There has been further enormous progress with the Active Citizenship Toolkit.
a) we now have excellent icons for almost all of the 52 “essential” elements (more about that later), thanks to the stellar work of Solvi, our graphic designer. She’s even keen to keep going and do more of the other elements.
b) we have another Manchester group willing to be a “crash test dummy”, and help us test out and refine the scheme ahead of a ‘real world’ launch. And we have a further-afield group which is looking at some of the element overview essays.
c) thanks to the wonders of transcription software and a willingness to seem mildly strange (talking to myself while walking around Alexandra Park with a backpack full of 27 kilos worth of bricks and weights) we now have draft (and I emphasise only draft) “element overview essays” for all 161 of the current ‘elements.
The temptation is to rush ahead with some sort of “soft launch,” but before we do that we need the element overview essays tidied up, more publicity materials/explanations of the scheme sorted (there are scripts of videos written) and – crucially – feedback from crash test dummy organisations.
So, if the help we urgently need – besides groups coming forward to test out the toolkit – is this
a) proof-reading/editing/researching the element overview essays
b) beginning to devise development resources for the 52 “essential” elements.
c) more crash test dummy volunteers.
If you’re interested in these, or anything else to do with the Toolkit, please get in touch… via marc@climateemergencymanchester.net
Here’s the email some of you you will be getting
“Hi x,
you may be aware that Climate Emergency Manchester is designing and creating an Active Citizenship Toolkit. You’ve probably seen the descriptions of various elements and the level descriptors. What we’ve been doing over the past month is writing short usually element overview essays, which are structured around three questions. What are the causes of this element not being done well? What are the consequences when it’s not done well? and How can we start on the road to doing it well? Most of these have been dictated by Marc on his endless walks around Alexandra Park. And he has then run them through transcribing software and has tidied them up to the best of his ability. We are hoping that you will check over a certain number of these (10? if you’d be willing) – not just for remaining typos and grammatical mistakes but also to suggest changes and improvements and additions and further resources to do with this element.
The time frame for this would be In the next three or four weeks. We think that reading over and making suggestions for a single element would take about anywhere between 15 minutes and 45 minutes. So let’s say an average of half an hour, and therefore, we’re asking you for four or five hours of work.
Please let us know if you are up for this.
Yours sincerely,
