Rural Voices
The Northumberland Rural Voices Network (working from within the Northumberland Strategic Partnership) was established in 2004 to help address the isolation felt by many people in businesses and the voluntary, community and public sectors throughout rural Northumberland. Designed to facilitate information dissemination and improve communication channels, the original Rural Voices website was in theory community-based, but was utilised largely as a tool to push information out to interested parties. In October 2007, after identifying the need to improve the site's interactivity, Rural Voices engaged Enigma to redevelop the website and brand.
Working closely with the Rural Voices team, Enigma devised a refreshing new strategy for the site, aimed at harnessing innovative social networking techniques to deliver a truly interactive web platform. Whereas in its previous guise, site tools were aimed at delivering information to users, the new Network has been designed to encourage users to generate content themselves, either by submitting it for inclusion and comment, or by way of vibrant social discussion. The result is a community-based web property which, over time, can become almost entirely self-sustaining.
Visit Rural Voices here: www.ruralvoices.org.uk
Features include:
- Detailed member profiles, to facilitate networking and skills matching
- Community networks - micro-sites within the main Network, aimed at drawing together those users interested in a particular area of Northumberland. Each network includes News, Events, Information Discussions and Images that are relevant to each network area
- Groups - created by users via an easy-to-use tool, to enable networking around specific interest areas
- Collaborative workgroups - hidden areas, providing a platform for collaborative working and knowledge exchange.
