Organisations

The Everyday Growing Cultures project partnered with local initiatives, Open Data Manchester and Open Data Sheffield, which are aimed at furthering the use and take up of open data amongst local citizens and, on the growing side, Grow Sheffield and The Kindling Trust in Manchester. Through these partners,  we worked with local residents to help collect, store, share and publish data on potential spaces for community growing.

Partners

Whilst Open Data Manchester and Open Data Sheffield are community-led initiatives, with active volunteers, an equivalent may not always exist in your area, but there are often groups and initiatives that have similar purposes and sometimes an individual in your community may have these skills.

  • Local universities may have groups, courses and/or students interested in open data and local communities
  • There may be active groups around Free Software, Open Street Map and other computing enthusiasts
  • Local authorities may have an open data officer, plus library, archive and land ownership officers
  • Social Media Surgeries

Do we need partners?

It’s not essential to have a range of partners or indeed experts. However, the experience of these partners, around mapping, community engagement, food growing, open data and technology, may assist you and provide advice, guidance and directions that you can tap into. Our events were hosted at community centres and community garden centres – these make great partners with links to local community groups and/ or residents’ groups.

Growing organisations

There are lists of local and national organisations taking action on food but also, in the case of Landshare, a growing number of landowners making their land available to grow on:

Sources of funding

You can get started initially by drawing on the skills of local residents and maybe accessing a community venue for free but, at some point you might need some funding to provide food, tools, print materials and so on.

Your local council or university can be a source of support. Sometimes there are pots of money for unconstituted or constituted groups.

Another option is to crowdfund – raise small amounts of money through people that want to get involved as well as friends and supporters. The people that invest will get a small acknowledgement or reward in return for their investment.

Some of these partners may also be able to help access funds to support your activities. Funding for this project for example came via Communities and Culture network+ and also via researchers at The University of Sheffield and The University of Manchester. This funding covered:

  • research costs, including technical support with the mapping walks
  • travel
  • mapping and showcase events including community venue hire
  • physical maps
  • publicity and printing costs e.g. posters and flyers
  • production of our project film
  • production of allotment data site
  • this toolkit

Crowdfunding campaigns

You might want to save crowdfunding for when you need to get tools and resources and lots of people involved in making the community garden happen – its a good way to build support around the project, and not just financial support.

Next Steps

Build a community through mapping…

 

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