Built Environment - High Density

The Bentley House Estate is one of the few remaining parts of Hulme not to undergo regeneration through demolition and new build. Surrounded by the distinctly different yellow bricks used for the new flats built by several housing associations. Six blocks of three stories high flats remain, with 2/3 bedrooms and shared access, 248 homes in total. Built in the late 40's early 50's of red brick - hence the local name of Redbricks.

Over many years the average population of the estate has remained constant, but the impetus for retaining community spirit which was strong during the estates first 20/ 30 years had been lost. Supportive structures have not been maintained and the estate has fallen into disrepair. Many residents had suffered from a poverty of expectations particularly with regard to opportunities to assist in change.

Demographic Profile - High Unemployment and Low Income

The population of the estate is approximately 300 -350. The total population is made up of a number of distinct groupings. There are a relatively small number, around 30 of longstanding residents of 10 years plus. This older Hulme community has a great knowledge and understanding of local problems and the more generic problems that still affect the area.

There are approximately 100 people, age range from 40 - 80. This group have remained relatively inactive and under supported, and to a degree unnoticed by the estate as a whole.

The age range from 20 - 40 includes an estimated 220 people. A large proportion of these tenants value living here and are generally resident for 2 years plus. This group is more pro active and has maintained some contact with current groups and community organisations. It has a diverse cultural mixture of creative and artistic talents, and includes single parents and young families. There are approximately 20 children under 16 years old. This part of the community is generally supportive of developing community actions and strategies - the engine house for community regeneration.

There is a small number of people who form a transient population that stays for anywhere up to a year. This group generally does not seem to get involved with current organisations or community activities. Many feel that enlivening of the community on the estate offers individuals in this group a chance to benefit from greater understanding and relationships with those who call the estate "Home".

Change From Within

In August 1998 a social and technological experiment began on Bentley House Estate.

There was no announcements, no media coverage, just the quiet measured pulse of a community changing and regenerating from the only possible starting point - within.

The technical face of Redbricks, the first virtual online community in the UK, is now a network of 90 homes linked by computers onto the Internet using and sharing an internally designed and developed Intranet.

A small group of visionaries, mainly with non-technical backgrounds, moved onto the estate with the dream of stopping the erosion of deprivation. The Redbricks was their home and neighbourhood so they had most to gain or loose from the regeneration or the continuing degeneration. Redbricks Online was one of the innovations, other more familiar mechanisms were established; LETSystems, recycling, a community garden, and a Permaculture group.

De Facto Social Entrepreneurs

Some of the original group claim that Redbricks Online is a happy accident, the right people, in the right place, at the right time. There was no major planning exercise undertaken involving the whole community; conversations in the pub on the corner were considered initial consultation. Development and growth were organic and limited not by aspirations, but only by money, time and expertise. The sum total is an exceptional example of social entrepreneurs emotionally buying into a project and committing hundreds of unpaid hours and some of their own income to prove the viability of the project.

Redbricks Online has offered an opportunity to strengthen and galvanise residents in their roles as community members, it has allowed for and supports a new impetus. From outside the momentum of change may seem slow; there are no quantum leaps, just carefully considered steps that provide a solid base.

Friends and Allies

Over time Redbricks Online has attracted many young 'techies'. Programmers, network engineers and creators of digital media at the very front of innovation who visit regularly. They have careers that allow them a life style very different from local residents; evenings and weekends find them on the Estate, challenged by the opportunity to work on something that is developed not for commercial gain alone, but for direct individual and community benefit.

They find an atmosphere unconstrained by the limits of their day jobs, an opportunity to experiment, develop their skills and to meet new challenges. They are welcomed and respected for their skills and talents and encouraged and supported when faced with technical difficulties. Redbricks Online provides for them an informal arena to create, problem solve and talk.

Ownership

The concept of community ownership is referred to in hundreds of documents and speeches, the term is so overused that it sometimes seems meaningless. Redbricks Online is owned in different ways by a broad spectrum of the local community, ranging from those whose cash bought hardware, through those whose efforts created the physical network, to all those using it - for simple email communications or for creating their own web sites within the Redbricks site.

Redbricks Online offers a clear statement about development taking the community on board and decisions being made by the people who are most affected.

The community of individuals who live on the Bentley House Estate own Redbricks Online, the first community intranet business was registered recently, the intention is to continue to provide online services to the existing 90 users and offer it to the other residents. No public funding has been used to finance Redbricks Online; no outputs were promised; there were no restrictions imposed by funding agreements.

If community ownership is about who controls what happens, then the residents have had that power from the beginning and still hold it and continue to defend it.

Marketing by Consent

One of the most interesting facts about Redbricks Online is that no one knocked on doors asking people to come on line, no leaflets were distributed, there were no public meetings. The physical and social network spread as individuals encouraged family, friends and neighbours to share something they valued. Personal endorsement by word of mouth worked just fine, and created demand for Internet access and engagement with their neighbours through the Redbricks Intranet.

Waiting lists for computers and connection drove the momentum, waiting residents were informed and involved in the development of the network. Connections at shared hubs were housed in individual's homes, so neighbouring users learned to ensure with that householder that the electricity meter was topped up, and that their cat didn't play with the cables. This is just one way that participants saw how their individual interest married with the development of the network for all.

Health and Safety

The highest standard of Health and Safety has been adopted. Planning presented a slight problem in that, according to the local planning office, no planning consent had ever been applied for in Manchester. Fortunately common sense won, and development continued through consultation with those directly involved and by taking reasonable care.

A competent workman with prior knowledge, experience and qualifications to the standard of the 15th Edition IEE, installed the cables. There can be no higher standard of quality control than social pressure - Bentley House Estate is his home and the homes of his friends and neighbours.

Hubs were placed at strategic connections and cabling built a backbone through the blocks. Cables link the buildings, higher than BT lines, so no hazards are caused. The cables through the lofts carry similar voltage to telephone wires or TV aerial, again no fire hazards or health and safety concerns were created.

Affordable ICT

Computers and connection cables have been installed without any public grants, while nearly all the residents are unemployed or on low incomes. A small charge of £12 sterling and M15£28 (a LETSystem currency) is paid per month for unlimited Internet use - 24 hours per day, 7 days a week. There are no telephone charges associated with unlimited use of the Internet or the neighbourhood Intranet.

The specially developed Intranet community shared systems are designed for use by communities of interest and of geography, and are only available to users of the neighbourhood networks

As many of the computers have been recovered for reuse, the total price is within everyone's reach at about £100 sterling each. The more the participants use the intranet and the Internet, the more cost effective it becomes sharing the cost of the lease line, and the cheaper it becomes for each individual.

'Do-able' ICT

A few residents had computer or Internet experience, a few others had attended related courses. In the context of Redbricks new users can generally find a neighbour who can help or advise them with a problem, be it with hardware, software, use of an application, or Internet/Intranet communication.

At the very least the development of the community means a problem can be shared with someone who has a vested interest in finding a solution - 'it might happen to them next week!' The increase in confidence that the unofficial support network provides liberates each new participant from much of the fear of ICT experienced by others - they are no longer atomised consumers.

Virtual Neighbourhood Watch

The name Hulme is infamous as an area of violent crimes, like all reputations some part is earned and some is exaggerated. Redbricks Online would not claim to be a perfect community, it would now claim that it is better informed, has a sense of common values and believes it can achieve change for the better.

Social auditing is underway to illustrate the less obvious value. An example is an incident that happened a few months ago.

The Intranet has a 'Shout' mechanism, which sends a message out to everyone who has an email address at Redbricks, i.e. every participant. A woman was mugged on the Bentley Estate and a resident quickly put out a 'Shout'. Within minutes the woman was supported by neighbours. It didn't stop her getting mugged and it didn't catch the mugger, but it did show that people cared about what happened to each other and were willing to come out to help.

Redbricks Online is building the first virtual Neighbourhood Watch with plans to have a number of cameras covering shared walkway areas. These will provide a simple message to anyone intent on crime. 'There are a number of online residents with cameras, some of them may be looking at their computer screens right now - how lucky do you feel today?'

Benefits for Property Owners

For landlords and estate managers, costs are generated by the need to communicate with residents and the repair and running costs of maintaining the building. Neighbourhood intranets provide the opportunity for effective communication with residents.

Additionally the network can carry a wide variety of environmental data provided by sensors, including temperature, dampness and humidity, insolation, wind speed, but also provide for remote meter reading and monitoring, with comparative measures of the efficiency of heating, ventilation and other building services. Door access control, and the remote monitoring and management of many services can use the same network as is used for email and web pages.

The ability to recognise and respond to problems early, with opportunities for improved efficiencies in the provision of services, provide many opportunities for landlords to make savings. These potential savings provide a strong motivation to landlords to encourage the development of neighbourhood networks

The results of environmental and cost monitoring can be used to identify best practice in housing provision, and improve the contribution of the built environment to the long-term environmental sustainability.

Community Benefits

The overall benefits to the community as a whole break roughly into:

• Communication has improved, neighbours who did not often did not know each other's names or talk, are chatting on the Intranet and on the streets. They now meet knowing something of each other's interests.
• Residents are more aware of their general environment as people exchange information relating to their individual interests.
• A sense of pride and belonging has been reinstalled.
• An area that was written off in terms of inward investment now has access to modern technology.
• Over £200,000 has been spontaneously invested, in time and money, by participants in their neighbourhood through the development of Redbricks Online.
• A sustainable project has been developed.
• Ownership and control of the Intranet is very firmly rooted in the community.
• Group buying of vegetables and potentially other goods and services offers significant bargaining power to the residents.
• Environmental parameters are beginning to be gathered, compared and mapped.
• The high speed Intranet, providing communication at 10Mbps is much faster and has 200 times the capacity of a conventional modem connections, providing effectively infinite bandwidth to each user.
• Continuous or short clips of video or sound, and person to person video phone all work well across the Intranet.
• Within the neighbourhood Intranet, any user can easily create their own video or sound recordings, and make them available to other users.
• The Intranet offers a very low marginal cost for additional content including educational and health items, entertainment and online games.

Individual Benefits

Individual benefits are many and varied the most popular advantages are:

• Affordable use, the cost is not a drain on limited resources.
• Less isolation, there is always someone to communicate with - either on Redbricks or the Internet.
• Confidence and increased knowledge of ICT.
• Increased opportunities to exchange skills and goods.
• A more secure neighbourhood.
• Affordable access to online education and 'Learning for Life'
• Increased potential in the job market.
• Local and global communication.
• Personal web space.

Services for Users

• An individual email account @redbricks.org.uk.
• An individual space within which to create their own web sites.
• Access to the global Internet for web pages, email, global newsgroups, and its wealth of sundry resources.
• Use of self developed software.

Self-Developed Software

Software programmes, available on license, has been developed to facilitate the use of a community Intranet. These include:

• Simple email account management.
• Email lists for a number of groups.
• Threaded discussions - topics, responses, responses to responses, etc.
• Accredited page of user information.
• DIY user information page.
• DIY notices of offers and requests.
• Payment by online cheques.
• Online user accounts information.
• DIY group/individual events diary.
• Local web page directory.
• User designed and built on line questionnaires.
• Project support requests.
• Streaming stored files, e.g. video diaries.
• Live video and audio streaming.
• IP telephoney.
• Virtual Neighbourhood Watch.

Replicability

From the beginning the initiators felt that if the Redbricks experiment was to mean anything it must have a practical application and be replicable elsewhere. Others must be able to take the basic ingredients, and these be flexible enough to encourage hybrid local version in other neighbourhoods.

For Local Authorities and other social landlords there are many benefits in using neighbourhood networks for communication with residents and management of estates.

The Redbricks approach deals directly with empowering the residents to participate fully not only with the development their own neighbourhood network, but also encourages their engagement with each other, and in wider social and economic solutions.

'Pay Back' Mechanism

It is essential that funding does not artificially support the project in the long term; to instill sustainability from the outset a 'pay back' plan should be devised. A mechanism can be introduced possibly through an Intranet Bank or an existing Credit Union; members buy the computers in instalments and also pay for the weekly on line costs using the Credit Union collection point.

An essential ingredient of the plan is the use of part LETSystem's currencies. This provides the possibility of resource input from all residents; develops social and economic engagement and minimises the sterling requirements. The use of LETSystem's means this solution is not cheaper but more affordable and provides more returns. LETSystems also provide a mechanism for recording a variety of outputs.

'Pay Back' achieves several benefits:

• Individual ownership of the equipment - more protection from theft.
• Encourages take up - the online costs reduce for the individual the more users are recruited.
• Realistic planning for upgrading to meet technological advances.
• Strengthens the Credit Union membership.
• Financial responsibility through creating a community managed rolling development fund.
• Management information systems internal to the community ensure best practice in the use of funds by measuring and publicising deliverables locally by using the Intranet.

A Complete Package

Introducing the technology without the social infrastructure development would be as unwise as throwing vast sums of regeneration money into an area without taking the community on board. There are many sad examples of programmes designed to restore areas in decline that have failed.

In the next five years we will see many projects that hope to address social exclusion by harnessing ICT. Some of these projects will be excellent; many will be hard-learned lessons, which lead eventually to good projects. There will be too many that prove to be disasters, ill thought out, badly planned and uninformed.

Redbricks have established a development agency, OverMet Ltd, to roll out the experience and assist other areas to achieve success - the first time.

OverMet are offering a complete development package, from the initial introduction of cables, hardware, software and the engagement of local residents in the process of rolling out the design and implementation.

Make use of the experience of Redbricks Online - every step of the way.

Contact Overmet - www.overmet.net
KateZ@redbricks.org.uk or phone 0958 770 725