Creative Citizens

Media, Community and the Creative Citizens explores the many different ways in which social media and other, older media forms help citizens to generate value for their communities.  We take case studies from three areas of creative citizenship – community journalism; community-led planning and design; and creative networks.  Through these cases, we test ways of deploying and adapting digital and other media for use within communities.  We find that media plays a significant role in most of the situations we studied, but that media interventions are most effective when most carefully tailored to the specific circumstances of any given community. The most reliable way of achieving that customisation is to use ‘co-creative’ methods, which enable problems and solutions to be defined by those who know the situation best, supported by those with useful areas of expertise. Creative citizenship is, we conclude, a promising way of thinking about the countless ways in which individuals and groups contribute valuable ideas, services and goods  to communities of place and communities of shared interest.