Ste Robinson

Community Reporter

"Sandbox is a place where creative juices seem to be served up like smoothies. Having a space where i can brainstorm and think either in a group or individually means a lot, and Sandbox is both unique and fun. I recommend the lego!"

Sandbox worked with Ste on the Bespoke Project.

The project has been established to look at the issue of digital and social exclusion in the Fishwick and Callon areas of Preston. Broadly speaking, the project has two parts. The first is for us to set up a team of community/citizen journalists who will report on the issues that are important to them and to their local community.

The second part of the project is centred on innovative design. Partner universities (Dundee, Falmouth, Newcastle, Surrey, and UCLan) will use the news stories, as well as other information gathered during the lifespan of the project, to design digital technologies that can meet the needs of the area. This collaboration between emotive, technological and functional design with hyper-local journalism is a ground-breaking exercise and, as far as we're aware, has never been tried before.

Background

Bespoke’ is a multidisciplinary project investigating how digital systems and devices can increase social inclusion and improve lives. The project is working at a neighbourhood level, helping people to tell their own stories through hyper-local news production, and then using these stories to inspire radically simple bespoke design solutions, created with and for people.

One of the key objectives is to create simple and engaging analogue interfaces to digital content in order to allow those that are digitally excluded to benefit from the economic, social & cultural advantages which access to digital tools and content can provide. The Bespoke team includes: ethnographers, computer scientists, journalists, product designers and craftspeople.