Help People Help Each Other

As you may remember from our “walk through” guide to help stimulate ideas for our competition, we started off by looking at what skills people wanted to learn and share and then onto what would make it easier for them to use technology and finally onto how people wanted to make their neighbourhood a better place. Now, we’re going to look at how people want to help people help each other.

Given this came from a community group working with the Turner Contemporary Gallery, I wondered whether we could think of categorising them in a slightly different way.

As you can see from the image above:

• Supporters are coloured in red, such as “walking people’s dogs” or “keeping our town clean”. People who want to help out but aren’t necessarily comfortable with leading the way or standing out. There are vital cogs in any community activity and you want many of them!
• Growers are coloured in green, from “cultivating vegetables” to “opening up an animal rescue centre”. They lay the foundations however big or small for others to be able to help each other. Look to them for coming up with ideas and channel their energy into planning activities
• Learners are coloured in turquoise, from “teaching or passing on my gardening knowledge” to “encouraging people to tap into their collective side”. They are the bridge between the supporters, growers and organisers as they spend time listening to people’s motivations and spread the learning so supporters can feel more empowered to be involved.
• Performers are coloured in yellow, from “meeting and greeting” to “bungee jumping off a cliff for charity”. They want to go further than supporting, too impatient to grow or share learning and don’t want the responsibility to organise. They want to help now and they want others to know about it!
• Organisers are coloured in green, from “holding local meetings to find problems with other people” to “running a mosaic group”. They take on the baton from the growers, provide the environment for the learners, but most importantly, they get the supporters to turn up and get on board!

What behaviours are best encouraged through the ideas in this competition? Could it help provide a way to involve people in taking these ideas forward? How can you design in these behaviours when developing prototypes?

Why don’t you put forward prototypes yourself that could start making this happen? We’re announcing criteria for what we’re looking for next week, but in the meantime, sign up for our hack day!