Ross Baxter, Chair of Blawith & Subberthwaite Parish Council opening the launch event. |
The press release from the Parish Councils:
In an exciting development in opening up space on the internet for local people, six Parish Councils in Low and High Furness have banded together to develop www.crake.org a new website available to all the inhabitants of the Crake Valley from Greenodd to Coniston.
The idea for www.crake.org started when Blawith and Subberthwaite Parish Council decided that it made more sense for a Parish of their size to share a website than have one of their own. From this practical consideration sprang the dream of a site on the internet that would serve the largely scattered communities of Egton, Lowick, Blawith and Subberthwaite, Colton, Torver and Coniston.
Each Parish Council now has its own pages on www.crake.org where local people can find out about the activities of the Council, what’s going on in their parish, ways to contact councillors with their concerns, opportunities to contribute their views on local issues. There are links to existing Parish Council websites and to a range of websites of local interest.
There are daily weather forecasts, links to BBC news reports, information about What’s On locally: local cinema, village hall events, walks, things to do.
What makes www.crake.org unusual is that anyone in the valley can have their own space on it and produce and manage that space for themselves. This gives local businesses and community organizations the opportunity to advertise their products and activities to the world at no cost.
The website has been put together by Simon Pardoe and Andy Brockbank of PublicSpace (see www.publicspace.org.uk), an organization dedicated to helping connect people with public debate and policy making, and itself based in the Crake Valley.
Thanks to their hard work and open source software, and through the generosity of the High Furness Neighbourhood Forum and the Rawden Smith Trust, the Parish Councils are able to offer free access to local people who want to author their own page on the site. Information about how to become an author is available online after registering on the site.
www.crake.org has the potential to develop into a hub of information exchange, and a powerful tool in the exercise of real local democracy.
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