How can you make a community ideas bank work? A review of the first 10 months of a pioneering project - the Barry ideasbank - made to the Royal Society for Arts, manufactures and commerce (RSA) at its Annual Meeting in Cardiff, Wales on September 28th, 2013.

1. Barry IdeasBank

2. My Museum
Gallery
Level 1
Gallery
Level 2

3. Motivation
 Frustration with ‘Groundhog day syndrome’
 Repository of ideas
 Gap in creativity resources
 Better communal suggestion scheme
 Opensource innovation potential

4. A case of 2 Barry’s

5. Why an ideas bank?
 For anyone wants make a difference
 Passion for area
 Capture ideas/create new insights
 Create new vibrancy/new connections
 New resource to engage

6. If Barry was a
pantomime

7. The untapped resource
 Ever been asked make area better?
 All ‘experts’
 Crowdsourcing
– Online technology
– Potential of ‘wisdom of the crowd’
– Creativity+ is about more connections
– Innovation, Insights, Ideas

8. Resources
 UnLtd grant £2k
 RSA Catalyst Fund £500
 Crowdicity in kind £24k
 YMCA Barry in kind £2k

9. Crowdicity

10. Vision/Reality
Initial vision
 Delivered through CIC
 Seed grant support
 Engage LA (VoG)
What happened?
 CIC inactive
 Help in kind
 Still wait ‘1st
kiss’
 Valuable experiment
 Potential new group

11. So where are we now?
 Potential new way of work public services
 ‘Prebuttal is the new rebuttal’
 IdeasBank totem for communal innovation
 Valuable repository
 Potential for own awards
 Tool UnLtd build ‘social enterprise capital’
 Lessons for elsewhere

12. Results data
 10 months old
 100 registered users
 84 ideas 163 comments 68 participants
 Visitors 20-300 daily
 Twitter - 986 followers 2,180 Tweets
 ‘Barry Kucha’ 2 events - over 70 attend
incl. Local AM + Chair of Regen

14. Different types of ideas
 Politico kite flying
 Spontaneous reaction
 Prompted activist
 Outlet for Exaptation
 Outlet for local issues
 Outlet from off-line activity

15. Some of the ideas
Eco Adventure Centre
Fountains
‘Severn Sea’
Barry Town Football Club fight for survival
New Marina
Promote local events
Feedback on local authority events
New events ideas
Mirior D’Eau
Promote Micro Volunteering
Ticket machine at Barry Island station
‘BarryVision – seaside webcams
World War I commemorations
Promoting the ‘Barry Riviera’

16. Lessons learnt
 Dialectical/Dialogical divide
 Social Media valuable tool but not magic wand
 Few write to their local paper
 Twitter better engage low involve/confidence
 Great for creative connections
 Sharing experience/knowledge/intelligence
 But need offline engagement as well
 Build ‘Creative Capacity’

17. Have human face/funny
side - avoid over earnest

18. Memorial for
community heroes

19. Tubespiration v IdeasBank
 Incubation/contemplative
 Dialogical
 Disruptive
 Solitary
 Story narrative
v
 Spontaneous - Twitter
 Dialectical
 Incremental
 Networked
 Be part of a bigger story

20. To make it work
 Move from curious flotsam
 Need at least 12 ‘Power Users’
 More Barry Kuchas
 Additional offline activity
 Promotional visibility/front-of-mindness
- posters, Letters page
 2nd
stage for ideas – awards
 Create independent curator group
 Integrate Public Service process

22. At least
 Shown it can work
 Dynamic community resource
 IdeasBank/Twitter combination
 Pecha Kucha - on ‘Barry terms’ formula
 Tribute to ‘community non-celebrities’
 Synergy Dialectical /Dialogical
 Great ‘Creative capacity’ builder

23. Maybe 1 idea come true!

24. Check the Barry IdeasBank out at:
www.yourideasbank.org.uk
Twitter follow @BarryIdeasBank