A key part of this project is to investigate for ADeC how online media might be useful to rural communities as ‘virtual venues’ (in place of absent cultural spaces) to knit together different activities and help provide a ‘shareable’ sense of place and identity. Proboscis has been experimenting with various different processes and technologies around local storytelling, mapping and knowledge sharing for some time (see some of our older projects like Urban Tapestries and the various projects of Social Tapestries). Over the years we found that building and maintaining custom systems for such projects created too many barriers for new users and strains on resources to keep going, so a few years back we began to adopt an approach of ‘scavenging’ and knitting together tools, software and approaches that people already use or could easily adopt without having to learn a whole new way of sharing their stories.

Sutton Grapevine draws on this process as we’ve integrated storytelling and news sharing (by email and with the free WordPress blog); radio-like sound recordings (via the free podbean podcasting service, the free AudioBoo podcasting service and the low cost Gabcast telephone-to-MP3 podcasting service); photo sharing (via the Flickr group pool); social connections (via the Facebook Group); news feeds (via Twitter); and (once we locate or create some) video sharing (via YouTube etc). We will also be adding in some of our own inventions like StoryCubes and Diffusion eBooks to make tangible things that can be passed around, as well as the digital media.

Not all of the media we’ve integrated thus far might be the right ones, nor are they exclusive. The key is to find out what media people already use and to build that in too, wherever people want to share it. Please get in touch (stories@suttongrapevine.org) if you have anything to share or to suggest a service you use that we could add in.

Giles.