Lincoln

Hello this is a new style of page to keep you updated more quickly regarding whats happening in the Lincoln area of the DAIN  project.

March update

Well I must apologise for the lack of updates, it has been a rather busy time in Lincoln. I am pleased to announce that we have our first drop in session up and running at the Mint Lane NHS Skills centre. This has been running since my last update and has been going very well with a very good response from community members and providing a great link in to a number of organisations that should help the project go forward. This is currently running on a Thursday 1-3pm by Alison and David.

The other story occupying my time in Lincoln have been arranging and recruiting for the next round of DAs. We have now met the requirements to begin the course and tutors/venues have been arranged. I would like to thank CEFET for the event they ran at the healthy hub which had a great response and allowed us to move forward with our plans faster than expected. I was very happy with some of the new potential DAs and feel they will be a great addition to the team.

We will be starting the second How to be a digital activist course on the 29th of March 2011 at 12noon – 3pm. It will be running for 7 weeks (same time) at the priory centre.

I have also been working on the newsletter which is available on the front page.

I will endevous to update this more often and look forward to updating you on the progress of the new DAs and our existing team.

Rob

Feb Update

Hello, bit of a quick update for the moment, although I will have some great news, we should be starting drop in at the mint lane centre in Lincoln in the very near future, more details to come and be confirmed but certainly coming along nicely. I had a really enjoyable day on the 4th and had some interesting discussions with a number of new partners with the DAIN project who i hope to follow up on. The highlight was of course the documentary from Berlin, as it reminded me of how useful the trip had been and what we had learned from it. My mad dashes to a non existent train station aside later in the day, it was a very worthwhile and positive day for everyone involved and the feedback we have had has been very good. I hope we will be able to do similar days which bring together everyone involved in the project.

This week will mostly be spent finalising the plans for our first drop ins, working on the newsletter for which articles should be submitted by the 18th of Feb, and organising for our second team meeting on Friday.

Jan 17th – 28th

Bit of a long update as this has been a busy time for DAIN in Lincoln. Firstly we had our first team meeting at the healthy hub on the 17th which was a great success, we stayed for a full 2 hours and discussed a whole range of topics and ideas were flowing around, I was really excited by many of them and athough some need some fine tuning I think we have a great group and a bedrock of ideas to take forward. Later in the week we had the DAIN steering group meeting, which myself, James and Alison were present at. We had hoped for more DA’s from the other areas to be present as the Lincoln cohort havent really done anything yet and so couldnt give the kind of feedback or interaction with other DA’s the steering group could have generated. We have a couple of ideas to mend this though, such as bringing over one of the more experienced DAs from another area to help give a flavour of things going on regionally to the Lincoln team.

The big event really was the DAIN day of action, which in Lincoln was held in the Coop supermarket, right in the centre of town by the bus station and post office so a brilliant location. I would like to thank all the DA’s who came along and helped out, as well as Coop for letting us do it; I think everyone got something out of it. I know for me and a couple of others it was the first real public event DAIN had done in Lincoln so it took a little while to get the introductions and the ‘pitch’ right and I think we did develop more of a rapport as the day went on, I was as nervous as everyone else. But we had a great stall and probably the best location we could have hoped for, something Im really thankful for. The day was a success in terms of getting the word out, we gave alot of leaflets and talked to quite a number of people, although we only got a few surveys done of each of the kinds we had available, the supermarket/bus rushing atmosphere didnt really lend itself to completing surveys, and they were geared more towards the drop in sessions we will be running rather than these kind of events. But thats just something we will learn and develop the skills to push with time. But for the first big event I am really happy with how it went and look forward to doing more of them and building on what we did last Friday.

This week has been a bit of a quiet one really, although I have a couple of meeting scheduled and training in Nottingham later in the week, I was also busy yesterday and had the day off. Today Im going to be creating another video for the event of the 4th and catching up on some admin. Next week is going to be great however, although we will be one team member down, and I look forward to seeing as many of my and the other area DAs at the screening as possible. See you soon. Rob, Lincoln’s DAC.

First update:

Hello, welcome to 2011 and the start of a new period of DAIN in Lincoln, I hope everyone had a lovely time over the holidays, but its time to start thinking about the coming months, and I think we have a good few ahead.

I am very pleased to say that Lincoln now has its first team of Digital Activists, having spent the last few months enrolled on the How to be a Digital Activist course, many thanks tutor Mike Wilson. In that time we began to develop and learn about each other, and had many interesting discussions about where DAIN might be taken in Lincoln.

Meet the Team (from left to right, Alison, James, Robert, Graham, David, Hollie, Neil.)

These ideas are now being refined and followed up in One to Ones and our team meetings. We hope to be able to run a number of successful events, including drop ins and  community outreach in the near future. Lincoln’s DA’s still have to go through the CRB processing but we are set to meet in the very near future to kick off and discuss all our plans for the coming months. You will be the first to hear on what comes out of it, so far there are some very exciting plans and ideas being thrown around about where and how we can really start to challenge Digital exclusion in Lincoln and especially on how to focus in on Young people in the area. Its a very exciting time and I am really pleased things are moving forward for the area.

Also I have prepared a Video for the DAIN steering group about Lincolns progress over the past couple of months:

Robert Richardson Lincoln DAC