We now (almost) know what local means for us…

We were surprised when nearly 40 councils expressed an interest in being involved in Local 2.0 and even more surprised when 28 of these enquiries turned into solid proposals! All these surprises were very welcome – even if we had to take a little longer bit longer to select the best proposals. In the end, we decided to pick three authorities as oppose to our original plan to work with two.

Our Local 2.0 partners are: Kirklees Council, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and Kings Lynn and West Norfolk Borough Council . We felt these offered a great mix of innovative ideas, urban and rural experiences, interesting local issues and challenges that need to be overcome. We have no doubt there will be lots of transferable lessons. We will be spending the next few weeks ironing out some of the details, including the specific neighbourhoods we will be concentrating on. I will keep everyone updated.

Other things… Interesting examples of community websites keep on rolling in – Ickburghroad.co.uk homepage is great, straight into the photographs of this Hackney neighbourhood throughout the decades. We have also been meeting some interesting people. Stephen Frost and others down at Izwe are developing an interesting platform and we really look forward to seeing what that looks like. Same goes for Dan Lehner down at UnLtdWorld and his work to connect social entrepreneurs at the local level.