Creating Our Identity and Website

As a taster activity at our Welcome Event, we set up art materials so people could help design the EMCRN logo. We created Logo Mood Boards to do this…

Everyone wrote down the emotions they feel about the East Marsh and what colours they thought matched those feelings. We also thought about what shapes or icons came to mind when thinking about the East Marsh. We spoke about how ‘you know you’re home’ when you see the Dock Tower. We chose ‘Know Your Home’ as our slogan – a play on words between ‘knowing you are home’ and how the EMCRN seeks to ‘know your home’ through community research.

One person there said that he ‘didn’t have a clue what the community research network was actually all about’ but it was ‘warm and welcoming’ so signed up to be a Community Researcher for the first project. Another said that she was ‘intrigued’ enough to come along to the next session.

Meeting the Community Researchers and Setting our Principles

Everyone interested in being a Community Researcher from our Welcome Event was invited to a 4hr introductory session.

This was at our new ‘Research Room’ just off Freeman Street. Everyone came along to discuss our plans for the first project.

People really started to get what the EMCRN is about, so we did an activity where we developed our ‘core principles.’ Our 4 core principles will guide everything EMCRN do.  

We also finalised our logo in that first week. A local graphic designer took all the ideas everyone had and managed to represent them all in our final design.

The colours represent the moods and feelings of the East Marsh – vibrant, hopeful, resilient and proud. These are used to colour the familiar streetscape of Freeman Street complete with its unique streetlighting and the iconic Dock Tower in the background signalling your home.

Our web designer, Kris, joined us for the morning of our second day. Kris showed the team the basics of how websites are built. This gave us a ‘better understanding of the site we were working with. It made it easier to understand the process of building it’ (Community Researcher).

After deciding on a template for the site, we used the rest of the day to decide the colour palette and layout of the homepage using wireframes. By the end of the day, Community Researchers ‘started feeling more comfortable and confident.’

We all agreed that we needed images to go on the website, so we purchased a camera and planned to go out the next week.

In week 3, we reviewed progress on the website and went on a photo walk of the East Marsh. We used printed maps to share our knowledge of the East Marsh based on 3 simple questions: What route do you normally take through the East Marsh?​ What parts/streets do you not see? Where should we go?’

We then did a circular walk of the East Marsh – down Freeman Street, along Cleethorpe Road to New Clee Station, up to Grant Thorold Park (stopping at The Canopy for lunch) and then back to Freeman Street via Victor and Duncombe Streets.

Everyone shared their experiences along the way. The Community Researchers summed the activity up as: ‘Helped me understand where we live better’; ‘Enjoyed it cause it was more hands on’; ‘Helped me understand where everything was’; ‘Eye opening’; ‘Made me see the East Marsh in a different way.’

We carried on with using mapping activities in week 4, but first we started by going through all images we took from the week before. We chose which ones we wanted for the website homepage and where we wanted them. We all had a laugh and bonded over remembering the previous week! You can see some of the images in our gallery.

After, we did some ‘participatory mapping’ activities to identify issues in the East Marsh. This involved getting into small groups and making maps from scratch based on how we visualised the East Marsh. It wasn’t about accuracy – it was about drawing how the Community Researchers saw the East Marsh from their everyday lives.

We then added layers to our maps on the issues that the Community Researchers identified as facing the East Marsh. All the groups then shared their maps with each other – talking about a wide-range of things from crime and vacant properties to substance misuse and lack of independent local businesses. Female Community Researchers spoke honestly and bravely about their own experiences of street harassment and the challenges they face as women. One male Community Researcher said that this ‘made me see the East Marsh through other people’s eyes.’  

The next week Kris came in to do some more on the website. It was really begin to take shape and match what the Community Researchers had visualised and designed.

Later, we did a ‘surveying space’ activity where we went up and down Freeman Street noting building use and vacant space/properties on printed maps. This was off the back of the previous week where Community Researchers discussed Freeman Street being an that could be improved.

We attracted some public attention doing this, with people asking what we were doing. The Community Researchers later said that they felt a ‘bit uncomfortable’ with the activity but it did help them get a deeper understanding of land use in Freeman Street.

We followed up the ‘surveying space’ activity by creating ‘solution trees.’ Working in small groups, the Community Researchers had the ‘problems’ of Freeman Street as the trunk of a tree and drew roots, branches and fruit onto it. On the roots, we named what we thought the causes of the problems are. On the branches, we put what we thought the effects of the problem are. On the fruit, we put what we think the solutions to the problems might be.

Though this made a few of the Community Researchers ‘feel a bit helpless’, it also made some ‘see the root causes’ – ‘I thought it was useful to see causes and effects’ (Community Researcher)

Kris joined us again in Week 6 to work on finalising some things for the website. We learned for the previous week that group worked best when working in smaller groups and then coming together to share.

So, a smaller group worked with Kris on the web design – developing content, organising the layout to make it user friendly and coming up with the idea of the ‘support hub.’

Another small group got together to develop the EMCRN social media strategy – researching all the different socials and thinking about users to try to target all audiences. The ‘social media chat was fun’, said one Community Researcher.

We’d done loads in the previous 6 weeks so we spent the final week reflecting back on all we’d achieved and what each of us had gotten out of the experience.

We pinned up all our work on boards and did a ‘gallery walk’ around each week, writing up and evaluating what we’d done.

After lunch, we sat down to write short testimonies on our experience of doing the project.