Earlier this year, Slider Studio were successful in a highly competitive process to win funding for a new technology feasibility study. The study, which was completed at the end of July, set out to explore the commercial potential for a new digital service designed to enable local authorities to support community-led planning and specifically the Neighbourhood Planning which will come into effect with the enactment of the new Localism Bill in 2012.
Working with regional architecture centres and local authorities, predominantly in the Midlands, it was our aim to develop ideas for web-based services that support the production, publication and determination of Neighbourhood Plans by referendum. As part of our research we ran three participatory workshops with different stakeholders in the neighbourhood planning process, including local authority planners, professional consultants and community groups.
The workshops were run at both MADE in Birmingham, and UDL in London with over 60 participants. We investigated integrations of existing methods and tools (including StickyWorld) to illustrate the potential for a comprehensive communication platform. We discussed ways to support the face-to-face activity and consultation events on the ground, whilst facilitating web-based collaboration and communication with all stakeholders within a neighbourhood. The response to the workshops was unprecedented: we collected 467 comments over the three workshops and found 182 existing web tools and ideas for supporting the process.
Our key findings, summarising the current attitudes of the various participatory groups toward Neighbourhood Planning, as well as a complete URL list of the tools collected can be found here in our Post Workshop Analysis Report:
http://www.sliderstudio.co.uk/resource/Workshop-Analysis-Report.pdf
The document is also available for public commenting in the YouCanPlan StickyRoom.
