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By viv, 21 December, 2011 8:30 am

In a week Christmas will be over and the New Year will be nearly upon us. How about starting 2012 with a resolution to buy locally produced food? The benefits are savings on packaging and food miles and you can add some variety by trying new varieties of ‘seasonal’ food.

‘How can Britain feed itself?’ GeoVation Challenge winner, Foodnation have now launched their retro-appeal Foodnation Android app making it easier than ever to locate your local farm and subscribe to a produce box scheme.

Combining the mobile app and website, Foodnation aims to help foodies find their local farm using OS OpenSpace. You can browse your farm’s tasty produce in the online marketplace. Then, using the secure e-commerce section, it’s easy to buy a one-off gourmet box or register for weekly or fortnightly produce boxes.

Foodnation also works well for Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) schemes. With several already on board, it’s easy to find your local CSA and get involved through buying an ongoing subscriptions/share in its produce.

Louise of Foodnation says:  Our farms offer delicious produce, which is not only seasonal but offers more choice in plant and animal varieties.  Foodnation is all about making produce box schemes convenient for the consumer. We hope we’ve made New Year’s resolution No.1 that little bit easier for people to commit to.

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By viv, 14 December, 2011 8:30 am

Cyclescape is a comprehensive online campaigning toolkit to assist cycle campaign groups around the UK which is being created by GeoVation Challenge winner, CycleStreets.

Cyclescape will enable members of the public and campaigners to pinpoint where cycling is difficult, prioritise what to work on, make geographical data such as collision data and accessibility easily available, and automatically notify and involve the cyclists in the area who have an interest in seeing issues fixed.

They are just moving into beta phase now, with testing of a closed early beta started by members of one of their stakeholder groups and their designers working on the overall design and page templates.  You can follow their progress and see design screenshots on their website.

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By viv, 13 December, 2011 8:30 am

Foodnation’s website is open for business and you can be amongst the first to access it. 

You can add your farm, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) or veg box scheme to the Foodnation map (which is using OS OpenSpace) and reach 1,000′s of potential customers ready to subscribe to fresh food deliveries in your area. If your local farmer is already registered you can find and buy from them.

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By viv, 16 November, 2011 8:30 am

We are really excited and pleased to be supporting National Geographic Education this Geography Awareness Week with our GeoVation, Mission:Explore. We’ve worked closely with them to create a series of missions that challenge children to go on adventures in their communities, explore their backyards and take action on issues that they care about. Young explorers can unlock points and collect online badges for the efforts. All the details of how you can take can be found on their website at www.geographyawarenessweek.org and the resources will be useful well beyond this week.

As part of this work I’ve been getting email alerts when newspapers, blogs and other media channels mention Geography Awareness Week. It’s exciting to see so many reports that focus on our creative and experiential approach to exploring local communities, but far too many have included and resorted back to the pub quiz style ‘name the capital’ quizzes that mask the opportunities of geography.

I personally find it infuriating that travel has become divorced from geography in the minds of so many people. Travel is usually a gulf away from geography section in book shops (if there is one). This is despite travel being arguably the biggest possible opportunity for the geography community to engage the wider public with the subject in an entertaining and enjoyable way. Exploration and travel are one of the physical manifestations of geographical enquiry and it’s time we reclaimed them. I believe making the explicit link between travel and geography will help to bring new life to geography, demonstrate that it is not just about factual knowledge building and reshape the way the public understands the subject.

The question is, how?

Daniel Raven-Ellison, Mission:Explore

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By viv, 7 November, 2011 8:30 am

Since winning the ‘How can Britain feed itself?’ GeoVation Challenge, City Farmers, have been incredibly busy. Below, Helen and Peter give an update of what they’ve been doing:

After attending the Incredible Edible Lambeth Harvest Party and reflecting on this growing season, we realized how quickly time has passed, and how much City Farmers has done over the past six months.

In Spring, funding from both Ordnance Survey’s GeoVation and Timberland’s Earthkeepers funds, enabling us to buy materials and services to get our projects of the ground. So what have we done? It would be impossible to list all the amazing projects we’ve been part of, but here’s a taster of what we’ve been up to:

• We’ve participated in several community events, giving out growing starter packs and advice.
• We have started two new community gardens with the residents at Rupert Gardens, with plans to support least seven more new ventures across Lambeth soon.
• We are providing logistical support to a wide range of existing growing groups, filling a much-needed role in the community.
• We spoke at Kew Gardens’ Start festival, and represented Incredible Edible Lambeth at Jamie Oliver’s Big Feastival.
• We had a stall at the Lambeth Country Show, where we gave away hundreds of plants in exchange for hundreds of completed surveys about growing habits. We also premiered our three maps, and gave advice on growing in our community.
• We’ve helped community projects like the Brixton Energy Co-op and the Remakery in a variety of ways from copy-writing to engineering.
• We’ve set up new initiatives in the community like upcycling estate windows into greenhouses, and our new project, to be announced this week. Stay tuned; it involves hops, growing and beer…

We have had such a positive six months, participating in exciting projects and talking to inspiring people. Thanks everyone, and happy harvest!

Helen and Pete, City Farmers

You can find out more about City Farmers work by visiting their website

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By viv, 4 November, 2011 8:30 am

GeoVation Challenge winner, London Cycle Map Campaign, is calling for a single,unified and easy to use cycling map of London -  the cycling equivalent of the London Underground Map.

In this months magazine, Cycle Lifestyle have produced an artist’s impression to help visualise what the streets might look like if Simon Parker’s London Cycle Map is adopted. They suggest signs and road marking to direct cyclists around the network of routes.

This could make cycling from anywhere to anywhere in London as simple as following a few signs and a trail of coloured dots on the road – rather than remembering hundreds of turn-rights and turn-lefts. Download a copy of the Cycle Lifestyle magazine (Issue 6) (PDF) and take a look at pages pages 8 &9 to see for yourself.

If you think, like we do, that this is a great idea and would like to help make it a reality then sign the petition

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By viv, 19 October, 2011 8:00 am

Catch up with Mission:Explore with this update from Daniel Raven-Ellison:

12 days ago we released our new Mission:Explore website, since then we have watched as young and old(er) explorers have accepted, completed and then reported a wide range of missions. People have been photographing where the ‘wild’ is taking over from civilization, designing memorials and earning rewards for doing so. One explorer (Sir Spiffington) has already created his own website which includes a great animation and a funny film, all inspired by the new site.

Making the Mission:Explore website is a continual process. The funding that we won 5 months ago through GeoVation from Ideas in Transit and the Technology Strategy Board has allowed us to implement a number of significant features. These include:

• Partner accounts which let other organisations create their own challenges;
• Scoring and leaderboards, which will soon also include groups;
• An extras box on mission pages which includes QR codes that can be scanned for quick access to the relevant page along with a widget which can sit on other websites;
• Explorer profile pages so that users can keep track of started and completed missions, their points and keep an explorer log;
• A content management system for creating, risk checking, tagging, scoring and publishing missions;
• A split community with those not logged in and aged 12 or under not being able to see user generated content and missions which are rated for older users.

National Geographic Education are already using the site for their work in promoting geography awareness week.  I presented on Mission:Explore for teachers supporting National Geographic in Portland in August and you can see the videos from this here . Love Forest, OPAL, Priory School, the Geographical Association and many others are currently live on Mission:Explore or soon will be.

The core of the GeoVation work is to see how Mission:Explore can be used to increase the number of family leisure users on the National Cycle Network. Crucially, we want them to come back too. We are working with Sustrans not only to create the challenges but also to monitor user numbers in the field. An additional component is a the work we are doing within the project for the dairy company Arla. Arla want to bring a wide range of children Closer to Nature and we are bringing all of this together by using Mission:Explore and the National Cycle Network to draw young people out of sub-urban areas an into ‘nature spaces’. Our first trial will take place in Berkshire next month and we will be using our findings from this work to decide our following steps.

Last week we were lucky enough to be invited by the Technology Strategy Board to have a stand at Innovate ’11, the innovation networking event and exhibition. This is an example of the one of the unexpected benefits of working with GeoVation that has been a great help to our work. Innovate ’11 is was an awesome event and one that I would recommend you attend in the future if you are interested in cutting-edge innovation and creativity. At Innovate much of the interest in Mission:Explore was for rebranding it so that organisations or regions could have their own bespoke versions.

We are now at a stage where we are looking for GeoVators to GeoVate with us. We have a limited number of free accounts on Mission:Explore which can be used by charities and public sector organisations to create games, hunts, trails, learning activities and more. If you or someone you know would be interested in this offer they should email us at hello@missionexplore.net to find out more.

We will be blogging again next month with an update on our work to increase users of the National Cycle Network.

You can become an explorer on Mission:Explore for free by visiting www.missionexplore.net.

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By viv, 30 September, 2011 8:30 am

Cyclestreets won £27 000 in the ‘How can we improve transport in Britain?’ GeoVation Challenge to develop a toolkit for groups across the country to campaign for better cycling facilities.  Below, Martin from Cyclestreets updates us on developments:

Meet our developer team!
I’m pleased to say that we’ve appointed a developer team and work is  proceeding fast. The team comprises Andy Allan, Andrew France, plus myself (Martin Lucas-Smith) from CycleStreets as project manager. Andy and Andrew will be working in it on solidly for the next few months so that a large amount of development can be done.

We’ve also developed the spec further at a two-day developer meeting last week which kicked-off the work. Read more here.

This is an open-source project. The code is being developed at https://github.com/cyclestreets/toolkit We’ll be looking for volunteers towards the end of October to join in, once much of the initial base of the system is in place.

Design
We’re finalising a design brief and will be approaching designers very  soon. If you know of a really great designer or design company, preferably someone who might be willing to help out at perhaps a slightly discounted rate, please do let us have their details.

All in all, it’s been an extremely busy few weeks. The development of the toolkit has been possible thanks to our  GeoVation award, which secured us £27,000 of funding. GeoVation is an  Ordnance Survey initiative and forms part of the Ideas in Transit  project with funding from the Technology Strategy Board and the Department for Transport.

Martin Lucas-Smith, Cyclestreets

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By viv, 22 September, 2011 8:00 am

Did you know that today is World Carfree day and an opportunity to leave the car at home and walk, take a bus, train or cycle? All this can help to highlight congestion on our roads, pollution from exhaust fumes and the threat of dangerous climate change caused by cars.

Some of the winners of our‘How can we improve transport in Britain?’ GeoVation Challenge have some great ideas and tools for alternative ways to travel.

If you’re cycling,  Cyclestreets have a great journey planner.  Their website and mobile apps use OS Street View® map data from the OS OpenData™ datasets as well as  OpenStreetMap options for route planning.

Public interest in the London Cycle Map Campaign is growing with nearly 1500 signatures but they need 100,000 signatures in order for a petition to be debated in the House of Commons. So if you think Simon Parker’s London ‘Tube Map’ for cyclist is  a great idea  – sign the petition now!

Mission:Explore are working closely with Sustrans and Arla to create challenges and activities called ‘missions’ along parts of the cycle network to encourage families and new users to get out and cycle on the National Cycle Network

If you have problems travelling on public transport, why not report it on FixMyTransport a site for public transport users to report problems and get them fixed!

AccessAdvisr, another of our winners are busy building their proof of concept for a new website and smartphone app that intends to improve the quality and richness of information about accessible transport networks.

And if you really need to take the car, have you heard about liftshare week (3^rd – 7^th October 2011)?  liftshare Week is the UK-wide event which aims to encourage more people to discover the benefits of car-sharing.

What maps or apps do you use to help you to leave the car at home and plan your cycle, walk or journey by public transport?