David Wilcox

Over the past 50 years I’ve been a print journalist, consultant in regeneration partnerships and community engagement, and for the past few years have focused on how to mix face-to-face and online activities for collaboration. I call that social reporting.

From 1969-1976 I was planning correspondent for the London Evening Standard, and wrote a book on London for Thames TV. I now live in the City of London, just south of Smithfield, and I’m currently developing a storytelling and mapping project to explore the past present and future of this area, and Clerkenwell.  More here and in a new Connections blog linked to a column in the EC1 Echo.

From 2016-2020 I worked on Networked City, an exploration into how digital technology and network thinking can help reframe London’s civil society and support social action.

• Networked City wiki
• Networked City blog

Drew Mackie and I also had the opportunity to put into practice some of the ideas we developed with others during that time. We worked with four equalities networks on the NetEquality Project, using network mapping and digital communications to enable peer-to-peer collaboration as well as network campaigning. More in this blog post about the start of that project.

One other major area of work has been development of games and simulations to co-design local and network platforms – including use of a co-design app. More here on that.

On the ground I’ve developed, with my son Dan, a demonstration of how we can use Google Earth, Story Maps and 360 photos and videos to create heritage trails. Here’s what we’ve done in Clerkenwell. Further north in Islington Drew, Dan and I developed a site for the Octopus network’s Urban Wildlife Project, using stories, videos and a network map to show how new social relationships – as well as wildlife – developed during the project.

I’ve worked with Drew Mackie on a major simulation for the Joined Up Digital project for the Centre for Ageing Better, following an exploration into Living Well in the Digital Age with the Age Action Alliance. We’ve developed social network mapping for the Croydon Best Start programme and other clients, and also created a suite of workshop games and simulations to support co-design.

Open explorations – mixing online research, blogging and crowdsourcing of ideas with events.

• Helping Big Lottery Fund explore how to be more than a funder in their People Powered Change initiative in 2011, with John Popham and Drew Mackie. More here >
• Working for Nominet Trust, with Tim Davies and Alex Farrow, on how digital technologies can support young people to engage socially and economically with their communities. More here >
• A further exploration with Nominet Trust into how we can use digital technology for wellbeing later in life. More here >
• The future for rural networking with Carnegie UK Trust. More here >
• Exploring how digital technologies may enable the new community enablers – organisers, builders, mobilisers. More here >

Workshop games, books and resource kits

• Co-authored the Social by Social book on social technology for social change, with Amy Sample Ward, Andy Gibson and Cass Business School, commissioned by NESTA. More here >
• Developed the Social by Social game created – like others over the past 20 years – with Drew Mackie. More here on recent games and simulations >
• Created the community assets game, with Drew Mackie, to help community organisation develop new business models and collaborations in the face of funding cuts. More here >
• Working with the European Media4ME project on using a mix of media for social cohesion in multi-cultural neighbourhoods. More here >

Reporting events

• Lots of blogging, tweeting, video, audio to help events expand beyond the room, and be part of a process of wider engagement. These ranged big events like Chain Reaction and a social innovation conference in Lisbon, to a one-day sessions for the Innovation Exchange where we helped facilitators integrate video into table discussions.

Training

• I do lots of workshops using the games developed with Drew Mackie, combined with some hands-on support in using social media
• Here’s a day with community builders at Forever Manchester.

Over the past few years other projects have included:

• Helping the London Borough of Newham set up an internal online collaboration systems.
• Supporting the BBC Trust on a consultation process that engaged bloggers in helping promote online dialogue.
• Working with organisations like Community Housing Cymru and Digital Unite on how they could use social media.
• Helping the organisation Making Music think through how they could use social media to provide additional services to members
• Contributing to development of an innovation framework for NESTA, and principles for collaboration.
• Working with IDeA on co-designing knowledge transfer between councils.
• Workshop on designing user-centred digital public services with Consumer Focus
• Social innovation reporter for the Big Society Network
• Exploring how the use of social media could support tobacco control.
• Work with the Third Sector Research Centre on the Beyond the Radar project.

I worked with Simon Berry to develop The Membership Project which aims to explore how social media and other drivers for change will impact on associations, nonprofits and other groups that serve members or look to them for support. We received initial funding from NCVO and RSA, and you can see more recent development here.

I’m married to Ann Holmes, who is a councillor for the Farringdon Within Ward of the City of London, where we live. Ann is currently Chief Commoner.

David Wilcox
david@socialreporter.com
https://socialreporter.com
@davidwilcox

+44 (0) 7970 621696