Like many of the best ‘decisions’ that we make at PVM, when we decided to offer our Community Reporter programme under social licence we started in one place and then got to enjoy the wonderful creative process that happens as the idea evolves and grows. This is one of the best parts of the job and one of the best things about working for an autonomous social enterprise: there’s always space to let the ideas think themselves, to throw up links and connections that alter the path slightly. And then, ultimately, you reach that point where the original idea is still there…but better, more robust, more interesting.
And so it was with the social licence. We knew that we had a programme that worked. We knew we wanted other people to deliver the programme, to increase the reach of the Community Reporter network and offer a more fruitful experience to all of our reporters. We knew that we could support other organisations to find income generating opportunities on the back of the programme. But one of the ideas that ‘thought itself’ was the evolution of a ‘wikinomics’ model of trade and exchange between partners.
We have the pleasure of working with some wonderful partners, really passionate and creative and committed individuals and organisations who are doing great work on the ground. So, using the social licensee network as a way of bridging and linking partners together is really exciting for us. Most of us are under resourced and over stretched so being able to access tools that mean you don’t have to constantly reinvent the wheel each time is a real asset for anyone. So we are thrilled that MRS in York have begun the knowledge exchange by sharing some simple page design tools that were developed for a European Leonardo programme. The PageDesigner programme is free, available in a range of different languages and aimed to be simple enough for the absolute beginner – a perfect complement to the resources currently available within the Community Reporter programme.
As the network of licensee holders grows we look forward to being able to help organisations share and trade across the partnership – an idea that we hope to explore further in our first trans-national Editorial Board meeting which will take place in April …but more about that another time!
