Co-creative media : theorising digital storytelling as a platform for researching and developing participatory culture

This paper considers the question, ‘what is co-creative media, and why is it a useful idea in social media research’? The term ‘co-creative media’ is now used by Creative Industries researchers at QUT to describe their digital storytelling practices. Digital storytelling is a set of collaborative digital media production techniques that have been used to facilitate social participation in numerous Australian and international contexts. Digital storytelling has been adapted by Creative Industries researchers at QUT as a platform for researching the potential of vernacular creativity in a variety of contexts, including social inclusion of marginalized and disadvantaged groups; inclusion in public histories of narratives that might be overlooked; and articulation of voices that otherwise remain silent in the formulation of social and economic development strategies. The adaption of digital storytelling to different contexts has been shaped by the reflexive, recursive, and pragmatic requirements of action research. Amongst other things, this activity draws attention to the agency of researchers in facilitating these kinds of participatory media processes and outcomes. This discussion serves to problematise concepts of participatory media by introducing the term ‘co-creative media’ and differentiating these from other social media production practices.

The Figmentum Project: appropriating information and communication technologies to animate our urban fabric

This paper explores how we may design located information and communication technologies (ICTs) to foster community sentiment. It focuses explicitly on possibilities for ICTs to create new modalities of place through exploring key factors such as shared experiences, shared knowledge and shared authorship. To contextualise this discussion in a real world setting, this paper presents FIGMENTUM, a situated generative art application that was developed for and installed in a new urban development. FIGMENTUM is a non-authoritative, non-service based application that aims to trigger emotional and representational place-based communities. Out of this practice-led research comes a theory and a process for designing creative place-based ICT’s to animate our urban communities.

Public acceptance of carbon dioxide capture and storage in a proposed demonstration area

With the rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, low-emission technologies with carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) provide one option for transforming the global energy infrastructure into a more environmentally, climate sustainable system. However, like many technology innovations, there is a social risk to the acceptance of CCS. This article presents the findings of an engagement process using facilitated workshops conducted in two communities in rural Queensland, Australia, where a demonstration project for IGCC with CCS has been announced. The findings demonstrate that workshop participants were concerned about climate change and wanted leadership from government and industry to address the issue. After the workshops, participants reported increased knowledge and more positive attitudes towards CCS, expressing support for the demonstration project to continue in their local area. The process developed is one that could be utilized around the world to successfully engage communities on the low carbon emission technology options.

Cipher cities

Cipher Cities was a practice-led research project developed in 3 stages between 2005 and 2007 resulting in the creation of a unique online community, ‘Cipher Cities’, that provides simple authoring tools and processes for individuals and groups to create their own mobile events and event journals, build community profile and participate in other online community activities. Cipher Cities was created to revitalise peoples relationship to everyday places by giving them the opportunity and motivation to create and share complex digital stories in simple and engaging ways. To do so we developed new design processes and methods for both the research team and the end user to appropriate web and mobile technologies. To do so we collaborated with ethnographers, designers and ICT researchers and developers. In teams we ran a series of workshops in a wide variety of cities in Australia to refine an engagement process and to test a series of iteratively developed prototypes to refine the systems that supported community motivation and collaboration. The result of the research is 2 fold: 1. a sophisticated prototype for researchers and designers to further experiment with community engagement methodologies using existing and emerging communications technologies. 2. A ‘human dimensions matrix’. This matrix assists in the identification and modification of place based interventions in the social, technical, spatial, cultural, pedagogical conditions of any given community. This matrix has now become an essential part of a number of subsequent projects and assists design collaborators to successfully conceptualise, generate and evaluate interactive experiences. the research team employed practice-led action research methodologies that involved a collaborative effort across the fields of interaction design and social science, in particular ethnography, in order to: 1. seek, contest, refine a design methodology that would maximise the successful application of a dynamic system to create new kinds of interactions between people, places and artefacts’. 2. To design and deploy an application that intervenes in place-based and mobile technologies and offers people simple interfaces to create and share digital stories. Cipher Cities was awarded 3 separate CRC competitive grants (over $270,000 in total) to assist 3 stages of research covering the development of the Ethnographic Design Methodologies, the development of the tools, and the testing and refinement of both the engagement models and technologies. The resulting methodologies and tools are in the process of being commercialised by the Australasian CRC for Interaction Design.

Discussions in space

In-place digital augmentation enhances the experience of physical spaces through digital technologies that are directly accessible within that space. This can take place in many forms and ways, e.g., through location-aware applications running on the individuals’ portable devices, such as smart phones, or through large static devices, such as public displays, which are located within the augmented space and accessible by everyone. The hypothesis of this study is that in-place digital augmentation, in the context of civic participation, where citizens collaboratively aim at making their community or city a better place, offers significant new benefits, because it allows access to services or information that are currently inaccessible to urban dwellers where and when they are needed: in place. This paper describes our work in progress deploying a public screen to promote civic issues in public, urban spaces, and to encourage public feedback and discourse via mobile phones.

Enabling authentic collaborative education in an online environment : the QUT Virtual Law Placement

This paper explores an innovative model for work-integrated learning using a virtual paradigm – The Virtual Law Placement Unit at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Australia. It builds upon the conceptual model previously explored at WACE 2007 and provides an account of the lessons learned from the pilot offering of the unit which was conducted and evaluated in 2008. ----- The Virtual Placement Unit offers students the opportunity to complete an authentic workplace task under the guidance of a real-life workplace supervisor, where student-student communication and student-supervisor communication is all conducted virtually (and potentially asynchronously) to create an engaging but flexible learning environment using a combination of Blackboard and SharePoint technologies. This virtual experience is pioneering in the sense that it enables law students to access an unprecedented range of law graduate destination workplaces and projects, including international and social justice placements, absent the constraints traditionally associated with arranging physical placements. ----- All aspects of this unit have been designed in conjunction with community partners with a view to balancing student learning objectives with community needs through co-operative education. This paper will also explore how the implementation of the project is serving to strengthen those partnerships with the wider community, simultaneously addressing the community engagement agenda of the University and enabling students to engage meaningfully with local, national and international community partners in the real world of work.

From social butterfly to urban citizen workshop

Web applications such as blogs, wikis, video and photo sharing sites, and social networking systems have been termed ‘Web 2.0’ to highlight an arguably more open, collaborative, personalisable, and therefore more participatory internet experience than what had previously been possible. Giving rise to a culture of participation, an increasing number of these social applications are now available on mobile phones where they take advantage of device-specific features such as sensors, location and context awareness. This workshop made a contribution towards exploring and better understanding the opportunities and challenges provided by tools, interfaces, methods and practices of social and mobile technology that enable participation and engagement. It brought together a group of academics and practitioners from a diverse range of disciplines such as computing and engineering, social sciences, digital media and human-computer interaction to critically examine a range of applications of social and mobile technology, such as social networking, mobile interaction, wikis (eg., futuremelbourne.com.au), twitter, blogging, virtual worlds (eg, hub2.org), and their impact to foster community activism, civic engagement and cultural citizenship.

Framework and processes for enhancing sustainability deliverables in Australian road infrastructure projects

Road and highway infrastructure provides the backbone for a nation’s economic growth. The versatile dispersion of population in Australia and its resource boom, coupled with improved living standards and growing societal expectations, calls for continuing development and improvement of road infrastructure under the current local, state and federal governments’ policies and strategic plans. As road infrastructure projects involve huge resources and mechanisms, achieving sustainability not only on economic scales but also through environmental and social responsibility becomes a crucial issue. While sustainability is a logical link to infrastructure development, literature study and consultation with the industry found that there is a lack of common understanding on what constitutes sustainability in the infrastructure context. Its priorities are often interpreted differently among multiple stakeholders. For road infrastructure projects which typically span over long periods of time, achieving tangible sustainability outcomes during the lifecycle of development remains a formidable task. Sustainable development initiatives often remain ideological as in macro-level policies and broad-based concepts. There were little elaboration and exemplar cases on how these policies and concepts can be translated into practical decision-making during project implementation. In contrast, there seemed to be over commitment on research and development of sustainability assessment methods and tools. Between the two positions, there is a perception-reality gap and mismatch, specifically on how to enhance sustainability deliverables during infrastructure project delivery. Review on past research in this industry sector also found that little has been done to promote sustainable road infrastructure development; this has wide and varied potential impacts. This research identified the common perceptions and expectations by different stakeholders towards achieving sustainability in road and highway infrastructure projects. Face to face interviews on selected representatives of these stakeholders were carried out in order to select and categorize, confirm and prioritize a list of sustainability performance targets identified through literature and past research. A Delphi study was conducted with the assistance of a panel of senior industry professionals and academic experts, which further considered the interrelationship and influence of the sustainability indicators, and identified critical sustainability indicators under ten critical sustainability criteria (e.g. Environmental, Health & Safety, Resource Utilization & Management, Social & Cultural, Economic, Public Governance & Community Engagement, Relations Management, Engineering, Institutional and Project Management). This presented critical sustainability issues that needed to be addressed at the project level. Accordingly, exemplar highway development projects were used as case studies to elicit solutions for the critical issues. Through the identification and integration of different perceptions and priority needs of the stakeholders, as well as key sustainability indicators and solutions for critical issues, a set of decision-making guidelines was developed to promote and drive consistent sustainability deliverables in road infrastructure projects.

The land use and public transport accessibility index : phase two final report

The Urban Research Program (URP) was established in 2003 as strategic research and community engagement initiative of Griffith University. The strategic foci of the Urban Research Program are research and advocacy in an urban regional context. The Urban Research Program seeks to improve understanding of, and develop innovative responses to Australia's urban challenges and opportunities by providing training assistance. The authors aim to make the results of their research and advocacy work available as freely and widely as possible.

Listen and learn

The communities located adjacent to and around the Airport City are composed of diverse interests and cultures that often have little to do with the airport and its global service functions. Yet, as most airport managers know, these communities can have a significant impact on airport operations and land use. Community engagement is an essential element to airport planning and management that is often underplayed and given only a token effort. In order for Airport Cities to realize their full potential in global and national markets as well as assume an appropriate level of corporate responsibility there needs to be a strong and enduring connections to local and regional communities. Through a series of nationally held workshops throughout Australia and internationally, we have reviewed the complex relationship between airports and their surrounding communities. We argue the following engagement elements improve both communication and relationships with local communities and must be actively nurtured, developed and pursued by airport managers: connectivity, collaboration and citizenry.

Revisiting 'how we learn' in academia : practice-based learning exchanges in three Australian universities

Ideas of 'how we learn' in formal academic settings have changed markedly in recent decades. The primary position that universities once held on shaping what constitutes learning has come into question from a range of experience-led and situated learning models. Drawing on findings from a study conducted across three Australian universities, the article focuses on the multifarious learning experiences indicative of practice-based learning exchanges such as student placements. Building on both experiential and situated learning theories, the authors found that students can experience transformative and emotional elucidations of learning, that can challenge tacit assumptions and transform the ways they understand the world. It was found that all participants (hosts, students, academics) both teach and learn in these educative scenarios and that, contrary to common (mis)perceptions that academics live in 'ivory towers', they play a crucial role in contributing to learning that takes place in the so-called 'real world'.

Dramatic character development personas to tailor apartment designs for different residential lifestyles

This chapter reports on research work that aims to overcome some limitations of conventional community engagement for urban planning. Adaptive and human-centred design approaches that are well established in human-computer interaction (such as personas and design scenarios) as well as creative writing and dramatic character development methods (such as the Stanislavsky System and the Meisner Technique) are yet largely unexplored in the rather conservative and long-term design context of urban planning. Based on these approaches, we have been trialling a set of performance based workshop activities to gain insights into participants’ desires and requirements that may inform the future design of apartments and apartment buildings in inner city Brisbane. The focus of these workshops is to analyse the behaviour and lifestyle of apartment dwellers and generate residential personas that become boundary objects in the cross-disciplinary discussions of urban design and planning teams. Dramatisation and embodied interaction of use cases form part of the strategies we employed to engage participants and elicit community feedback.

Real estate 2.0 : towards a value ecology?

This paper anatomises emerging developments in online community engagement in a major global industry: real estate. Economists argue that we are entering a ‘social network economy’ in which ‘complex social networks’ govern consumer choice and product value. In the light of this, organisations are shifting from thinking and behaving in the conventional ‘value chain’ model--in which exchanges between firms and customers are one-way only, from the firm to the consumer--to the ‘value ecology’ model, in which consumers and their networks become co-creators of the value of the product. This paper studies the way in which the global real estate industry is responding to this environment. This paper identifies three key areas in which online real estate ‘value ecology’ work is occurring: real estate social networks, games, and locative media / augmented reality applications. Uptake of real estate applications is, of course, user-driven: the paper not only highlights emerging innovations; it also identifies which of these innovations are actually being taken up by users, and the content contributed as a result. The paper thus provides a case study of one major industry’s shift into a web 2.0 communication model, focusing on emerging trends and issues.

Sustainable urban infrastructure management : integration of urban computer modelling

Purpose - This paper seeks to examine the complex relationships between urban planning, infrastructure management, sustainable urban development, and to illustrate why there is an urgent need for local governments to develop a robust planning support system which integrates with advance urban computer modelling tools to facilitate better infrastructure management and improve knowledge sharing between the community, urban planners, engineers and decision makers. Design/methodology/approach - The methods used in this paper includes literature review and practical project case observations. Originality/value - This paper provides an insight of how the Brisbane's planning support system established by Brisbane City Council has significantly improved the effectiveness of urban planning, infrastructure management and community engagement through better knowledge management processes. Practical implications - This paper presents a practical framework for setting up a functional planning support system within local government. The integration of the Brisbane Urban Growth model, Virtual Brisbane and the Brisbane Economic Activity Monitoring (BEAM) database have proven initially successful to provide a dynamic platform to assist elected officials, planners and engineers to understand the limitations of the local environment, its urban systems and the planning implications on a city. With the Brisbane's planning support system, planners and decision makers are able to provide better planning outcomes, policy and infrastructure that adequately address the local needs and achieve sustainable spatial forms.