Learning tool

We enjoyed this project which involved creative use of open tech for gender equality - just the sort of thing GreenNet likes best!

Women's Engineering Society were funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and worked with Wellcome Foundation to carry out this innovative project, celebrating 100 years of WES and aiming to increase recognition of women engineers. We were involved at an early stage to plan the technical proposal the and contribute to the funding bid.

We built a map that uses Wikidata to access live structured data from wikipedia to display new addtions of notable women engineers to Wikipedia, the map is searchable and pulls information and images featured on each pin from wikipedia. WES ran events and a comms campaign to encourage constributions.

WES has had many notable members with fascinating lives and careers, yet the only member who features widely in the popular historical narrative is pilot Amy Johnson. Our WES Centenary Map aims to help redress this, by showcasing new and improved Wikipedia entries about historical women engineers as pins on our map.

The Wikipedia and Wikidata entries the map is based on are being generated by volunteers, trained and engaged through Wikithons around the country, supported by research into the WES and other archives. We plan to have 200 map pins of historic WES members to explore by the end of the project in May 2020. The map is going to evolve over the lifespan of the project, pins will move to new places as the entries in Wikipedia and Wikidata change and evolve.

This ambitious project was set up to integrate the Woodcraft Folk's in-office membership administration system with their public facing website. The idea was to build a very modern system to underpin a site that supports Woodcraft kids, parents and office staff, without losing the special creative spirit and energy of the Folk that has endured since its inception nearly 100 years ago.

The project kicked off with a workshop that brought together a range of Woodcraft people who collaboratively set out the site's priorities and challenges.That culminated in a comprehensive plan for the site and the database backend. Plans evolved into page mockups, wireframes and production sites, which were presented, discussed and tested by the Woodcraft Folk.

The result is a beautiful website (with page designs by Sarah Macbeth for wave design) which skillfully makes space for Woodcraft children to speak and show for themselves. And the cool funky tools like the online membership renewal, the guided search, the filterable calendar and interactive maps have found a wonderfully comfortable co-existence with the camping, peace building and cooperative spirit.

The Woodcraft Folk use CiviCRM to manage their membership, GreenNet has supported  them to customise and develop their CRM system since 2009.