Co-Creating Community Digital Infrastructures
Exploring the tensions and themes that emerged during The GrowDome Project, with a focus on the fabrication and weaving of community infrastructure - and the ‘in-between’.
A decade ago, we set out to explore questions around food, community, technology and sustainable business through a collaborative project with a local community in inner-city Dublin. You can read about it here. Why am I writing this today? There are three reasons. Firstly, I want to make sense of the past and capture the learning, lessons and insights and to communicate them to others who may be exploring similar areas or facing similar challenges. Secondly, I want to contextualise this project with a contemporary understanding of the issues being tackled, the global climate, give names to concepts, theories and practices that may not have been existent or widely understood at the time by connecting this to the present. Finally, I want to address some lingering tensions and systemic observations this process surfaces.
This reflection piece revisits that experience, connecting it to contemporary conversations around community infrastructure, social innovation, social business, community development, social justice, and community resilience. It also highlights enduring tensions encountered during the project, acknowledges areas for improvement, and identifies the mindsets that linger today [metamodernity]. To bring this reflection up to date, I’ve incorporated recent research, new terminology, theories and practices that have emerged since the project’s inception.