The picturesque countrysidewest of the small market town of Leyburn, on the north-eastern fringes of the YorkshireDales National Park, is dottedwith villages and hamlets you pass through in the blink of an eye. Surrounded by fields and dry-stonewalls, withmore sheep than people; this is the idyll of rural England. Driving throughmeandering lanes, or walking the country trails, it is easy to lose your bearings. For those who do, that modern bastion of navigation, the patron saint of geographically lost souls – themobile phone – is no help. As 3G and 4G have swept the world, here in the isolated hills and valleys of Coverdale, Wensleydale and Swaledale, connecting to a mobile network can never be taken for granted. For some this is a blessing. They live in the area precisely because they want to get away from it all, to disconnect from themainstream and enjoy a slowerpaced existence. There are those, too, who holiday here to switch off, happily unable to check their emails while relaxing in front of a roaring log fire in the local hostelry. Then there are those for whom the lack of access is a hindrance: businesses unable to operate at peak capacity; home-workers struggling to connect with their organisations; holidaymakers who hand back the keys to the cottage because there is noWi-Fi. Into this environment, the UK Government Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) launched the 5G testbed and trial initiative Mobile Access North Yorkshire (MANY). MANY aims to help rural communities achieve socio-economic flourishing through improved connectivity and provide a platform for improved wellbeing, business innovation, and safety and resilience. The MANY consortiumworks with the community in two ways. Firstly, MANY develops use cases for new technology that will sit on the new connectivity infrastructure. Specific cases under development include a TourismAugmented Reality experience, Environmental Monitoring – providing early flood warnings, Wellbeing and Mental Health support, and MissionCritical Communications for mountain rescue teams. Secondly, MANY works with community members more broadly to understand connectivity experiences, aspirations and concerns, enabling us to build an understanding of the entanglement of home, work, business, community and connectivity technologies, and how rural communities value connectivity technologies socially and economically. This is a commercial programme, looking to prove such a scheme is viable, but from the start there has been recognition that the peoplemost affected – residents and businesses of this quiet region – need to be listened to. Engagement can give people a voice, and occasionally enables projects to act on that voice. But our experience is that this action does not happen very often in similar large-scale infrastructure projects. Our role has been to ensure engagement happens, and goes beyond transmitting and explaining project benefits, to ensure community wishes are heeded. Our research provided privileged insight into the community, giving a real sense of the space and its people. DONOHARM There are often assumptions within research projects. You say ‘this is the work we will do; this is when and howwe will do it’. What became clear from MANY is that level of certainty is not always possible or practical. We had to adapt and develop to suit the situation, to take account of the problems and concerns local people raised about the new connectivity infrastructure. You stand to damage a community if you say outright ‘we’re doing this and this’. You have to be sensitive towhat works and what hurts, to listen to the different voices, concerns and aspirations. You can easily expose or create rifts if you do not handle the situation sensitively; it goes back to the essence of research ethics – do no harm. If you can say to the community ‘this is what we hope to do, this is who we have listened to, and this is the evidence of community concerns and aspirations’, and if you communicate in an accessible way, you can start to improve the transparency of a difficult and complex, community-based project. Then, even if people don’t like the project goals, at least they have a clearer understanding of what is happening and why. Communities are generally more accepting as a result. This doesn’t mean local opponents suddenly disappear – some still felt strongly they did not want 5G – but there was a growing realisation that more people were positive about the project and needed these technologies for connectivity. We were able to identify what really matters to a community – not just individuals. We could say to project partners ‘this really matters’ and get the project to change where they put masts, for example, or tell themwhen more information was needed, because 44 |
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