Call for proposals: storytelling and reach

In one sentence

TICTeC Action Lab #4 is looking for an individual, organisation or joint team to produce a piece of work to help the civic tech community improve/strengthen their storytelling and reach and amplify their projects and their successes beyond the civic tech community, through mainstream channels.

About TICTeC Action Lab #4

As part of the TICTeC Labs programme, mySociety convened the TICTeC Action Lab #4 working group in order to take ideas raised at Civic Tech Surgery #4 forward, and decide together what piece of work would be useful to commission to help the global civic tech community with challenges around storytelling and reach – getting stories about their projects and successes into mainstream channels.

The TICTeC Action Lab #4 working group has six members from across the world, who between them have many years of experience working on civic tech. You can read more about Action Lab #4 members here.

About this project

TICTeC Action Lab #4 members agreed to commission a piece of work that will help the global civic tech community with challenges around storytelling and reach – getting stories about their projects and successes into mainstream channels. A grant of $3760 is available to carry out this work, which will need to be completed within eight weeks of the successful applicant being appointed.

We recognise that there are different potential solutions to this challenge which could all be useful to the community. This call for proposals is therefore open to projects which fall into one of the below categories, with an emphasis on work which brings people together to share knowledge and skills, and support each other:

1. Media training for civic tech organisations and people

Training in how to access and work with mainstream media and improve the reach of civic tech communications.

2. Running a conference or event which brings together civic tech organisations and journalists/ the media

We would expect this to be an online event, with resources available online after the event for future use.

3. Creating a community and/or resources for civic tech organisations

Some of the suggestions which came from our Civic Tech Surgery on this topic were:

• a community focusing on communications for civic tech organisations – sharing tips, advice, images and opportunities
• creating an image library – available to organisations and journalists – and advice around making good photographs with your phone
• creating universal logos for some of our common themes, e.g. ‘open data’

We are looking for proposals which focus on one of these three categories – it may include elements of the others but we do not expect any project to cover all of these areas.

For any proposal we encourage you to think about and describe:

• how your project can reach a wide range of people, ideally globally – we are open to initial projects which are focused on a particular topic or region, but would like to see evidence of how this could be the start of wider-reaching work.
• how it could be maintained beyond the initial eight-week project to have a long-lasting impact – e.g. how training attendees could share what they learn with their organisations, how connections and outputs from an event will be shared and maintained beyond that event, how an online community will be facilitated long-term.

Applications

Applications closed on 22nd September and applicants have been informed of the outcomes.

What happens after the project

We intend to publish the work you produce, credited to you, on the TICTeC and mySociety website, licensed under a Creative Commons licence. We may make some light edits (beyond proofreading) before we publish. You will be free to make publicly available your own version should you wish to, and any other material based on the research you conducted. The project will be disseminated by TICTeC Action Lab members, the TICTeC Labs Steering group, and the TICTeC community to ensure it’s used as much as possible.

mySociety will convene a ‘report back’ event at the end of the TICTeC Labs programme to discuss how the programme went and the work commissioned by the programme and its participants. Authors of commissioned work will be invited to attend to present their work.

Any questions?

Please send any queries or questions to tictec@mysociety.org.