Digital Champions for a Digital Birmingham

On behalf of Birmingham City Council, this project was intended to benefit Birmingham-based businesses.

The aims of this project were to demonstrate the usefulness of Internet technologies, especially social media technologies, to a wide range of business sectors through a series of demonstration projects; the wider project aims included innovation and business growth.

The term 'digital champion' is now fairly commonplace. In the context of this project, we were hoping to create digital champions through the demonstrator projects, which were intended to inspire others to try something new.

The project built on our experiences in the AHRC Knowledge Transfer Fellowship in New Strategies for Radio and Music Organisations. We demonstrated simple uses of technologies that could make a difference to our partners' activities. The prototypes were informed by and fed back into our research and teaching activities within Birmingham School of Media.

We completed 15 demonstrators (or assists) within the project, which served 75 companies directly and indirectly.

This project ran from late 2009 to March 2011. It was part of the 'Working Neighbourhood Fund - Stimulating Demand Programme 2009/11 - Web 2.0 Presence' package of support being delivered on behalf of Digital Birmingham and Birmingham City Council.

More information on the Digital Champions for a Digital Birmingham project is available from the Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research (BCMCR).