About Big Wide Talk

Big Wide Talk is a new national network of parents and practitioners, who are determined to make life better for children. The work is driven by the production of high quality, locally derived and locally owned information supported by sophisticated new technology. Big Wide Talk brings people together to do exciting things with children, draw strength from each other and make their own history. This means that the stories of people’s everyday lives with children can be strategically connected to the meta-systems of government and the global economy.

Parents and practitioners work together in local groups set up across the country. The purpose is for both parents and practitioners to pay more shared attention to children, to co-research communication, and to share their findings with each other and decision makers. Participants use Big Wide Talk methods and tools to do this, which adds up to mean that they rearrange their relationships with and their investment of time, space and money.

http://www.bigwidetalk.org/

Big Wide Talk's Project

ESF Funding within the EQUIPE Development Partnership was to allow Big Wide Talk, then known as The Gatsby Children’s Communication Project (Playing with Words), to expand it’s activities to include: new strands of research; the development of methods of establishing social enterprises; the creation of a framework for identifying opportunities for social enterprise; an economic development tool accessed via the internet; the development of local and national networks; and direct support for participants wishing to start new enterprises.

Big Wide Talk also used ESF funding to develop accreditation and empowerment opportunities for its participants. 270 participants were accredited for their research. Qualifications range from NVQ1 equivalent, to a BA in Learning, Technology and Research, as well as the delivery of programmes of continuing professional development.

The main objectives of the project were:

• To identify local opportunities for social enterprise
• To develop opportunities for social enterprise
• To understand the social and economic context of economic activity and child rearing within the Big Wide Talk local groups
• To build capacity for social enterprise within the Big Wide Talk local groups

Project Outputs

• Framework for the identification and analysis of local social enterprise opportunities established using participative research methods and tools. http://www.bigwidetalk.org/public/methods
• Recruitment and induction of 4 Animateurs-Enterprise to work with local groups. The Animateurs were inducted into the Big Wide Talk methods and tools and were subsequently involved in the social and economic research work which lead to the development of the BWT approach to investment (and the development of social enterprise).
• Linking of local groups to support services for enterprise via network established to help local groups participate and connect their local research with service planning and development.
• Sustained ongoing dialogue about the social and economic context for child rearing and employment choices involving 300 participants – experiences shared and documented through a variety of tools, including the use of dedicated splat maps http://www.bigwidetalk.org/public/methods/information_system/splat_maps.html
• Local groups set up operating as independent economic entities following analysis of research data.
• Participative planning database accessed via the internet containing information on resources, funding, advice and statistics available from national, regional and local sources – used as a resource by local groups.
• Exploration of the ways in which parents negotiate time available for bringing up children and using social enterprise solutions to make more time available using newly developed methods and tools http://www.bigwidetalk.org/public/methods/investing_in_the_future.html
• Programmes of Continuing Professional Development initiated to run concurrently with BWT exhibitions and seminars http://www.bigwidetalk.org/public/learning/continuing_professional_development.html
• Series of six workshops and nine national seminars delivered, as well as 3 Tent Town Locals.
• The Big Wide Talk EQUIPE Final Report – ‘How do we invest in the future?’