A really cold evening in Skinningrove Village Hall provided us with some really useful data on the true meaning of the word ‘community’
Originally eight people were invited to come along but due to illness we were reduced to six. This was not a problem as these six people certainly had enough to say and all great stuff. As the night went on it became more and more obvious that Carrie’s suggestion on the main theme jumped out at us. The group discussed in great detail how they felt the internet could help their village. The meeting concluded with the participants leaving with a real positive and determined attitude. This all resulted in some very amazing results but you will have to wait to hear about these later. We are planning a follow up meeting with this group for an update in the next 4 weeks. Real enjoyable night. Thank you Skinningrove. Look forward to our return.

Production has begun again after the Christmas break on “Tommy and Barry Go Back”. We lost a lot of production days before Christmas to weather condition and ill health so we have postponed the world premiere to March 3rd. It’s the same venue, Saltburn Community Theatre at 7.30pm. We moved our production location to Destinations in Saltburn as a more convenient location. Yesterday we got some very tricky shots in the can including Zeppelin flying and Chilean rescue pod maneuvering!

Next production day is Friday 21st (Destinations Again) when we hope to finish the 1945 Jetty scene. Below are some stills from scene 6.

Livivng and working from our home and totally being dependant on the internet to run our business we were wildy excited when we heard that BT is looking for rural areas in the country in which to install fibre optic braodband. Everyone of us are invited to click on to a link and then vote for your area. The most votes for each area wins. Simple eh? What they don’t tell you is that you have to have more than 1000 residencies from your exchange to qualify for this scheme. So, you may be able to appreciate our disgust and disappointment to learn that our exchange has less than 600 exchange connections. so, we don’t qualify. How can BT say they are wanting to take fibre optic into the rural areas when they exclude maybe half of them due to their so called “rules” May I remind BT what the Wiki definition of rural is ..”Rural areas are large and isolated areas of an open country with low population density.” Surely low population also means “not many houses?”

Another really great workshop delivered by Carrie. Interesting and as ever produced lots of discussion and ideas.
Afterwards it was Christmas with DVN and a great Destinations “spread” for lunch. Many thanks to Paul, Sue and all at Destinations who made this possible. It was also really good to see some people who are not usually at our Saltburn Meetings/Workshops. Good to see Eileen too. Looking forward to the Pilot Focus Group next Friday but if you are not going, have a great Christmas and I hope next year finds you all healthy and happy. Look forward to meeting up again in 2011.

Some potentially good news?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/dec/06/extra-50m-superfast-broadband-uk-2015

I read an article titled ‘In Our Own Image’ in New Scientist 27th Nov 2010 that referred to humans tendency to anthropomorphise objects.  Adam Waytz et al found that this is more likely to happen when we are faced with unpredictable situations or entities.  This effect was seen in study where desktop computers were considered to have ‘a life of their own’ when they froze unexpectedly.

It was suggested that people can feel disproportionately angry with their computer when it has a problem, because they feel as if they have a partnership with the machine, and it has let them down.  Cliffird Nass suggests “It’s a betrayal of trust”.

Interestingly lonely people are more likely to see human qualities in objects.  Whereas socially connected people are more likely to ‘fail to see the humanity in real people’.  Waytz et al suggests that feelings of security and power might make us see others as objects rather than as people.

Does this then mean that lonely people tend to find computers more frustrating than others?

Thank goodness for the internet.

Life in a rural village is a great experience.  Having been born and bred in the hustle and bustle of city life whilst growing up in London, I can really appreciate the quiet, good life of living in a rural community.

View from our garden in Moorsholm

However, come the winter it can have some disadvantages.  The countryside here on the edge of the North York Moors is stunningly beautiful and full of fantastic photo opportunities. As the winter arrives it gives us some amazing winter scenes. In fact the picture shows this, and was featured on ITV’s North East Tonight local weather news on Thursday 25th November.

The problem is,  getting out and about to capture these scenes. So, in only our second winter in Moorsholm, we are yet again snowed in.  With the local roads being very dangerous to drive on,  it is the best option to stay put.

But life and work must carry on, and we are lucky to be able to work from home. Most of this work at the moment can be carried out on the computer and the internet. Although we love to be out in the communities of East Cleveland the winter wonderland as it is restricts that.

So thank goodness for the internet.  It gives us the chance to carry on through the weather (poor broadband connection permitting) and keep in contact with the outside world.

See you all sometime soon.

One of the main aims of our project has been to find out about people’s different experiences of technology use. Whether people’s experiences have been good, bad or indifferent, we have been keen to find out so that we can develop a better understanding of digital inclusion.

We are delighted that one of our interviewees has written up her own experiences which she has agreed for us to post on our website. What is so striking is the way in which early experiences of technology and learning have a profound impact on how we see and relate to technology today.

This is her story. Do you have a similar point of view or share similar experiences?

“I have always disliked things that are technical. I had no technical education at school; physics and technology were not on offer to girls in the ‘50s/’60s at my school. Technical matters were the remit of men and boys which suited me fine because from a very early age I preferred to spend my leisure time reading when I was excused from housework.

I enjoy the act of writing – I find it helps me to think creatively so when I did a university course in my forties I had no interest in writing my essays in any other way than by long hand and paying someone to type them up if it was required. However I was beginning to recognise that work presented on computers did look good and indeed might become a requirement.

At this stage I did attend a basic computer course for a term but I found it really difficult and I knew straight away that my mental health and my relationships would suffer if I pursued this tortuous learning. What finally killed it for me was being told by the tutor that all computers were different!

I joined an animation group because it was suggested to me and I had an interest in the creative writing aspect of developing a story line. I can honestly say that now that we have finished working on the script I am losing interest and have no wish really to learn about animation though I am sure it will be interesting to see the final result.

The only thing I find fascinating are the little plasticine figures that appear to walk but are in fact manipulated by hands that have disappeared on the video.

Perhaps that’s why I feel ambivalent about animation. The figures represent a manipulated reality: they are created by human beings and cannot move without help. Is our experience of reality any different, manipulated as it is by anyone in authority including the new power of the cyber world? We are left without a sense of autonomy.”

Thanks to Community Researcher Nick and our interviewee for this blog post.

As both a community researcher and small business person working from home, I completely understand the importance of digital inclusion.
It is a fact that the Moorsholm internet speed is very low yet we have been excluded from the BT pilot schemes to expand fibre optic broadband to rural areas on the grounds that we have less than 1000 homes connected to our local exchange.
We run a community newspaper in the area and totally rely on our internet to transmit the pages of the paper to the printer.
As a result of Moorsholm’s connection it took us 48 hours to do a job which should have taken one hour.
We are not the only business in our village, in fact we are one of many. How can small businesses working from home survive if we don’t get the support we need to enable us to be efficient, from the likes of BT?

On Thursday 18th November children at Whitcliffe Primary School will re-enact a famous event from their Schools history. Actually the story relates to Skinningrove school but both schools have been amalgamated and children of Skinningrove and Carlin How all attend Whitecliffe. Whitecliffe has the logbooks of both schools going back over 140 years and one entry states; “school evacuated on the occasion of a Zeppelin sighted overhead. The children will re-enact this momentous event and Inspector Charlie Bell of Cleveland Police will play the part of the calm voice of authority leading the children to shelter in the mines (this actually took place too – many Skinningrovers took shelter in the mines during both world wars.  This will form the audio track of an animated film  “Tommy and Barry Go Back” to be premiered at Saltburn Community Theatre, Animex Fringe on February 10th 2011.