"Let's act as if our institutions are ours to create, our learning is ours to define, the leadership we seek is ours to become"
Peter Block

The Resident University – 26th and 27th March

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2 days of workshops, seminars, lectures and networking for all those involved in making neighbourhoods places to live, at St Georges Community Hub, Hockley, from Friday 26th, to Saturday 27th March.

Learn from the Resident Experts how to – Activate Faith in The Neighbourhood, Develop A  Community Asset, Get Communities Growing Food, Work Across Generations, Run a Community Watch Scheme, Make Neighbourhood Management Work for Residents

New thinking on… Timebanks, Fundraising, Total Place, Youth Justice, Storytelling, Voter Bonds, Local Food, Social Media and Open Space for discussion of what matters in your community.

Friday 26th Programme Includes:

D-I-Y Funding Workshop – Active Citizenship Fund

Get started on an application to the Be Birmingham ‘Active Citizenship Fund’ for up to £10,000.   The aim of the fund is to support local activities that build social capital,  and get more people involved in their neighbourhood and community.

Help, advice and support will be available from groups successful in the first round on; developing your proposal, writing it up, and filling in the form.  Access to PCs and laptops, electronic copies of the form, and good humour will all be available on the day.

Co-Production – Seminar

“Citizens are not passive recipients of public services, but are active
players helping shape the places they live”……

Find out about how Birmingham is looking into the idea of ‘co-production’.  How communities and public services ‘co-produce’ neighbourhoods and neighbourhood services, and how this ‘co-production’ might be valued and funded in the future.  Learn more about how we define co-production, hear about practical local examples, and add your views and experience to the research.

Food Links – Workshop

Find out more about different local food projects in Birmingham, and how they can be used to build social capital in communities.  From Intergenerational growing and cooking projects, to farmers markets and community lunches.

Social Media Workshop – with ‘We Share Stuff’

Find out how you can use social media to get your voice heard online, and help tackle real problems.  Become more confident about how you can use different forms of social media – from blogs and podcasting, to video and social networking and hear how other residents and community groups are using them.  Get help to set up your own blog / website / twitter account, and experiment with what you can do.

Plus…Local Food Links, Developing Community Assets, Building Effective Groups, Time Banks

Saturday 27th Programme Includes:

Community Watch – Workshop

Hear about the experience of setting up and running a successful community watch scheme in Kingstanding, and the difference it has made to improving community safety, and the local environment.  Find out what worked and why, and discuss the potential for using the approach in your area.

Tactics for Influencing – Workshop

Find out about different approaches to influencing decision making, share tactics for getting what you want, and think about how use can use your own power more effectively.

D-I-Y Funding Workshop – Active Citizenship Fund

Get started on an application to the Be Birmingham ‘Active Citizenship Fund’ for up to £10,000.   The aim of the fund is to support local activities that build social capital,  and get more people involved in their neighbourhood and community.

Help, advice and support will be available from groups successful in the first round on; developing your proposal, writing it up, and filling in the form.  Access to PCs and laptops, electronic copies of the form, and good humour will all be available on the day.

Plus… Building Effective Groups, Social Media, Food Links

to book a place, get in touch via info@chamberlainforum.org, tel: 07795 448 462 or use the booking form below.

Resident University March 2010
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RU Listen In – Phillip Blond

RU Listen In Podcast - listen now

  Welcome to the second RU Listen In podcast. This time, we hear from Phillip Blond, who came to Balsall Heath in November 2009 to give a Resident University Lecture.

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Listen In: Phillip Blond Podcast

Influencing Decision Makers – Workshop March 2nd 9.30

The next ‘Influencing Decision Makers’ workshop will be held on Tuesday March 2nd, 9.30-12.30 at the Council House.

This course is designed to help community and voluntary group members and individuals who represent community views become more effective at influencing local decisions on behalf of resident communities and communities of interest.

Learning

The course is designed to help you:

  • Identify – who local decision makers are, what kind of decisions you want to influence and how you can start to influence effectively
  • Understand – the importance of knowledge, skills and networks in effectively representing community views
  • Chart and map – your knowledge and skills in relation to influencing local decisions – and become aware of how to improve them
  • Appreciate more widely -  local democratic structures and how they work
  • Find out more – about the range of opportunities for getting involved, and where to go for advice and support
  • Consider tactics for influencing – from ‘community organising’ and social media to inter-personal skills
  • Develop your own strategy - for influencing based on your own priorities, and plan for future development based on your own strengths and needs

You can book place through the form below, or by emailing info@chamberlainforum.org. If you would like to have a chat about the workshop, please give us a call on 07795 448 462

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Digital Inclusion – Saturday 23rd January

How can you use the internet to benefit your community? What does digital inclusion really mean, and what’s stopping the use of digital technology become a reality everywhere?

These are some of the questions that will be hotly debated this Saturday at the Digital Inclusion ‘Unconference’. Organised by ‘We share stuff’ and supported by Resident University.

Resident University will be running a session at the beginning of the day, where we will be hearing from resident experts who are already using social media to make things happen in their area, and looking at what we can do to support more people to do the same.

For more information, visit the ‘we share stuff’ site, or contact Resident University on 07795 448 462

Also look out for a new Resident University briefing that explains what social media is all about, and where you can go for help, support and advice.

DIY Funding Workshop

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In December, Resident University joined with BOSF (Birmingham Open Spaces Forum) to support a self help funding workshop.  The workshop was aimed at parks and open spaces groups who were interested in applying for funding to Awards for All.   The workshop was a real success, and Resident University are looking to organise more self help workshops later in the year.  If you’re a community group and would like Resident University to support something in your area, please get in touch.

Young People and Democracy

In a recent survey of  conducted by YouGov, on behalf the Citizenship Foundation, 54% of young people aged between 14-25 said they did not trust their local MP to tell the truth.  In the same survey, 60% said they did not trust senior officials in their local council to tell the truth either.  Not a picture of a very healthy democracy!

However, despite levels of mistrust, politics is still seen as important, with the majority of people (59%) still believing the biggest way of participating in a democracy was to vote, and that politicians – as opposed to the media, pressure groups and businessess – should have the most power in society.

When it comes to who should be influencing politicians, a large majority (72%) thought that the public, should have the greatest amount of influence.

As part of a Community Research project, Resident University will be working with a group of youth groups and organisations to find out what young people in Birmingham think about citizenship, politics and democracy.  In particular, what they think about local decision making, and being involved at a neighbourhood and community level.

Each organisation will be supporting groups of young people to carry out their own research using a variety of different methods from film to surveys.

Resident University will then bring the groups back together to discuss the findings, and help to share them widely with other people.

To read the Citzenship Survey results in full, download the reports below.

Citizenship Survey Results

Citizenship Survey Summary

RU Council Meeting 2

The next meeting of the RU Council will be January 29th, 1.30pm at BVSC.  For more information about the council, please contact Hannah at Chamberlain Forum, on 07795 448 462

RU Council First Meeting

RU Council2

Resident University is being developed with the help, support and guidance of the Resident University Council.  The council is made up of people actively working to support community engagement and empowerment, either as residents, community groups and voluntary organisations, or as officers employed by statutory agencies, such as neighbourhood managers.

Through the work of the Council, we aim to ensure that Resident University reaches as many people as possible, is timely and focussed on the right things, and is able to effectively link to other activity that is taking place across Birmingham.

The Council will be meeting once every few months, and we will continue to report back from meetings, here on the Resident University website.

Resident University Council Meeting Minutes

ToR RU Council

RU Council Presentation

RU Listen In – Taking Part

RU Listen In Podcast - listen now

  [podcast]http://residentuniversity.net/files/2010/01/Taking-Part.mp3[/podcast]Welcome to the first Resident University Podcast in the RU Listen In series. The first programme was recorded at the Resident University Lecture, ‘Taking Part’ on 16th October, with Dick Atkinson and Melissa Shervington. In the programme, we talk to both Dick and Melissa, and get some feedback from people who came to the event about what they had learned, and what they thought.

You can listen to the podcast directly here, or download from the site to listen to later. We will be creating a new channel for RU Listen In on itunes, so you will soon be able to subscribe to the channel, and get automatic updates with new programmes.

Taking-Part

Community Network Assessment Framework

Community Networks are the essential life blood of community action.  Without the ability of residents and community groups to link up, making a difference can be a hard and lonely task.  Having other people to talk to doesn’t neccessarily get you what you want straight away, but having a wide network of people who all have skills, energy and expertise to share, can make the impossible possible, and enable you to get things done.

In December, Resident University held a seminar for community networks, that looked at why networks are important, and the kind of things they need to be able to do, in order to be useful and effective for their members.

During the seminar, we looked at a new assessment framework for community networks that has been developed by Community Network 4 Birmingham, an umbrella organisation dedicated to supporting networks, and helping them to link up together.

The purpose of the framework, is to help networks assess what they are doing well at (and not so well at) and is a starting point for thinking about developing a plan to improve.

The framework is still work in progress, and lots of helpful feedback was generated in the seminar which will be used to improve it.  You can download a copy of the first draft here, but please come back in a while to get the latest version!

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