CCDE: Centers for Community Digital Exploration
Where all walks of life explore and share the connected and expressive practices of the Web.
Downtown Bristol, Vermont
Rural communities are facing enormous pressures to develop or bow out completely and erect walls against the world. Local public institutions founder under the burden of fear, inertia and a crumbling economy. It can be difficult to fill volunteer ranks of fire departments, school boards, and agencies. As Robert Putnam notes, neighbors no longer know neighbors in this era of Barry Wellman’s “networked individualism.”
Do we hunker down within our homes and attend to our own? Do we grow ever fearful of the unknown, the different even within our own increasingly diverse communities? How are we using the digital technologies pervading social, work and educational spaces? To better ourselves as individuals? To connect with people who think as we do? Or do we reach out into and across our physical communities as well as into the world beyond to connect, collaborate, and create better worlds? How do we get community members to become active participants in the shaping of their community? How do I, as a community member, use a blog, a wiki, a YouTube channel, to share what I know, to inform my politicians or my constituents about my views? How can a local artist reach a broader audience? Rural communities in particular can struggle to utilize effectively the powerful connective, creative, and communicative practices of the Web or combine them with the equally powerful practices of in-person civic engagement.
We hope to open the first center(s) in 2010.
A Look at What Goes on in a Center
Our Vision:
We envision that our Centers for Community Digital Exploration will bring small local communities together to explore participatory online learning in a place where people converse as much as produce, and where we ground the individual benefits of online interaction within the community’s well-being. In partnership with local institutions such as museums, schools, libraries, elderly centers, teen centers, and small businesses, these centers will be places where people gather around the use of digital technology and web practices to:
- Enhance educational and creative expression opportunities
- Sustain deep community bonds
- Build bridges to other communities.
The Details
Each center, well equipped with computers and digital media equipment, will house a computer lab, meeting space, and exhibition space and offer a range of opportunities for community connection, learning and collaboration. Each center will tailor its offerings to meet the needs of the surrounding community. All members of the community are invited to participate in and to initiate the activities of the center. These physical centers will be places where people from across a community’s spectrum gather in person to discuss and learn; where all walks of life explore and share the connected and expressive practices of the Web.
Within this neutral, mentored non-school, people can freely explore these tools and practices. Those with no computer or internet access at home, youth and the elderly can share stories and expertise, engaging in reciprocal apprenticeships, as they teach one another invaluable lessons about life. Nonprofits and agencies can gather to learn from one another and help one another both online and in person. Individuals can avail themselves of the computers, the space, the mentors to engage in hybrid learning
We also hope to add mobile labs—DigEx On Wheels—much like the Books-on-Wheels model. Our fully equipped computer labs will circulate among the villages surrounding a center’s location, offering workshops, computer time, and mentoring on digital arts projects.
