Montag, 16. Januar 2012

Mobility


Trade your know-how | Skill Sharing


Together with four colleagues I worked on a project that would support Wilhelmsburg to reduce the carbon footprint by increasing mobility in short distances and to encourage people to get in touch with each other for a stronger and more sustainable community. Our focus area was the North Western part of the town, in the surroundings of the University of Neighbourhoods.

The Working Process
When we first went out to talk to people living in Wilhelmsburg, we learnt that they are quite proud to be Wilhelmsburger. They have various cultural and professional backgrounds, which provide them with diverse skills and knowledge. However, it seemed as if there was not much interaction happening between the people.
Most people we met have a rather low income and therefore don not own a computer or a car. While some of us found their way around walking, others preferred to use the bicycles we had been provided with. Getting through town this way, we found a decent system of bicycle lanes and sidewalks that allows people to access virtually every part of town within around 10 minutes. 
From those first approaches we developed the idea to encourage the use of the existing sidewalk- and bicycle-system and the interaction between people to make use of the cultural richness that exists to create a more sustainable community.
Our first ideas of introducing people to each other with video clips and maps of favourite places evolved during the following days into a principle we called “Skill Sharing” and resulted in something as simple as a box and file cards.  

The Concept
Our target group are men and women of various ages who are interested in sharing their skills and knowledge with people from their neighbourhood and want to gain different skills or knowledge in return. Money does not play any role. For example could a 23 years old painter be interested in learning how to cook African style and a 35 years old woman, who is particularly skilled at that, has always wanted to learn a certain painting technique. The question is, how to bring those two people together so they can exchange their knowledge.

place
Since many people in Wilhelmsburg don’t have access to internet at home and they told us during the interviews that they would prefer to meet in places like cafés to get in touch with other people, we decided look for a suitable place. Luckily we found it quite fast in “westend” café, that in fact already serves as a meeting place within the neighbourhood.

cards 
The principle is simple: people who want to offer their skills write on a card what they are offering and leave it in a box in a central meeting point. People interested in learning or in need of assistance of a particularly skilled person, can also fill out a card and leave it in the box. Over time this box would be filled with various cards of offered and requested skills that can be browsed through. It could be regarded as a Wilhelmsburg database of skills. One person needs to take care of this database, clear it of improper offers or requests and of those that are outdated. To our delight, the kind lady we met at westend was willing to take care of it.

Benefits
The advantage to have a centrally accessible database like this is that people who use it, can easily get in touch with each other either by the provided contact information or by meeting on the very spot. Sharing individual know-how increases the mutual understanding, which leads to a stronger community feeling and in the long run to a higher quality of living.
Economically speaking the participants save money because they do not need to drive far to educate themselves. The painter from the example before would probably have to drive to another part of Hamburg to attend an African cooking class and he would also most probably have to pay for it. So he either is not interested in doing this because of the time and money he would have to invest and therefore does not learn how to cook or he attends the class and spends the money as well as the additional time. By having a teacher from his neighbourhood, he not only learns how to cook, safes the money for a class and the additional time for the trip there, but he also gets to know at least one person from his surroundings that he has not known before. It is possible that the cooking-painting-exchange leads to further undertakings in the future that might not even necessarily have anything to do with painting or cooking.
The environmental benefits are clear: by increasing the amount of opportunities within walking and cycling distance, on the one hand the individual mobility is being increased and on the other hand the motorised traffic is likely to be decreased because people do not have to use the car, bus or train to access certain educational services anymore. Viewed realistically, the impact on the traffic is probably only marginal though.

Further Steps
To further communicate this system of skill sharing we have developed a postcard that can be left at key places such as the library, laundry, kiosk, internet café or at bus stops. People only have to mark their field of interest, specify on the back what exactly they offer or need and put down how they want to be contacted. Either they drop the card directly at westend café or they put a stamp on it and post it. If they want to access the cards they need to go to the café. This is preferable, since it enables spontaneous socialising.
If this first skill sharing box at westend were successful, the concept could be extended to other neighbourhoods and their local centres within Wilhelmsburg.