DCRC - Digital Cultures Research Centre

DCRC are pleased to announce success in three funding bids for the RCUK's 'Connected Communities' theme, led by the AHRC.

This theme emerged  last year after a series of consultations between research councils dating back to 2008. For DCRC it offers a host of opportunities that it many ways recall debates about 'community media' that have been around for forty years (or more). However these questions are now updated in a Web 2.0 context where 'access' to media is re- configured and we are all busily 'making connection' with one another in ways that are better understood as developments of telephony rather than media. These are the projects that we are running over the next year. There will be a 'Connected Communities' page in the Projects section of our website soon. Please do get in touch if you’re interested in being involved in this new strand of work as it develops.

'Keeping in Touch' asks what can we learn about people's everyday use of mobile media and communication technologies that would support the aim of strengthening communities? How do people already use mobile media and everyday communication technologies in their daily lives to 'keep in touch' with significant community networks? The review will explore the claims that are made about the potential of pervasive, mobile and gaming media to connect people, especially those who may be isolated or less mobile, so that they can engage with their communities, whether online or topographical.

Constance Fleuriot will be running this project and we will be working with Knowle West Media Centre to investigate the ways we 'keep in touch'. We are also thrilled to welcome Clodagh Miskelly back to the West to write a report for us on best practice in participatory community media projects.

Community media-spheres and the Creative Citizen is a collaboration with Cardiff University, RCA, Birmingham University, Birmingham City University and the Open University in which are preparing for a much larger (£1.5m) bid in June. Here we ask how can community self-mediation be transformative for creative citizenship in the new ecologies of local media (both digital and physical)? New forms of engagement, such as the "crowd-sourcing" of ideas and other techniques of co-creativity in areas like design, 'e-democracy' and open data movements go well beyond what is conventionally regarded as "media." What is the relationship between the local shop window and a hyper local news blog? What approach might enable us best to understand these local communication networks in terms of usage, expression and creativity?

We also want to know: what is the potential for intervention in or around these networks and mediaspheres to boost the capacity of the UK creative economy and so to enhance the well-being of communities and citizens? The project will contribute to tools describing and evaluating emerging media ecologies, whilst offering citizens and communities the opportunity to develop practical platforms for co-creation.

The final project Measuring Value Networks In The Cultural Industries responds to the call by Mick Elliot of DCMS to formulate new methods for measuring and evaluating cultural work. It is a partnership with Goetz Bachmann at Goldsmith’s University, Bill Sharpe and the Pervasive Media Studio. It builds on Bill Sharpe’s work on multiple economies:

"...there are many economies, of which the one based on money is just one, and that they all contribute to the health and sustainability of our shared lives; each one supports a pattern that combines individual and shared valuation in a unique way. Our habit of taking 'economic value' to mean 'monetary value' is at best misleading and in general nonsensical..." (Economies of Life Sharpe 2009:1)

Central to this view is the idea that the relationships between these economies constitute an eco system which needs to have multiple understandings of value co existing in order to produce monetary value. Economic benefit arises from systemic cultural practices which rarely have money-making as their core. These questions have been thrown into sharp relief by the particular characteristics of the digital economy in which free content is the rule rather the exception. The growth of user generated content and co-creative methods of production in the digital domain have made the question of value in the cultural economy even more pressing. Emergent digital technologies afford an explosion of diverse creativities whilst at the same time undermining their potential to reach economic sustainability in the money economy.

The project aims to deliver a systemic method for understanding the productivity of the relationships between arts practices and creative technology development. It aims to develop a multi criteria method for evaluating creative communities. We will be using a social network analysis of the communication contacts of the PM Studio network. This research will produce a set of maps of communication flow which we will then follow up with a limited series of qualitative investigations. These two kinds of evidence will enable the production of a model of networked value production. (or at least that’s the plan!)

These projects will all be happening between now and the end of the year. We’ll keep you posted.