People's Voice Media

Internet and Evolution in Manchester Communities

Nigel Stewart with Radio LAN transmitter (photo scanned from early addition of .Net magazine)

I was encouraged to move onto the Bentley House estate, more commonly known as the ‘Redbricks’, back in 1999, in order to help with the Redbricks Online community internet project that was then being rolled out. Back in the day, a visionary called Nigel Stewart had a plan to provide Manchester with high broad band internet, using short wave radio. Although he was unable to make it happen back then, MDDA, with a little help from the EU, have plans to do something very similar now, a decade later. Here is the story ..

In ‘99 some friends of mine purchased a ‘leased line’ from BT, and installed a server in a flat on the Redbricks estate. Leased lines were a pre-runner to broadband, providing a 24/7 connection, but costing a small fortune, for a comparatively small bandwidth, relative to a modern home broadband connection. Still, the plan was that by squeezing 30+ flats through a single line, it could be made cost effective. So recycled PCs were bodged together, and flats across the estate were networked with 100s of meters of blagged ethernet cable, and servers hacked up with Linux free software ...

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Envirolution Festival blog

I didn't get to see much of the entertainment myself however, as I was involved in a couple of workshops. The first one was called the 'Green Economy', and included talkers on LETS (including myself), social enterpise, and a district wide loyalty card which is being set up in Manchester.

The second workshop, which I facilitated, was about local food, and enjoyed speakers from Kindling Trust, Leyland's City Farm, Slow Food Manchester, and an nutritional scientist from the MMU. Both workshops provided good discussion and an opportunity to network and meet interesting people.

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Footprints For The Future Climate Change Conference

Footprints for The Future was a conference held by Salford City Council to launch their new climate change strategy "Creating a City Prepared for the Future". The video presents the main themes and features speakers from the day. Featured speakers are from Salford University, URBED, The Environment Agency, Peel Holdings, Energy Saving Trust, Greater Manchester Waste Disposal Authority, ENWORKS, Salix Homes, New Deal for Communities and Salford City Council.

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Winning at Wellbeing September 2009

A short film documenting the annual get together of North West groups working together under the umbrella of Target Wellbeing which is co-ordinated by Groundwork North West. Working as a Community Reporter for People's Voice Media I created this film to appear on their website.

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Lower Kersal Allotments Project

Lower Kersal Young People's Group is run by Tom Lever MBE. The allotment project is one of the projects he arranged to give young people in the area something positive to focus on and learn new skills. This is one of the first edits I put together for People's Voice Media while volunteering for them. Footage was gathered by young people from the project.

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Birchfields Park Forest Garden Summer Solstice

Ladies and gents, for your pleasure, Julie Spellman’s eagerly awaited film about the Birchfield’s Park Forest Garden Summer Solstice event, which took place on June 21st.

The event was organised by Adele Myers, with support from Jane Morris, on behalf of Manchester Permaculture Network. With zero pounds in her budget, Adele did an amazing job, pulling in community herbalists, artists, and practitioners, to deliver a community event that was at once inspiring, informative, and practical.

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