like an open source movement for community development.” - Apt613
Research and Findings Over 12 weeks we sought to understand the reach of OPN and the make up of people who were using it, what they liked and what they didn’t like. Some of the key findings from this were:
278 17 people
different groups/ meetups
some of these ran weekly, others less frequently
Topics these groups covered included: Public Speaking Business Development Skills Social Media Learning Health and Wellbeing Tech and Open Source Data Arts Music Spoken Word Social Justice and charity meetups
In a follow up survey we asked some of the attendees their reasons for coming to OPN and how they felt about it:
66%
said they were aware of the topic covered by their meetup and wanted to contribute
44%
were aware of the topic and was interested in learning more about this subject
35%
of hosts said they started the meetup because they were aware of the OPN offering and community.
95%
of repsonses saw OPN as a valuable resource and 85% said they were unaware of any similar resources locally.
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Some Key Quotes Was it worthwhile attending OPN?
Do you plan to continue to attend OPN?
“Very worthwhile and the Impact Hub is an excellent space for this type of activity to take place.”
“I am setting up my own social enterprise and maybe in the future who knows”
“Fulfilling and worthwhile due to team working and meeting new people.” “Very- there’s an amazing buzz at Impact Hub if I could afford it I would join it” “It’s a beautiful concept to be able for spaces giving back to the community it was built for It was good. But felt clique at times.”
What might improve OPN? “More schedules and some areas released to users” “More interactions with people” “Impact Hub is not easy to find if you haven’t been there before!” “More focussed attention from regular hub folk” 28
“Yes and for my university modules” “Yes, I would like to host rehearsal spaces for artists” “To talk about our business” “Perhaps, if I have an idea in future that needs to bring people together.” “Yes. I’ve just started a monthly group for songwriters and want to start a monthly group to discuss theology/philosophy”
Data Map of Participants
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Where participants have come from Below is a snapshot of the locations OPN participants have come from across west midlands with the furthest coming from Leamington.
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Resources & Conditions Over the last year of running OPN we have identified some key components, resources and conditions, which are needed to be able to replicate the process.These broadly fit into three categories; Physical, Cultural & Human
Space • • • • • •
A range of furniture and flexible formats - with different and rapidly adaptable layouts. Different rooms, areas and spots for different groups to base themselves in but are able to flow between them Flexible and fluid process for booking and assigning spaces for the evening - with ways of identifying who’s doing what where Refreshment Area - hot drinks and water provide; access to fridges and cutlery, plates, etc; shared food preparation and dining area; occasional shared meals for all attendees Toilets, sinks, quiet space Notice boards and signposting - who’s where
‘Doing’ Resources •
All the stationery, bits and bobs which groups and people might use to plan, map and action their ideas - e.g. pens, paper, post-its; magnets, lego, blu-tac; whiteboards, drawing boards and felt tip hoards.
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Resources & Conditions
Hosting and Management
A dedicated host to welcome people, help arrange the different spaces and help groups make the most of the space. The busiest period is 30 mins before the start and first hour, as we help everyone settle in, welcoming new and returning participants.
Passion
OPN can be very exciting, satisfying, often chaotic and rather busy if you let it flow naturally without too many rules and top down restrictions. We’ve found in order to run it and continue it sustainably there needs to be a deep passion for the overarching causes, motivations for starting it and place its in. Without this passion it risks defaulting to a free space resource, which eventually isn’t of high value to anyone.
Storytelling & Marketing Capability
The key to growing our momentum has been initial sharing of the context and motivations / passion for us starting OPN, followed by regular sustained storytelling and broader marketing of what’s happening at OPN. Beyond, printed flyers and websites, we have found most of our value has come from sharing the content to drive interest and curiosity, as opposed to straight forward marketing of the event. Each Impact Hub has gone on to create their own brand identity, tone and story, so there is now a range of examples for new OPNs to get ideas from.
Access to Existing Networks
We found that having an existing network helped us to make the first 15 - 20 OPNs help to grow the momentum and draw attention. It is helpful to start OPN once you have an informal network already building in an area / organisation.
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Resources & Conditions
These are the cultural conditions that you need to exhibit and nurture to ensure that OPN can be as inclusive, diverse and unexpected as possible.
Authenticity
Without an authentic call, this could lead to a very transactional relationship and potentially form a clear customer/supplier transaction limiting future development of attendees.
Collective vision
This should be big, ideally as big as possible, but it needs to be clear and something everyone can get behind and identify with.
Openness
The foundation of the night is openness, in terms of energy, space and ideas. A clear statement that ideas grow to be bigger when shared rather than kept secret.
Feedback and improvement
It should be an iterative process and involve learning along the way, it’s a new process and new way of working so there will be teething problems, identifying these and improve can be a positive act if done in the spirit of openness.
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Reflections on Findings Over the last 2 years we have learnt a lot about the why spaces like OPN are needed, what limits them and what helps them to thrive. Being Open isn’t enough, there is a need to actively host the evening and ensure that people’s journeys are captured and also enhanced as well as possible. During a period when Impact Hub was under financial pressure it was difficult to fully resource and explore the role which Open Project Night could have in supporting our wider mission. As well as supporting those who attend Open Project Night to help them on their mission. Open has to be truly open, with no relationship to membership of an organisation or group. This is tough at times but is important to foster the most collaborative environment. There is no doubt that OPN participants are referrals across the network, an informal invitation process has emerged through the network, where if you’ve used it before you reccomend it wider. In order for this to be broader, outreach would need to be hosted by a producer, not only to bring people to our OPN, but actually to help build skills / resources to ensure OPN’s happened in communities across the city.
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What’s Next? Our experience of running the Open Project Night over the past 2 years has been that a central coordinator/ producer role is essential for the successful delivery and development of not just the evening events but also for managing and supporting the collaborative actions and work that surrounds it.
Open Project Night Producer Post
The proposed Open Project Night Producer Post would therefore be responsible for coordinating the wider activities and offers and also be the person who builds on existing organisational contacts and networks. In line with the original Impact Hub Birmingham philosophy the Producer would be responsible for designing a year round development and outreach programme with a focus on those who don’t currently engage with OPN and break down exisitng perceived cliques.
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Strand 1: Storytelling The Producer would be responsible for the development of an OPN blog & podcast series that highlights the story of projects at OPN and shares updates on their progress. Strand 2: Digbeth Trade School Programme. Digbeth Trade School will be part of the Trade School network made up of self-organised barter-for-knowledge schools across the world. ‘Teachers’ propose classes and ask for barter items from students. Trade School is for people who value hands-on knowledge, mutual respect, and the social nature of exchange. The Producer would be responsible for setting up and managing Digbeth Trade School at Open Project Night as our flagship peer-to-peer learning programme. Strand 3: Birmingham SOUP SOUP gives residents the opportunity to learn about projects happening in Birmingham and vote on the project that they believe is the best benefit to the community. It feeds the needs of small enterprises who require help and guidance and gives them the opportunity to pitch for microfunding, share their project ideas and network with like-minded people. The producer’s role would be to support the development of Birmingham SOUP and to ensure that groups using OPN have access to Birmingham SOUP and other sources of seed funding to get their ideas off the ground. Strand 4: OPN Commissions OPN Commission will offer a series of commission funds that allow OPN users to simply apply for funding to programme talks, exhibitions, workshops and screenings at OPN to continue to make OPN a vibrant & inspiring space to meet / organise / plan / do. Strand 5: OPN Toolkit A key role of the OPN Producer would be to develop the OPN Toolkit, a set of resources that means that Open Project Night can be easily replicated in community hubs in Birmingham and beyond. This will entail developing and iterating different versions, trialing OPN in various community venues and consulting with a wide range of partners and stakeholders. 36
What Could OPN be?
Thoughts from the Impact Hub Birmingham Team “For me it is the idea of 21st century youth club, a YMCA which trains the mind and not just the body, for those who are young of mind and curious. To hold a space for lots of different groups to illustrate, educate and expand on their vision of building a better city. There is a huge amount of isolation both physical and mental occurring at this time and us such we need to build new mechanisms to engage as many people as possible in a vision of progress.” - Andy Reeve “OPN should be the most beautiful combination of space and community. The magic fusion of passion, people and purpose given a home to mould a new world.” - Dan Zastawny “Turning up at Open Project Night could be like the internet made real in terms of the way you find new things and connect with other people. It’s where you go to find local community initiatives, startups, learn from inspiring, curious people and expand your mind as to what’s possible in terms of your own ambitions, how you can make an impact in the city and who you could work with.” - Daniel Blyden
“Open Project Night could be the reason that people don’t give up on this city or the relentless pursuit of doing good here, whatever that means to them. A lot of great, important work can be lonely, challenging and often feel unsupported, futile or frankly, totally impossible, but a space to grow your resources, get refuelled by the energy of others, ask questions, see things visibly happening around you and having somewhere for your ideas to physically exist can make them real, deep-rooted, accountable to a community and impossible for people to ignore.” - Louise Byng “Impact Hub Birmingham’s OPN should exist to grow participations of 1000s of citizens across the city in making Birmingham. One day Open Project Nights would be all across Birmingham, popping up in communities across the city. Utilising amazing assets that lie empty and mean the community can self oragnise, dream, design and make their local areas together. Every OPN would have its own microfunding SOUP’s, 100s of citizens working together and big asset rich partners across the city would help seed this movement, letting it grow without strings or fear. Knowing that when places are built by their people, co - owned by its people and this is in collaboration with major stakeholders, not top down this makes better, more vibrant, healthier and thriving places. - Immy Kaur
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January 2017
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