Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by GeniUS! on January 24, 2012 at 16:58

The official launch of GeniUS! is at 2pm tomorrow! We want to hear your creative and innovative ideas to solve our first challenge.

Permalink Reply by caseymorrison on January 25, 2012 at 18:32

I'll kick this off..!

• Is there anyway it could make money? could a group take it on for 12 months, run an enterprise club and see what happens? could they be given a council contract to get them started - like to set up a new cleaning firm co-owned, or a river taxi scheme or a .......... could york businesses mentor them? I'm sure they'd be interested people to help (including me).

• Could you put a broadband connection in, get a few ex-council laptops and use it as a skills-share place (like learn direct). make it really informal, make sure it wasn't set on fire, but take some risks and make it an interesting working space?

• Could you start with a list of things that you currently see as problems and put them together with whatever they need. Its currently costing you £............ would you be prepared to use the money in a different way. you could get a grant for a skatepark, or photography workshop so long as the council was prepared to help out.

my 2p..

Permalink Reply by caseymorrison on January 25, 2012 at 19:35

Or this.. http://www.somewhereto.com 

Permalink Reply by Heather Niven on January 26, 2012 at 16:57

Hi Casey,

loving these ideas! community enterprise spaces, activity groups, skills sharing spaces - all great stuff.

Maybe free rental in return for 'doing up' the spaces, or a cooperative which needs a venue?  Looking for ideas which provide real value to the community and 'wash their face' in terms of sustainability.  

Also start-up businesses, creative work spaces, or performance/recording areas might be a possibility?  Or a mash-up of them all for a real mixed atmosphere?

what do people want :O) tell us!!

Permalink Reply by Gwen Swinburn on January 25, 2012 at 19:55

The idea of having all the assets in one database is super. I am not a council employee so am unaware whether all the assets are held by one property or similar department' but it would be good to have contact names tbat interested parties could use.
A second input would be for these particularly challenging assets, is to ensure that the planners and listing officers are on board to help make things happen. A short summary of aspirations from the council's perspective would also help.

It may be helpful to form a small asset management panel ( possibly as a subset of the Economic Partnship) that includes folks from the private sector who ares embedded in the property industry. Oh by the way the system does ot allow me to go back and read this, so I hope thee are no typos.

Permalink Reply by Heather Niven on January 26, 2012 at 17:07

I agree Gwen, publicly accessible database of what is where, and how to access it would be super.  

The team working with us on developing ideas from this question are involved in the asset management team at the council, so maybe a group could be convened.  Preferably though those  people are welcome to have a group debate on this site, to discuss in more detail what ideas they have, and to have input from all the innovators here too :O)

Thanks for your input and feedback.

Permalink Reply by Stewart Halliday on January 26, 2012 at 16:31

On the specific example above - could you get either the York Brewery or CAMRA to set up some sort of micro brewery on the premises. Maybe would enable us to keep the heritage link with it's original purpose but also employ some people too.

Permalink Reply by Heather Niven on January 26, 2012 at 17:09

and of course make York's own special brew ;o)

Permalink Reply by Emma J on January 27, 2012 at 22:20

i think this is a great idea - York is big enough to take another brewery, if York brewery isn't interested or if it doesn't work for them. Would the Swan / Slip like to brew it's own beer?  Alternatively there are also a number of small businesses on Bishopthorpe Road that may be interested in using the space in some way. 

Permalink Reply by Dave Atkinson on January 26, 2012 at 23:55

Hi there

First of all Casey, Gwen and Stewart please let me reiterate Heather's thanks for giving us a really good start on this challenge.

I am leading the facilitation and shaping of this first challenge and I'm delighted with the speed and thoughtfulness of the responses. I've posted a blog (see Hello World), in which I've given a bit more background on the team and the challenge.

First of all, in terms of extra detail around the possible outcomes for the Clementhorpe Maltings, we specifically picked a property that had an interesting past and loads of potential. One of the issues up front is the condition of this particular building and it will need some work to make it operable. I'll do 2 things up front and feed back to you all as soon as I can. First, I'll have a discussion around the potential cost and timescale of bringing the building into an operable state. Second, some of your ideas Casey are great and immediately implementable, so I'll investigate any other properties that we could bring in to play to allow us to move on some of the ideas in the short term.

Gwen, to answer your questions, I'm working with the planning teams at the council and I'll be discussing the issues around planning as they arise. In terms of the databases, we have separate property, highway, equipment and fleet databases in the council and we could look at creating a portal to the data through a map based like Google maps or similar. What do you think?

Stewart, your idea pays a real nod to what York is all about. Protecting our heritage and growing business. Like the pirate picture as well.

 

Permalink Reply by Antony Powell on January 27, 2012 at 15:00

There is an opportunity to simultaneously solve this problem and solve a much deeper one raised by the  challenge of globalism and localism through steps toward a peer-to-peer share-economy. I would propose the database becomes a wider Mesh that catalogues resources (including assets, skills) and appropriate meta-data for different applications - like venues, film locations, rentable equipment. The resulting York Mesh becomes an open, reinforcing and accessible dataset that can be used for multiple purposes, not all of which necessarily need to be predicted at the outset. So that means we can overlay 'user needs' queries on the Mesh like the one Casey suggests (e.g. show me all the 'creative spaces in York') 

The concept of a Mesh is in the formation of local lending/using communities that get us all away from the idea of the ingrained need to 'own' assets. By way of simple example: I bet a dozen houses on our street own 'pressure washers' that only get used a few times a year - so why don't we share just one?  It's only the ownership mindset that stops streets, communities or cities (like York) identifying shareable resources that are accessible by many. A building like Clementhorpe Maltings is one type of asset that could address a class of needs.

I can offer ideas on how to deliver a York Mesh, but for the purposes here I suggest that this initial question should not only be considered as a Council Asset problem, but more widely and explicitly as a 'sustainably economy' problem that equally applies to individuals, groups and organisations. Many of the building blocks of the solution are common, elements already exist, and others are not too difficult to implement. It implies generic and accessible solutions, not stovepiped 'point' solutions with their associated bureaucracy. Moreover York is exceptionally well placed to construct/exploit a Mesh mindset through the vehicle of initiatives like GeniUS, Science City York, etc and demonstrate value back to NESTA.

Permalink Reply by Heather Niven on January 27, 2012 at 15:46

York Mesh sounds like a brilliant idea! Have you any ideas as to how you/we would go about running a pilot on this?

 

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