Clayton Shaw describes how a volunteering project in digital technology appealed to young people in Birmingham.
In 2010 Sampad launched an 18-month long volunteering project called RADIU5 (pronounced radius five), aimed at offering creative opportunities for 16 to 24 year olds based within five miles of our office and project partner Midlands Art Centre (mac) in Birmingham. We recruited over 100 cultural volunteers with 1,800 volunteer hours, primarily to work on a digital project. The group wasThey involved and led creative workshops, volunteered at events, developed skills in photography, film-making, writing, performing and event organisation, and contributed to the production of an interactive digital map of cultural events. This was steered by the digital technology organisation Substrakt and culminated in an exhibition and related events programme at mac.
There were a number of reasons why we embarked on the programme. First, following the newly refurbishmented of mac in 2010, we wanted to find a new way of connecting with local young people. Second, we wanted to test the use of digital technology for community and outreach purposes, to capture and present information in innovative ways. We sought to better understand the trends of young people, what kind of culture they consume and the media they engage with. Finally, we recognised the opportunity to contribute to inspiring and further incentivising young people with the Olympic values as part of ‘My Games’, an initiative led by the National Young Volunteers Service ‘V Inspired’.
We made an accurate assumption that young people would be interested in taking part in an activity involving digital technology, and settled upon producing a data visualisation of youth culture. This was a result of earlier research undertaken with the Madrid-based organisation Medialab Prado, which facilitates participatory research in the discipline of information visualisation.
The core group recruited friends and peers to help research the cultural activities that were of interest to them. Recorded by photography, blogs and vlogs on social media platforms such as Flickr, Youtube and Tumblr, the content was tagged and captured within a tailor-made visualisation tool that organised information in order of popularity. What is more, due to the local recognition of the initiative, participants were offered volunteering opportunities at conferences and performances around the city and beyond. From this they learnt new skills, contributed to a unique digital project and made new friends and contacts. Sixteen of the participants achieved Arts Awards, the highest number we have achieved in any single project. Encouragingly, there is also the story of one participant, Omar, who was not in education or work, and had been spending all his spare time in his bedroom playing computer games until his friend, already a RADIU5 recruit, encouraged him to get involved. After a shy start, he made a real impact in supporting the project. His confidence grew and he has now gone on to study at college.
RADIU5 was undoubtedly a worthwhile and incentive-focused project, but maintaining the opportunities for the volunteers is not easy and requires creative planning. We have remained in contact with them and recently sent a number of volunteers to the Ars Electronica Festival on work placements as part of a new partnership. This provided them with new skills and knowledge of digital projects for the benefit of our sector, and shows an alternative example of some of the rewarding volunteering opportunities we are able to offer.