Leeds City Lab Planning Meeting 01 – Tuesday 29th September 2015, 9.30-12.00 KEY DISCUSSION POINTS AND ACTIONS Attending:
Apologies:
Irena Bauman (Bauman Lyons Architects & Leeds Love it Share It (LLISI) CIC) Paul Chatterton (PI of Leeds City Lab pilot project (completed), University of Leeds School of Geography, LLISI) Susan Coan (Leeds Beckett University) Jo Cutter (UoL Business School) Nick Garrett ((Leeds City Council) Andy Goldring (UK Permaculture Association & LLISI) Nathalie Hadwin (Leeds City Council) Stephen Hall (UoL) Katie Hill (Leeds Beckett University, LLISI) Steve Hoey (Canopy Housing) Jonathan Lindh (LEDA) Elaine McNichol (CPD4 Health Innovation, UoL) Yun Wing Ng (RA of Leeds City Lab pilot project (completed), Bauman Lyons Architects) Richard Norton (Voluntary Action Leeds) Paul Routledge (UoL) Alexa Ruppertsberg (UoL) Rachael Unsworth (Freelance Geographer, LLISI)
Brian Ablett (Leeds City Council) Sue Ball (Media and Arts Partnership (MAAP)) Emma Bearman (Playful Leeds) Paul Connell (ODI Leeds, SmartKlub Actuated Futures) Gill Crawshaw (Volition) Mike Davies (Freelance Business Analyst) Gary Dymski (University of Leeds, Co- PI of Leeds City Lab Pilot Project, completed) Matt Edgar (Changeful: Service Design and Innovation, Actuated Futures) Cath Follin (Leeds City Council) Sara Gonzalez (UoL) Jason Hird (The Institute for Crazy Dancing, Tea & Tolerance) Debra Kerr (Leeds City Council) Tom Knowland (Leeds City Council) Faye McAnulla (University of Leeds) Alice Owen (University of Leeds) Paul Simkins (Arup) Erik Thomasson (University of Leeds) Alicia Ridout (mHealth Habitat) Janet Spencer (Leeds Housing Concern) Anna Vickers (Arup) Louise Walker (UoL)
SESSION 1: GROUP FEEDBACK ON PILOT PROJECT RECAP PRESENTATION: What’s currently missing? -
Health/wellbeing theme Children and families, multigenerational conversations An aim to be an exemplar to other cities about how successful partnerships work
What jumps out? -
S.Hall: Infiltrating each other’s workspaces – can be easily done now S.Hall Excited about possibility of coproduction workspace – but this is long term goal, have to think through issues of accessible city location and how we might pay for it. NH: excited by being able to link into listening project with communities about what they need and matching up Council assets with Leeds urban commons IB: Important for individuals to pursue projects they are interested in, there won’t be one project that everyone will be interested in. IB: A NETWORK of projects that feed into and enrich each other IB:Leeds Love it Share It offer of small ££££ budget suggested at the last workshop of pilot project is reoffered for bridging gap between now and when other funding comes in. S.Hoey: Need to connect to other initiatives in the city – Leaders for Leeds, Leeds Citizens who have recently finished a listening project and Poverty Truth Challenge. AG: We need a small team to look at long term fundraising in parallel with identifying ‘minimum viable’ projects – small practical projects we can do well now and sets us up for the next project. RN: What is Leeds City Lab’s unique proposition that sets us apart from other initiatives? We’re looking at similar issues and all want to make Leeds better.
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RN: Could also be opportunity to link LCC and Leeds voluntary sector with Leeds’ young creative entrepreneurs e.g Duke Studios JL&PC: Need to clarify if this is research project / is it action-research? Should we use the term research or is it too academic? KH: Example- History of Leeds Music scene project – umbrella project bringing together several independent Leeds music projects and organizations and individuals. All independent projects enriched by being part of wider initiative. IB: Notion of ‘wicked problems’ repeatedly occurring in every city but aren’t getting resolved. Anthropologist Rebecca Moore recently said: No such thing as certainty of outcomes, we are always working with partial knowledge, collaboration and experimentation is only way forward. IB: If we forget the word ‘co-production’ none of this makes sense and we’re just like many other forums. Idea is to pool together our knowledge and resources and networks we are linked into. AG: Too often at meetings people ask ‘does anyone know about this and that’, who’s working on what – previously guarded city data is becoming increasingly available – we need a series of practical mapping exercises that make this data accessible to anyone, not just researchers. NH: LCC are having same conversations – mapping assets, who’s doing what and where, but Council don’t know what they don’t know. Need other people to map what they’re doing. Build up practical and tangible maps to identify real gaps in city, not just assumptions. JL,PC&AG: Information can’t do anything by itself, needs facilitators and interpreters. Paul Connell at ODI Munro House is committed to this, and Leeds has a lot of data expertise we need to link into. SH: Leeds City Lab could be hosted by ODI for a bit – would also be a way of infiltration.
SESSION 2: WHAT ARE THE ‘MINIMUM VIABLE PROJECTS’ WE SHOULD WORK ON NEXT? Mapping: -
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Coproduced mapping – includes people’s interests e.g. Urban Commons linking into a Listening Project could work very well. Chatting to communities about a piece of land that is local and important to them. Spend a few days listing existing data sets and websites so we know what we have and don’t have. Why is it needed? o You don’t know what’s going in your own sector o Powerful tool as myth buster e.g. mapping to show LCC land ownership – 45% of Leeds – with mapping you can identify where intervention can still happen in collaboration with the public sector o Mapping existing community activities could encourage good things happening more often e.g. food projects, gardening projects etc. People can lose sight of what’s happened and been achieved. If these were mapped communities can become aware of and link into another community’s projects e.g. Cross Green and Richmond Hill Community Unity already working together. NG: Perfect task for ODI Leeds, up to LCC to release data for ODI. ODI host 48 hour hacks, set a task at beginning. We could do basic mapping and people who have information feed into 48hr process, at the end you have a product. We need a starting point e.g. urban commons, what’s still in public ownership, libraries, building on existing needs Small steps – we can pick a particular part of the city around a particular agenda, work on that then take it city wide? Potential to deploy students on work placements to help with module requirements? NG: For mapping you need data. LCC has about 8 different databases none of which talk to each other and joining them up is not a priority. If we can release data from those databases to do a hack to map community assets then it’s probably worth the clanging. Don’t underestimate how much people love community assets, when you map that down then do a listening project on the back of that they you get traction because people start thinking creatively.
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Leeds works better when you start something disruptively, come up with something and place it. If you try and engage too much at the start it won’t get going. Better to go under the radar then turn up with something and the Council will probably move. What’s latest on H2020 call? Need to keep an eye on that. o There was h2020 call on urban re-wilding – we were talking about linking with Leeds Sustainable Development Group on nature based approaches to urban design. Someone should call meeting at Tetley and if people are interested then make it happen. o Urban mapping would help with this.
Vision/Ethos: -
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Nailing this down is especially important for new people Can be quite broad, inclusive, could mention centering around ‘wicked problems’, articulating unique proposition, and how we recognize value of existing Leeds players, how we would like to connect and collaborate with other networks/organisations in Leeds Couple of paragraphs long, or even one sentence YWN to share Google doc link on Leeds City Lab website with ‘About..’ and intro video text so group can start to shape this
Chatting Project: -
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Goes hand in hand with urban commons mapping. Mapping would provide a starting point and invitation for listening. Small groups take ownership of smaller areas and increase the information. We could just map what we’ve got now and ask: Why does it matter to you? How do you value it? Why does this piece of common land matter to you? Did you meet your first girlfriend there? What is the value? Could record people’s voices and opinions – very accessible- get it on radio and website. Which comes first? Listening or mapping? o Could be slightly staggered – information acts as catalyst for smaller groups to form around geographical areas that mean something to them o If project is to have any credence with communities we’re trying to do this for then listening project should come first o Listening project should provide a mechanism to follow through on, people can act on their own thinking. o We need to map existing initiatives in the city that we can add value to rather than starting from scratch, rather than listening then disappearing off. Maybe one of the next steps for us to have a meaningful discussion about a brief for each of the little projects because we’ve all got different conceptions of what a listening project could be ‘Listening’ suggests WE are going to be listening to THEM – it should be like a speaking project so local people can speak and then listen to each other What about ‘chatting project?’
Infiltration: -
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We can share a workspace and during that day you chat with people you’re sharing the workspace with, go for a coffee/lunch/drink at pub together and share some of the day’s insights, blog or Tweet about it, anything that comes up can contribute to mapping Feel free to infiltrate at VAL and Bauman Lyons Architects office.
Do we need to look for spaces yet? -
Ask Paul Connell if we can use ODI for next meeting/next few meetings, Leeds University, LCC and Arup are members already. We just need somewhere to meet – everything else can be stored online or in a box
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Word laboratory suggests the PEOPLE and the EQUIPMENT: what’s minimum that we need? Us and a projector?
Leeds Love It Share It (LLISI) offer: -
Anyone can become a member although all the members so far have been directors (Paul Chatterton, Katie Hill, Irena Bauman, Rachael Unsworth, Andy Goldring) Is LLISI and Leeds City lab the same thing? – it’s just a vehicle for now, good enough to get us to next step. At the next meeting we can bring the paperwork and decide who wants to be on board of directors
Funding: -
Need a funding team to work out a business model and how we’re going to bring more resources in. LLISI’s money isn’t going to take us far. We should be creative about long term financing. If Leeds energy companies became Leeds owned companies which has dividends that came back to develop more wellbeing projects in the city – ongoing fundraising mechanism Economy and Culture board chaired by Nigel Foster and others – invited us to come and tell them where we’re at. Maybe 10 of us could go and pitch our idea to private sector partners? We could get an old shop in the city centre, who knows?
People/Groups to get in touch with: -
Yorkshire Evening Post – they have reach and readership that we don’t have and they like writing about projects – we should tell them about our project. We should all subscribe too! If we’re going to work in partnership it needs buy in from higher up at LCC. We need to set our values together and have LCC be comfortable with that o There’s only about 3 people in the Council you need buy in from. Lee Hemsworth and couple of other people. You do not want to engage with the entire Council.
Inducting new people -
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Can be frustrating if first half of every meeting is spent updating people. Need ways to bring people up to speed very quickly – could be physical posters on the wall that say these are our values/vision/principles, a timeline of what we’ve done so far. It can all be available on website too so it’s new people’s responsibility to read it before they come, Maybe newbies can come 15 minutes earlier to sit down with one of us and we give them a quick update. Sort out website so it has .org instead of wordpress.com Fun to have a physical badge saying ‘Leeds City Lab’
ACTIONS: -
Set meeting date at ODI Leeds in October with Paul Connell, circulate date to group Write mini briefs for mapping and chatting projects (maybe as a group at next meeting?) Share Google doc on website of website text for people to start shaping ethos/vision Share Google doc on website for next meeting’s Agenda Buy leedscitylab.org domain and update web address – sort out Google searchability. Steve Hall to email around about infiltrating workspaces Existing LLISI directors to meet in meantime and prepare membership/directorship paperwork for next meeting Stay in touch at leedscitylab@gmail.com for anything in the meantime (Friday’s for responding to any emails)