In 2020, Rachel Coldicutt and Cassie Robinson launched the Community Tech Fellowship programme, working with 8 of the most rooted, dynamic, determined community leaders in Greater Manchester, to debate, share, problem solve, and make sense of the future for civil society — building capacity for collective action.

 

Transformative social change has always started in and with civil society. And we need a civil society that can be both fiercely independent in organising itself, and truly interdependent and cooperative with all those seeking to build a shared future. Deeply embedded in communities across the region, Greater Manchester civil society has a unique role to play in bridging the relationship between the dynamics of technology and our local communities.

The Fellowship programme isn’t about digital skills, or coding or talking about access and inclusion - and this isn’t about digital service delivery or democracy, open data and digital rights, as important as those things can be. This is about where community intelligence - all that insight about what’s happening in communities - in our community spaces, in our town halls, in our neighbourhood relationships, in our Mutual Aid groups, in our Facebook groups, and how that gets used to shape and determine a community’s future.

Over 4 months, the fellowship programme involved 8 fellows of the Greater Manchester Community and Voluntary Sector in a series of 8-10 sessions and workshops, building collective learning and shared wisdom together.

This programme was Supported by the Co-op Foundation and Luminate.

The Fellows met once a month together and, using prompts related to technology, shared and made sense of what’s changing in their communities.  The programme focussed around a Scanning and Sensing Network -- the start of a new horizon scanning infrastructure for Greater Manchester’s civil society.