Summary
Opportunity to test and explore the appetite and need for 'community tech' - technology built with, by and for communities, that is locally accountable and creates local value.
Aims and activities
Aims and questions
Aims and activities
The ambition was for the field of community tech to grow, so more communities could be supported to develop tech solutions that work for them and their community.
The Discovery Fund aimed to provide community organisations with the capacity (time, resources and support) to explore questions and challenges they faced and consider development of community technology so that potential solutions could meet their specific needs, align with their values and ensure long-term agency over the technologies they create. The fund was a way to:
- Resource community organisations to investigate what the potential is for community tech in their context
- Provide a low barrier of entry for communities to find space to explore solutions to current 'sticky challenges'
- Provide an opportunity for communities to learn methods of, and explore user-led approaches to, developing solutions
- Gather insight about where communities’ interests lie in relation to community tech, to help us with the future development of community tech funding rounds
- Seek to support historically under-supported and marginalised groups with an aim of building a cohort that is representative of the diversity within wider society.
How to get involved
Who's involved
Who was involved
Power to Change was the catalyst funder behind the independent programme, which was run by Promising Trouble.
Power to Change is an independent trust that strengthens communities through community business. We use our experience to bring partners together to fund, grow and back community business to make places thrive.
Promising Trouble is a social enterprise whose work puts community power at the heart of technology and innovation.
Learning and Resources
Connected People and Places essays
The Case for Community Tech, which sets out a vision for how hardware and software created by, with and for community organisations:
- builds the resilience and impact of individual community organisations and the communities they are part of
- contributes to the growth of place-based communities
- promotes a more diverse and sustainable technology ecosystem
Meet the makers and maintainers in community tech - the first community tech funding round
