This is a CTP of initiative: Shareable‐ShareMelbourne (Australia)
This CTP (CTP4: Yarra City MapJam) is about the Yarra City MapJam, which was the second MapJam held for ShareMelbourne after the Melbourne MapJam (CTP2). The City of Yarra is a local government area in Victoria state, located in the Greater Melbourne region. The Yarra MapJam took place in October 2014 and coincided with the Sharing Cities Network second annual global MapJam of Shareable that was going on simultaneously in different cities across the world.
The Yarra MapJam aimed at mapping different sharing projects such as urban agriculture, community gardens, tool libraries etc. The mapping process is basically an allocation of the projects in different areas in Melbourne on a digital map and not involving any official procedure for putting the initiatives under Shareable. The purpose of the MapJam was to connect the dots between the different sharing services and groups that already exist and increase the awareness of shared assets, possibly leading to more collaborations between sharing projects and new project ideas to fill in the gaps.
The MapJam was held on the 21st of October 2014, from 18:00 to 20:00 o’clock, in “The Reading Room, Fitzroy Town Hall”, in the old library of the City of Yarra. It was facilitated by Darren Sharp, with support from the event partners: the City of Yarra, WeShare by Infoxchange, and Livewell Yarra. The MapJam was attended by around 25 people, entrepreneurs, community groups, local government staff and start-up founders from different sharing initiatives and businesses. There was free wireless internet, food and drinks.
The event started by Darren’s presentation about sharing cities and asset mapping, followed by the MapJam activity. The room included different tables, each with a different sharing theme: types of services, production, distribution, finance and land/housing. Attendants sat in groups on the different tables and mapped any sharing activity they know of on the virtual map. The mapped activities include community gardens, bike-sharing, co-working spaces, urban farms, and repair cafes. Other initiatives are only accessible via internet and provide a virtual platform, so these couldn’t be mapped. The event ambience was friendly and positive; a lot of discussion, networking and interactions took place between all like-minded attendants.
As a result of this CTP, Darren produced an interactive map for the City of Yarra, which allocates many sharing initiatives and assets. He has put it together on the website and it is available for future development by the community: http://www.yarracity.vic.gov.au/environment/community-participation/share-yarra/ The MapJam led for the first time to have a concrete picture of the amount and diversity of sharing activities in the City of Yarra. According to Darren: “I think MapJams are a great opportunity to make the invisible visible and help local communities connect the dots in their city”. The Yarra MapJam represents the first direct involvement and collaboration of a local government with ShareMelbourne. The Environment Program team in the City of Yarra have chosen to co-organize this event with Darren and other partners, as they found that the ‘sharing’ concept involves all different sustainability aspects: environmental initiatives, economic development, as well as community development. While Melbourne and the surrounding local governments are not official sharing cities, this CTP was a main step towards bringing the sharing concepts in the city strategy level. Moreover, the MapJam brought different stakeholders together, who used digital maps to locate resources and started building connections and creating cross-sector collaborations and opportunities for partnerships. This marked an important step towards scaling up sharing initiatives in other cities of Greater Melbourne.
The Yarra MapJam was co-produced by several actors: The City of Yarra, ShareMelbourne, WeShare by Infoxchange and Livewell Yarra.
As the leader of ShareMelbourne, Darren coordinated and facilitated the MapJam event. The City of Yarra sponsored the event and provided the venue and food. In fact, they approached Darren about partnering for such an event. It all started as follows: Darren had a local government contact at the City of Yarra, through Livewell Yarra (Darren’s PhD project) who introduced him to Karen Cameron, the Environment Programs Officer in the City of Yarra. Darren met with Karen Cameron to introduce her to Shareable the Sharing City idea. Karen subscribed to Shareable’s newsletter and received an update about the second annual MapJam festival initiated by Shareable. Karen Cameron liked the idea of the Sharing City and the MapJam movement and thought of arranging the MapJam event in Yarra as part of the Environment Strategy 2013-2017, due to the following: During public consultations for developing the strategy many people mentioned that they need a program that overcomes the current cultural norms of consumption of people in Yarra. The Environment Strategy team found that the ‘Sharing City’ notion promotes a sharing mentality and culture between the members of society, which challenges the current cultural norms of consumption addressed during the consultations. Moreover, the sharing economy notion involves economic as well as social and community development. Thus, the City of Yarra decided to become the venue partner as well as the promotional partner for the event.
‘We Share’ by Infoxchange were an event partner, who helped promote the MapJam event via their networks. ‘We Share’ is a digital inclusion project by Infoxchange that aims to connect more than 10,000 seniors with the sharing economy. It “takes good old-fashioned sharing and uses digital technology to bring individuals together, especially older people, allowing them to share skills and goods” (infoxchange.org/ 2016). Livewell Yarra, which were another event partner promoting the MapJam via their networks, support the City of Yarra’s Environment Strategy and its aims to overcome the current consumption cultural norms in Yarra. In fact, Livewell Yarra’s purpose is to encourage citizens to reduce their carbon footprint while maintaining or enhancing their wellbeing.
Several events are related to the Yarra MapJam:
First, Shareable’s global MapJam#2 movement taking place in many cities around the world again encouraged the City of Yarra among many other cities to conduct the event. Karen states: “We wouldn’t have done it if it wasn’t a global event, this MapJam by Sharing Cities”. The global MapJam movement gave the feeling of being part of a bigger, influential movement and of sharing the same ideas and motivations with many other cities around the world. Not only was the simultaneous global MapJam#2 a strong motivation for the Yarra city team, but certainly CTP2: MapJam#1 which took place a year earlier on a global scale as well as on a local scale – in Melbourne, provided tangible evidence for the potential success and impact of the Yarra MapJam event.
In addition, the ongoing development of the City of Yarra’s Environment Strategy 2013-2017 and the accompanying public consultations were crucial for this CTP to occur. It was through these consultations that the demand to overcome cultural consumption norms was addressed by the people. And it led to the City of Yarra team to think of the sharing economy as a starting point to address this. In fact, Karen states that Yarra is very progressive environmentally compared to the other cities in Victoria, Australia, where people are very environmentally-conscious. It is one of the smallest local governments and densest cities that are close to Melbourne city. The socio-economic situation is increasingly polarized with growing gentrification, and contrast between poor and rich. People as well as the local government are becoming increasingly aware that a change on both: the socio-economic as well as the environmental level has to be implemented.
The Yarra MapJam led to one main event which took place almost one and a half years later, namely Darren’s facilitating a workshop for Melbourne Knowledge Week in May 2016. Previously the Knowledge Week festival only covered the City of Melbourne, but in 2016 it was the first time that the City of Yarra were participating and they wanted to introduce the sharing economy concept. The Knowledge Week team were introduced to Darren by the same contact at the City of Yarra and the economic development team invited Darren to participate under the banner of Yarra but representing his own consulting practice Social Surplus.
The Knowledge Week workshop took place exactly on the 4th May 2016 and was attended by residents, entrepreneurs and local business owners. Participants were shown how the sharing economy enables more efficient use of resources, reduces waste and helps build community by strengthening connections at the local level. It also detailed the economic benefits of adopting a ‘sharing mind-set’ and demonstrated the potential to unlock the idling capacity of various assets including physical resources, skills and knowledge. Darren explains that, “participants were provided with a detailed introduction to the latest trends in the sharing economy and the opportunities it creates to build stronger connections and address range of social, economic and environmental challenges using the abundance of resources already existing in communities.” More information about the Knowledge Week event as well as Darren’s workshop can found via: http://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/arts-and-culture/events-partnerships/melbourne-knowledge-week/Pages/melbourne-knowledge-week.aspx For Karen Cameron, the MapJam was more of an isolated event, which left the interactive map as a legacy. She thinks that much more can be done in Yarra city with this map. Until now the map that came out wasn’t sufficiently used. She adds that “Next thing to do is to come up with ideas how we can use the map and what are the coming steps. There is a page on our website that includes and encourages sharing initiatives. This is where the map is currently located.”
There was hardly any contestation in this CTP.
While preparing for the event, all the different facilitating partners worked in harmony each having his own role. Darren coordinated and facilitated the event. Yarra provided the venue and food, WeShare and Livewell Yarra helped promote the MapJam via their networks.
On the City of Yarra level, the Environment Strategy team agreed about the relevance of the sharing economy in reaching their ambitions to overcome the cultural norms of consumption of the people. They saw the advantage of sharing notions in addressing not only environmental issues but also socio-economic challenges. Thus, they were motivated to promote the sharing economy as a project in their Environment strategy and to sponsor and co-facilitate the MapJam event.
Karen Cameron states, that they anticipated a potential source of contestation with the Economic Development team, who have different, more economically-focused priorities. She mentions that her team feared the lacking support of the Economic Development officer and knew the importance of having such an influential person on their side. Thus, they specifically involved the Economic Development officer since the start to ensure that she is supportive of their project and of the MapJam event. And in fact, she liked the idea and was supportive to the event.
As for the MapJam event itself, it went quite smoothly and the ambience was friendly and positive. The attendants were very keen and motivated to the mapping activity. The facilitation by Darren went smoothly and the attendants easily understood their task of mapping. Many activities were mapped by the different groups resulting in an informative virtual map with diverse sharing initiatives and resources in Yarra. In addition, the attendants were excited to connect and network with other like-minded people. The free food and drink added to the enjoyable experience of the attendants and created a casual socializing platform.
Overall the Yarra MapJam event was a positive experience for the city of Yarra and Darren Sharp. Karen explains that her related ambitions and points of concerns are how to market the map more so it is better utilized and how to make the sharing ideas attractive to the people in the City of Yarra and bring them together under this notion.
Once the second MapJam Festival was launched by Shareable, Darren anticipated that ShareMelbourne would be one of the cities to conduct a MapJam, which would be facilitated by him. He mentions “I wanted to conduct the second MapJam but wasn’t sure about the focus”. It was in just in the end of September 2014 that Karen Cameron emailed him to partner on the Yarra MapJam. Before this, Darren had met with the officials of the City of Yarra after his contact had connected him with Karen Cameron. He didn’t expect this meeting before he started connecting with Karen.
When he met with Karen his aim was to at least introduce her the Sharing City notion and to hopefully get her support for the future. However, he didn’t anticipate the meeting to lead to a partnership in arranging a Sharing event. Similar to the first MapJam (CTP 2) the Shareable team were promoting the second MapJam on the website and newsletter in advance and covering many MapJam stories that were happening around the world in diverse cities simultaneously. This has introduced Darren to what he could more or less expect in terms of event proceedings and virtual map outcome. His experience in conducting the first MapJam in Melbourne (CTP 2) also helped him have a clearer idea of the event.
This CTP has contributed to bring the Sharing City concept to the Yarra local government level. It represents the first local government direct involvement and collaboration with ShareMelbourne. Darren had a strategic vision aiming to gradually involve policy- and decision-makers in the Sharing City discussion. While Melbourne and the surrounding local governments are not official sharing cities, this CTP was a main step towards bringing the sharing concepts in the city strategy level.
Through this CTP, Darren has learned the importance of city staff participating in MapJam events. City staff participation were needed to bring different elements of the Council together: community development, environment and sustainability, economic development, urban agriculture, youth, ageing etc. It’s also important for bringing external community members into contact with the Council officers to open up lines of communication. Moreover, the city not only has the resources to sponsor such an event, but to bring it to the strategic city level. The event was announced and covered on the City of Yarra website and was held in the elegant Fitzroy Town Hall owned by the City of Yarra. Moreover, the MapJam was promoted under the name of the City of Yarra, which added to the legitimacy and credibility of the event. Moreover, the city staff engagement led to more collaborations in the future in more formal events, such as the Knowledge Week workshop conducted by Darren in 2016.
While partnering with the local government was very important, Darren realized that involving a diversity of stakeholders not only from the local government, but also from the business and community sectors, brings the best outcomes in such an event. Each stakeholder could contribute to the event and mapping activity from his perspective and experience, and also learn about the other stakeholders’ ideas and ways of thinking. This facilitated cross-sectoral ideas exchange as well as triggering of collaboration potentials. Another positive, but more general impact of the Yarra MapJam is that it introduced more people to the sharing notions and initiatives. This helped Darren further build his network, and support base.
The learning experience was also for the city of Yarra Environment Strategy team, as Karen Cameron states. The team has appreciated the importance of mapping and allocating assets and resources in their city and of having an asset-based approach to community development. The map gave them an overview of the abundance of resources that exist within their communities. They understood more thoroughly the positive socio-economic impacts sharing initiatives have besides its challenging of current consumption norms. They are aware that they have to build on what was accomplished so far in the MapJam, and integrate it in their Environment Strategy. Karen states that on the Melbourne city level efforts around the sharing economy are more intense and tangible. Compared to that Yarra city is still relatively behind. In fact, Yarra local government has very limited resources, so they need to work in partnership with Melbourne. She also mentions that “We also need to better utilize Yarra’s rich and connected population, link people together and encourage shared uses and assets. For instance, if there is part of the road that is not used, how can it be shared?”
References
Available at: http://www.shareable.net/ [Accessed 2016].
Available at: http://www.shareable.net/cities/melbourne-australia [Accessed 2016].
Infoxchange, 2014. Celebrating 25 years - Annual Report 2014. Available at: https://www.infoxchange.org/sites/default/files/infoxchange_annual_report_2014.pdf [Accessed 2016].
Stay informed. Subscribe for project updates by e-mail.
