THE

DEMOCRATIC
SOCIETY

CityCamp Brighton
Report and lessons learned

Catherine Howe and Anthony Zacharzewski

May 2011
The Democratic Society and Public-i, May 2011
Democratic Society Research Paper 3

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Contents

Introducing CityCamp Brighton 5

Why take action? 5
What are the aims? 7
What is a CityCamp? 7
What happened in Brighton? 8
The Brighton approach 9
Democracy Matters 10
Open data 11
An agenda for change 12
Benefits of the approach 12
Who participated in Brighton? 13
Organisation and attendance 14
What was discussed? 15
The prize 16
Awarding the prize 16
The projects 17
What did it cost? 21
Where did the money come from? 22
How participants saw the event 23
Appendix A: The Programme 27
Appendix B: Press and Other coverage 29
Appendix C: General background on CityCamp  31

Report and lessons learned 3

4 CityCamp Brighton
Introducing CityCamp Brighton

CityCamp Brighton was an intensive local innovation event held in

Brighton and Hove, a city and unitary council in southern England. It has
created the beginnings of a social innovation network in the city, and
preparations are already under way for a second event in March 2012.

Brighton and Hove is vibrant and creative city with two universities and
active digital and creative communities. The city has millions of visitors
every year and a lively night time economy. However it also has pockets
of intense deprivation and services are not uniformly good across the
area. The organisers wanted to use the event to reenergise the relation-
ship between the City and its Citizens and to create a network of people
from all parts of the city who would innovate and develop services and
projects to make Brighton a better place to live and work.

It was organised by a team from the Democratic Society, Nixon McInnes,

Public-i and Wired Sussex, and was supported financially and in kind by
LGID, the City Council, Sussex Police and the University of Brighton. The
best idea created over the weekend was awarded a £10,000 prize do-
nated by the Aldridge Foundation.

Why take action?

Government policy and financial pressures are pushing local public ser-
vices to change, and encouraging citizens to take responsibility for de-
sign and delivery of services as part of a “Big Society”. At the same time
wider social trends are producing political disengagement and discon-
tent with “one size fits all” services. People want personal services and
personal engagement in politics – even though they also want a uni-
Report and lessons learned 5
formity of treatment that may not be compatible with localism.
Despite these political and social pressures, examples of social innova-
tion delivering service change are few. Where large-scale changes to lo-
cal service delivery are proposed or in hand, they have looked to tradi-
tional outsourcing or structural reform models.

There are so few civic networks because the different elements needed
to create them remain disconnected. Public services lack the time or or-
ganisational capacity to engage with innovators or the public, and find
it hard to turn the sketchy ideas of innovation or the views of the public
into policies, delivery or structures.

In events such as CityCamps (the first UK example was held in London

in October), innovators are coming together to work out how to change
services.1 This is a positive step, but innovation that is not grounded in
practice and information can produce wheezes rather than ideas, or gen-
erate projects built on social media principles that lack understanding of
the existing landscape of needs, practice and incentives. With CityCamp
Brighton we wanted to connect the creative innovators in the city with
the public sector experts who understand how the city works.

Alongside the financial and political pressures on local government, the

public are disengaged from the reality of local services, and fail to under-
stand the nature of the cuts that are likely to come. According to Ipsos
MORI, 79% of the public believe that the fiscal position can be balanced
by cutting government waste.2 As the cuts begin to be felt, the natural
public reaction will be specific protests against individual cuts – the time
to build a broader discussion on transformation and innovation is there-
fore short.

1
  CityCamp London archive and material can be found at http://citycampldn.gov-
fresh.com
2
  MORI Public Spending Index, Ipsos MORI, 22 June 2009, quoted in The Spending
Reviews and the Operational Efficiency Programme, Institute for Government, July
2009
6 CityCamp Brighton
What are the aims?

To answer these pressures, localities need to create and network the

right conversations between the three elements of the civic network,
promoting civic engagement and social innovation by:
• Connecting innovators (and frustrated innovators) with local public
services who are interested in change and able to provide funding,
context and access
• Identifying promising reforms and give them development time and
space to grow
• Allowing the public to articulate their needs and aspirations in a dis-
cursive and information-rich format,
• Providing deeper democratic legitimacy to innovation, service
change and co-production
• Giving innovators and the public access to the context and informa-
tion from public services, and enable them to explore, develop and
challenge local public services in new ways
• Providing a forum in which existing services can truly open up their
processes and finances
• The CityCamp model, with action sustained by an ongoing network
and supported by wider 0democratic engagement, can be a part of
achieving those goals.

What is a CityCamp?

CityCamp is an “open source” event format, meaning that the name can
be used on a broad spectrum of open civic innovation events. The origi-
nators of the format set out four goals:
• Bring together local government officials, municipal employees, ex-
perts, programmers, designers, citizens and journalists to share per-
spectives and insights about the cities in which they live
• Create and maintain patterns for using the Web to facilitate local
government transparency and effective local governance

Report and lessons learned 7

• Foster communities of practice and advocacy on the role of the Web,
mobile communication, online information, and open data in cities
• Create outcomes that participants will act upon after the event is
over

They also set out the way in which the Camps run, an approach followed
in Brighton:
• As an unconference, content for CityCamp is not programmed for a
passive audience.  Instead, content is created and organized by par-
ticipants and coordinated by facilitators.  Participants are expected
to play active roles in sessions.  This provides an excellent format for
creative, open exchange geared toward action.
• CityCamp explores and documents ideas, lessons learned, best
practices, and patterns that can be implemented within and shared
across municipalities, anywhere in the world.  Of particular interest
is the use of social/participatory media, mobile devices, linked open
data, and “Web as platform.”
• CityCamp recognizes that local governments and community or-
ganizations have the most direct influence and impact on our dai-
ly lives.  This event seeks to create local communities of practice
who are dedicated to design, process, and technology applications
that make cities and other local communities more open and “user
friendly”.

What happened in Brighton?

The CityCamp concept was bought to the UK by FutureGov who ran a

highly successful CityCamp in London during October 2010. A number
of people from Brighton attended this and started talking about the pos-
sibility of a Brighton event – using the hashtag on twitter of #ccbtn.

Local organisations the Democratic Society and Public-i decided to step

up as organisers, and were joined by Max St. John from Nixon McInnes
as a core team and shortly after that by Wired Sussex, a group support-

8 CityCamp Brighton
ing the local digital business community. The event was put together in
short time, with support from the local public services, LGID (a national
local government improvement and development organisation) and the
University. From the initial inspiration in London in October, the project
team started work after Christmas, and the event began on 4 March.

The Brighton approach

CityCamp is a flexible model, and the organising team decided early on

that they wanted the event to emphasise social and service transforma-
tion, without necessarily restricting participants to thinking about Web,
transparency or technology. There is no shortage of technical talent in
Brighton, which hosts one of the country’s leading digital clusters, but
we felt that our priority ought to be to connect the tech and business
sector with the public services and communities in the city.

As part of that, the organisers saw CityCamp as the start of a new net-
work, rather than a single event. The organisers wanted to seed a group
with energy and vision to change the relationship between citizens and
government in Brighton, and to build an environment where social en-
trepreneurship could work with business and the public sector.

As part of that wider network, the organisers also wanted to support

wider democratic engagement, and a one-day CityCamp follow-up in
autumn (provisionally called CityForum) will spread discussion of issues
and solutions in the city beyond CityCamp participants.

CityCamp Brighton had a number of objectives beyond this relationship

shift, specifically that:
• The event should be focused on creating new tools, projects and ser-
vices which are co-produced by the community and government to-
gether.
• It should open minds to innovation within the public sector as well as
within the community and private sectors
Report and lessons learned 9
The prize was a key element in moving these objectives along and in
ensuring that the final project outcomes was something that has a good
chance of being sustainable in the long term without creating another
funding need in the area.

Democracy Matters

One of the motivations for the collaboration between the Democratic

Society and LGID was a common belief in the need to explore this chang-
ing relationship between the citizen and the state and to look at ways in
which more co-productive relationships can be established

The shared ambition is to create a democratic model of innovation which

moves beyond a consultative relationship with the public and involves
the public directly in the design and delivery of services. This new model
needs to engage elected members as actors as well as representatives
and needs to involve citizens more actively throughout the lifecycle of
any project. This will require a shift in skills of members over the coming
years which sees them acting less as professional advocates and more as
social entrepreneurs and agents of change.

The next stage of the CityCamp Brighton plan will see the CityForum
event which will connect the local politicians to the new network and
challenge them to work directly with this group. This brings the relation-
ship between the council and the innovation network to a new phase,
moving from small-scale innovation projects to fuller engagement with
the political life of the city – an outcome which will broaden horizons on
both sides.

In doing this we also see a need to encourage greater agility and flex-
ibility on both the policy making and implementation processes of the
Council. ‘Agile’ is a software development approach that has core prin-
ciples which can be applied to other business processes, it reflects the

10 CityCamp Brighton
speed and pragmatism of the web without forgetting the need for con-
trol and quality management. It’s a response to three very specific shifts
in our landscape:
• real time information
• transparency
• collaboration and co-production

The CityCamp team will be developing these themes over the course of
the next year.

Open data

Open data – the idea of making government data available in useable

formats for both audit and innovation purposes is something that Lo-
cal Government talks about a lot but can struggle with ways of getting
started.

One these that came through strongly at the event was the need and
appetite for open data within the area Brighton and Hove has a group of
citizens already active around the need for open data from the City.3 The
Council is looking at ways to work with this group and is exploring data
store models similar to the London Data Store.

A useful by-product from CityCamp Brighton was the opportunity for

both the Chief Executive of Brighton and Hove City Council and the Dep-
uty Chief Constable to publically state their commitment to making data
available as projects needed it. This meant that rather than expecting
teams to figure out what to do with data that is already there the event
could look more widely with a degree of confidence that the data would
follow which made a difference to the level of engagement in the event.
This pragmatic solution to the question of where to start making data
open and also the open collaboration with the open data community
means that the relationship is already more positive and co-productive
 http://odbh.wordpress.com/
3

Report and lessons learned 11

than in areas where the council is not engaging with the issue.

The winning project – My Urban Angel – will rely on the opening of data
from Sussex Police and the Council and both organisations have com-
mitted to making the data available.

An agenda for change

There is an enormous amount of talent in a city like Brighton – both

within the public sector and within the wider citizen body that goes
largely untapped by the State. CityCamp Brighton and the ongoing net-
work is an attempt connect to this talent in a way that makes radical and
collaborative possible and changes the working practices of the Council
is ways that makes it possible for it to participate in these projects as
equal partners and not as bureaucrats.

There is a need to shift the relationships and skills of all of the partici-
pants so that they are fixed squarely on the idea of delivery and out-
comes and not on process. Its another aspect of increasing the agility in
an organisation as you look to shift decision making capacity to the edge
of the organisation and beyond as the state withdraws from the lives of
citizen. This is only possible with a more active and engaged public and
this in the environment that the CityCamp Brighton team are looking to
create.

Benefits of the approach

The approach taken in Brighton combines social innovation, transfor-

mation of public services and a more participative approach to public
engagement. Only by bringing together all three elements can local gov-
ernment transformation be made politically and practically sustainable.

The specific benefits are that:

• It is flexible and can be tailored to the needs of different areas
12 CityCamp Brighton
• It shares new insights and new context among all participants, mak-
ing successful ideas more robust
• It is an ongoing process with a regular rhythm, rather than a one-off
event, so enthusiasm and engagement are maintained
• It works to reinforce existing incentives (for citizens to participate,
for innovators to solve problems and for public services to transform
themselves) without predetermining any model or framework
• It supports democratic engagement both through participation and
through bringing new ideas to elected members’ leadership of public
services
• The democratic leadership of local public services can be fully in-
volved in the discussions but need not take personal responsibility
for decisions on any innovation until they are ready for delivery –
they can shape the proposals without being able to veto them.
• Openness of context, data and ideas is at the heart of all events

Who participated in Brighton?

Brighton & Hove, with a population of about a quarter of a million peo-

ple, is of the right scale to hold a CityCamp with a strong local flavour.
The city is small enough to be comprehensible, and for the people who
live there to understand its social and physical geography. At the same
time, it is large enough to maintain the networks and skills that a Cit-
yCamp event relies on.

The event benefited hugely from senior support from both Brighton and
Hove City Council and Sussex Police with the Chief Executive, John Bar-
radell and the Deputy Chief Constable Giles York both attending most of
the event as well as participating in the judging. Senior figures from the
local voluntary and health sector presented and participated.

The main programmed speakers spoke on Friday - the “Learn” half-day

that began the event. The timetable for the day is set out on the next
page.
Report and lessons learned 13
13.40 Emer Coleman, Director of Digital Projects, Greater
London Authority
14.00 “Views from Brighton” panel:
John Barradell, Chief Executive, Brighton & Hove City
Council
Lisa Rodrigues, Chief Executive, Sussex Partnership
Mental Health Trust
Graham Bartlett, Borough Commander for Brighton &
Hove, Sussex Police
Emily O’Brien, Brighton & Hove Community & Volun-
tary Sector Forum
16.00 Dan McQuillan, co-founder, Social Innovation Camp
Benita Matofska, founder, People Who Share
Antony Mayfield, founder, Brilliant Noise

As well as the speakers on Friday, the best-selling local novelist Peter

James gave a very well-received speech on “Brighton’s murky underbel-
ly” at lunchtime on the Saturday.

Organisation and attendance

CityCamp Brighton would have been far less successful without strong
support from the public sector, but benefitted from being organised
through a small network, not run by the public sector. This gave the or-
ganisers speed and agility, and reduced the significance of political or
organisational issues. The event was seen by others as an independent
grassroots affair (with high level support that was frequently acknowl-
edged) – and as such was much more effective at drawing in support
than a council-branded event could have been.

In terms of wider participation the organizing team felt it was important

to find a mix of participants from the private, public and community sec-
tors and so set initial allocation of places 30:30:30 between the sectors
14 CityCamp Brighton
on that basis. The private sector places went quickly with local busi-
nesses and developers wanting to participate and because of the strong
support from the Council and the local Police Force the public sector
tickets went next. The community sector tickets went more slowly, re-
flecting the short run-up time, which meant that most of the marketing
was done online, and the unconference format being unfamiliar to this
sector (although occasionally found under the term “Open Space”) and
hence unappealing.

Overall participation in the event as a whole was somewhere between

150-200 people – the exact numbers being difficult to judge as people
dropped in and out of sessions.

What was discussed?

The event was structured, as the London event had been, over one half-
day (Friday) and two full days (Saturday and Sunday). The themes were:
• Learn (Friday) – Find out about the topic/location with talks from
experts and some really detailed Q&A
• Discuss (Saturday) – Shape projects: unconference sessions led by
participants who pitch ideas to be developed
• Build (Sunday) – Hack Day: develop plans and protoypes of actual
projects

The organisers emphasised that the event did not have to result in tech-
nological solutions (although the reality is that unconferences attract a
primarily technological audience and most projects did in the end have
some kind of technological angle). The one area where the organising
team was proactive in managing attendance was ensuring that there
were enough designers and coders for every project to have the support
it needed on the Sunday. A lesson for future events is that if the organis-
ers do not think they will have enough developers in the audience it is
well worth considering asking for volunteers from further afield. The full
schedule, as published, is at Appendix A.

Report and lessons learned 15

The prize

The aim of the event was to produce a project (or ideally, several pro-
jects) that could make a positive change in the city, and could involve
public services in delivering them. The Aldridge Foundation £10,000
prize fund for CityCamp Brighton gave the opportunity to take work
from the event forward to delivery and focused the project teams on the
idea of practical and sustainable outcomes rather than just a conversa-
tion or a good presentation. The organisers believe that the prize had a
tangible positive effect on the quality of the event and, obviously, the
ongoing sustainability of the projects.

The prize winners received not just money but also ongoing business
mentoring via Wired Sussex. The judges and organisers also matched all
the project teams with relevant public and private sector contact to give
them the best chance of going forward even without the prize.

Awarding the prize

The judging panel was made up of:

• Honor Wilson-Fletcher from the Aldridge Foundation
• Phil Jones from Wired Sussex
• John Barradell from Brighton & Hove City Council
• Giles York from Sussex Police
• Catherine Howe from The Democratic Society (and Public-i) (chair)

The panel spent time with the teams on Sunday afternoon to find out
more about each project. Each project did a five-minute pitch at the end
of the afternoon to all of the participants (and the panel) covering these
points:
• What is it?
• How does it work?

16 CityCamp Brighton
• Who does it help?
• What do you need to make it happen?

The judges published a criteria statement setting out how they would
evaluate the projects, which read:

“There needs to be a need. We are looking for projects that know

who they can help and what the benefit to those people will be.
We are trying to draw different parts of the city together – this
means that projects which help a range of groups would be great
We are looking for project teams that go across all of sectors that
are represented at CityCamp – this means that you need to try and
get Public, Private and community sector involvement in your
project.
You don’t have to have the details all worked out but one of the
questions that we will ask is how the project will be sustained in the
long term. Not all projects will need ongoing financial investment
but you many need to get wider community or civic support - we
want to know what you will think will happen after you win the
prize.”

The projects

My Urban Angel
The winning project was created by a team with representatives from
all of the sectors at the event and was conceived and created over the
course of the weekend. Below is a short description from the website:4

“This is an application which will run on a smartphone and supported by

a website and social media channels. The app will be used by anyone who
is going out and wants flexible options for keeping in touch with friends
and staying safe. It is principally for young people going out at night but
could equally be used by children or older adults. Users have complete
control over a range of features and they can personalise setting to suit
4
 http://myurbanangel.org/what-is-it
Report and lessons learned 17
different occasions. Different features only come into play when they
are needed and the overriding aim is to make it easy for anyone to keep
themselves safe.”
The judges were impressed not only with the idea but the scope of the
project and the fact that there was a strong case for ongoing sustainabil-
ity. The prize team are now in the process of setting up a social enter-
prise and have already started putting together a business plan to sup-
port this.

Vital Brighton
The other project that got a special mention was Vital Brighton, a social
gaming service that would match people’s leisure activities and day-to-
day movements through the city with pro-social actions. The service
would be supported with a gaming economy and was an innovative and
creative approach to behaviour change. Though the plans were too nas-
cent to be eligible for the prize the judging team wanted to see the pro-
ject move forward and Wired Sussex will be matching the project team
with some business planning support to help make this happen.

Data & Narrative

This project wanted to try and create a more narrative view of data sets
that could help community groups interpret and use open data to help
with commissioning and building services.
The project is exploring the open data options and also trying to build a
business case to support the idea. It has since launched as DataBridge.5

CityHive
A central resource for anyone to build any kind of list (events, locations,
rooms for hire) in a common data format for the community to access.
The organiser is taking this forward through the open data group in
Brighton.

 www.databridge.co.uk
5

18 CityCamp Brighton
Learn Local First (pitched as Bitesize Brighton)
Local information for learning – children should learn first from local ex-
amples rather than ones which don’t help build their understanding of
where they live
The organisers have introduced the idea owner to the education team in
the Council, who are helping her to take it forward

Interactive Community Noticeboards (iNoticeboard)

This project wanted to create interactive notice boards for bus, train, car
park – spots where people are – delivering public/community informa-
tion.
The open data group will be exploring whether the data sets can be cre-
ated. The project lead has also had a range of conversations with devel-
opers interested in using the idea.

Touchy Peely
Beautifully simple idea to match people with compost with people with
compost bins – a brokerage site for compost, neighbourhood cohesion,
landfill reduction.
This is a hobby project for the developer who brought it to the event and
he will continue to build it. The event moved it forward with extra skills
and also raised the profile with a key audience.

Wiki-Curriculum
Collaborative curriculum – create tools to make it possible to build local
school curriculums more openly
This project was pitched on the Saturday but the owner preferred to
work on other projects on Sunday rather than develop this one.

I Can Help
This project looked at ways of connecting people who can help, with
those who need itin the form of micro-volunteering.
The project owner is now intending to trial the idea in his own communi-
Report and lessons learned 19
ty and also to work with the Council to get a clearer idea of the benefits
that this kind of activity could bring.

Open 311
This team explored an idea that has been trialled in other areas – a multi-
channel, non-emergency service.
The idea is being taken forward by the Brighton & Hove Open Data
Group as part of their Open Data Manifesto, to which all three main par-
ties in the city have signed up.

There were also a few more established projects that came along to par-
ticipate:

Zocalo
Getting people to connect across the city through one big street event
(neighbourhoods) by organising street parties and gatherings on differ-
ent days
The next Zocalo event is later in 2011.

Apps for Good BTN

Strategy to deliver programme teaching young people to solve problems
through designing apps.
The team is going to be collaborating with the My Urban Angel team to
help get young people involved in the delivery of this project.

Democracy Bot
This is a travelling project that is looking for ways to hear democratic
sounds from the background noise of the social web
This is an ongoing collaboration that you can read about at http://de-
mocracybot.org/

20 CityCamp Brighton
What did it cost?

Below is a summary resource plan based on our experience with the

Brighton event – this would obviously need to be tailored to the condi-
tions and arrangements for other events. This plan is predicated on a 3
day event and we have put many of the costs in terms of time as well
as external cost.

Item Description Cost

Time External Cost
Venues (200 Lecture theatre for day None Sponsorship in
people on Friday, one kind
150 on other Flat floor space for day None Sponsorship in
days) two, with gathering area kind
for participants
Ditto for day three None Sponsorship in
kind
Catering Day 1: Coffee and drinks None £5 per head
Day 2: Breakfast, coffee, None £15 per head
lunch and drinks
Day 3: As day 2 None £15 per head
Marketing Website 3 days Sponsorship
including in kind, other
content than hosting
creation cost of £90
Posters 1 day £150
Design 1 day £85
Social media Ongoing Free services
and in kind
Outreach to community 2-3 days Incidentals only
organisers and visits to
organisations

Report and lessons learned 21

Infrastructure Wifi - assume everyone 1 day for Sponsorship in
wants to get online setup, kind
checking
and testing.
Technical
support
during the
event.
Administration Stationery None £300
Badges ½ day £50
Arrangements, catering, 8 days None
co-ordination
Webcast 1 day Sponsorship in
kind
Project Agenda setting and pro- 5 days None
management ject management
Raising sponsorship As long as
it takes.
Brighton
event spent
about 3
days on this.

Where did the money come from?

CityCamp Brighton was primarily funded by:

• Project funding from LGID
• Prize funding from the Aldridge Foundation
• Donation of locations by University of Brighton and project manage-
ment support from Brighton & Hove City Council

All other costs were met with locally provided sponsorship and its worth
noting that this is an area where the team struggled with the short plan-
ning period for the event and would recommend a longer lead in time if

22 CityCamp Brighton
you need to raise a greater proportion of costs from sponsors.

The LGID sponsorship was fundamental. As well as providing essential

funding for the event, particularly the venue costs, it linked our work into
the wider local government world, and LGID’s participation on the Friday
provided valuable perspective on local government issues from the floor.
The LGID contribution will be credited in future CityCamp events in the
city and elsewhere.

How participants saw the event

The event was a huge success – there was good participation from all of
the groups that were invited and the feedback on the day and following
has been incredibly positive. Here are some of the reactions from par-
ticipants.

“As an organising team, we were blown away by the energy

and buzz around the whole weekend, and in awe of the pas-
sion of everyone who took part. Seeing eleven really solid
ideas being pitched was the ultimate proof.”

“I have spent today at City Camp Brighton and found it one

of the most inspiring, energising days I can recall.”6

“City Camp Brighton was an amazing 3 days. Thanks to

the organisers for an inspiring, exhausting yet energising
event.”7

6
 http://andywinterbht.wordpress.com/2011/03/05/city-camp-brighton-an-inspir-
ing-and-energising-event/
7
 http://andywinterbht.wordpress.com/2011/03/06/city-camp-brighton-the-win-
ning-idea-was-my-urban-angel/
Report and lessons learned 23
On Twitter:

“Amazing. People have come up with so many ideas that

CityCamp have had to get extra rooms opened up.” (Jon
Pratty)

“harnessing the deepgeek community and creating better-

ness in brighton inspirational community stuff in action”
(Madresearch)

“fascinating as a process. Reflecting on classes of problem

for which this is a good solution method. Hugely admiring
the energy.” (Jonathan Flowers)

“My #ccbtn world is currently being rocked by@danmcquil-

lan. Just brilliant.” (SpecialAd)

“One of the most senior police officers in Sussex is sitting

just over there. Using his iPad.” (Clive Andrews)

“very excited to be going to #ccbtn today! great sense of

anticipation and optimism” (Tor Seacombe)

However on the wider objectives – the idea of creating an ongoing net-

work for social entrepreneurship that can support a change in the way
that these groups work together then it is very early days. Over the next
six months there will be some key milestones to meet :
• Establishing the monthly meetups and ensuring that the innovation
and ideas exchange continues [the first meetup was held on 7 April,
with 35 attending].
• Seeing progress from the My Urban Angel project and getting value
from the £10,000 prize investment
• Starting the planning and getting commitment for an Autumn event

24 CityCamp Brighton
Beyond this there are some other issues that we will be interested to
track, for example the outcomes for the projects that didn’t get funded
and the sustainability of some of the cross-sector project teams that the
event created. It will also be interesting to see the ongoing effects with-
in the two public sector organisations, Sussex Police and Brighton and
Hove City Council to see if there is evidence of behaviour change from
the staff who participated in the event.

Overall the experience has been a positive one and the project team
would recommend the approach to anyone who is trying to kick start
the kind of innovation that we have seen emerging from the event. Its
difficult to be sure about the critical conditions that allowed the event
to succeed but we believe the key factors were:
• The fact that there was an obvious audience in Brighton for this kind
of event that meant we could establish the idea and then try and
widen the appeal
• The project team had strong links with each of the sectors we were
trying to attract and were able to deal with barriers and problems
• Support from the Council, Police and LGID meant that we could fo-
cus on running the event and make sponsorship a secondary concern
• The Prize – it clearly added a lot of focus to the event and made the
projects strive for a pragmatism which we believe is needed to cre-
ated sustainable outcomes

Assuming that we meet the milestones described above then the next
stage for CityCamp Brighton is to think about the issue of representa-
tiveness within the network and also, because of the involvement from
the Democratic Society, to look at how we can ensure that participation
in social innovation also means participation in local decision making
and this will be the focus of the autumn event.

Report and lessons learned 25

26 CityCamp Brighton
Appendix A: The Programme

Friday 4th March (Learn)

12.30 Registration
13.30 Welcome to CityCamp Brighton
An introduction to the weekend from the CityCamp Brighton team
13.40 Emer Coleman
14.00 Views from Brighton
15.15 Questions and answers: your chance to quiz the speakers
15.45 Coffee break
16.15 The wider picture
17.30 Share your ideas for Saturday sessions

Saturday 5th March (Discuss)

9.00 Turn up, drink coffee, get inspired with more ideas
10.30 Workshop sessions 1: break out groups discussing solutions
12.00 Peter James
12.30 Lunch and a chance to refuel your brain
13.30 Workshop sessions 2: break out groups discussing solutions
14.30 Workshop sessions 3: break out groups discussing soliutions
15.30 Coffee break
16.00 Pitch sessions: share your solutions and build a team for Sunday
17.00 Drinks

Sunday 6th March (Build)

9.00 Doors open and preparation for making things

Report and lessons learned 27

10.00 Build! Sprint one
12.30 Stand up meetings: share progress and problems, get help – and
have some lunch
13.00 Build! The final straight
15.00 Presentations to the group and judging panel
15.30 Judging panel meets
16.00 Presentations and closing drinks

The number of projects that presented meant that timings at the end of
Sunday ran over, and the event finished closer to 6 p.m.

28 CityCamp Brighton
Appendix B: Press and Other coverage

LGID write up:

http://www.idea.gov.uk/idk/core/page.do?pageId=26288487

Aldridge Foundation
http://citycampbtn.org/innovation-and-entrepreneurial-thinking-will-
deliver-change/

Report and lessons learned 29

30 CityCamp Brighton
Appendix C: General background on CityCamp

What is CityCamp?
CityCamp is an unconference8 focused on innovation for municipal gov-
ernments and community organizations.  As an unconference, content
for CityCamp is not programmed for a passive audience.  Instead, con-
tent is created and organized by participants and coordinated by facili-
tators.  Participants are expected to play active roles in sessions.  This
provides an excellent format for creative, open exchange geared toward
action.

The first CityCamp was held in Chicago, Illinois, 23-24 January, 2010.
Since then, others have followed:
• Arizona, Chandler, Phoenix, Tuscon, USA
• Atlanta, Georgia, USA
• Boston, Massachusetts, USA
• Brighton, England, U.K.
• Colorado, Arvada, Boulder, Castle Rock, & Denver, USA
• Guatemala City, Guatemala
• Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
• London, England, U.K.
• Manchester, England, U.K.
• Perm, Russia
• San Francisco, California, USA
• St. Petersburg, Russia
• Washington, D.C., USA

8
  An unconference is a participant-driven meeting. The term “unconference” has
been applied, or self-applied, to a wide range of gatherings that try to avoid one or
more aspects of a conventional conference, such as high fees, sponsored presenta-
tions, and top-down organization.
Report and lessons learned 31
Stimulate, Participate, Collaborate, Repeat
Each City Camp has four main goals:
• Bring together local government officials, municipal employees, ex-
perts, programmers, designers, citizens and journalists to share per-
spectives and insights about the cities in which they live
• Create and maintain patterns for using the Web to facilitate local
government transparency and effective local governance
• Foster communities of practice and advocacy on the role of the Web,
mobile communication, online information, and open data in cities
• Create outcomes that participants will act upon after the event is
over

And four main rules:

• All CityCamp events are on the record by default.  Particpants should
be made aware that they can and will be quoted, photographed, vid-
eoed and otherwise recorded. Exceptions must be agreed to by all
parties present in a conversation in order for the conversation to be
off the record.
• Both public representatives and private citizens must participate.  If
one party is absent then the event is not a CityCamp.
• All CityCamp events are participatory.  Attendees at each CityCamp
are expected to take an active role in the agenda
• CityCamp exists in the Creative Commons under the Attribution,
Share-alike License.

CityCamp explores and documents ideas, lessons learned, best prac-

tices, and patterns that can be implemented within and shared across
municipalities, anywhere in the world.  Of particular interest is the use of
social/participatory media, mobile devices, linked open data, and “Web
as platform.”

CityCamp recognizes that local governments and community organiza-

32 CityCamp Brighton
tions have the most direct influence and impact on our daily lives.  This
event seeks to create local communities of practice who are dedicated
to design, process, and technology applications that make cities and
other local communities more open and “user friendly”.

CityCamp is an “open source brand” that exists in the Creative Com-

mons.9  Open source ensures that CityCamp is maintained as a pattern
that is easily repeatable and for anyone to use.  Branding ensures that
the pattern is recognizable and that independent organizers don’t mis-
represent CityCamp. No one organization will own CityCamp.  Instead it
will be maintained by the CityCamp community supported by a cadre of
local community organizers.

9
  CityCamp is an “open source brand” that exists in the Creative Commons.  Open
source ensures that CityCamp is maintained as a pattern that is easily repeatable
and for anyone to use.  Branding ensures that the pattern is recognizable and that
independent organizers don’t misrepresent CityCamp. No one organization will own
CityCamp.  Instead it will be maintained by the CityCamp community supported by a
cadre of local community organizers.
Report and lessons learned 33
34 CityCamp Brighton
Report and lessons learned 35
The Democratic Society is a non-partisan
membership organisation that supports
participation and democracy.

http://www.demsoc.org

Public-i works with the public sector at

local level to provide cost-effective, inno-
vative products which create democratic
and social value from new technologies.

http://www.public-i.info