A promotional film produced for the University of Teesside’s Community Informatics Research and Applications Unit (CIRA) which works to bring information and communication technologies to small communities in the Teesside area. The film’s focuses on the small former mining village of Trimdon in County Durham and the suburb of Hemlington in Middlesbrough to show how they worked closely with these communities. In Middlesbrough an interview with the owner of the Cyber Village Media Café about...

A promotional film produced for the University of Teesside’s Community Informatics Research and Applications Unit (CIRA) which works to bring information and communication technologies to small communities in the Teesside area. The film’s focuses on the small former mining village of Trimdon in County Durham and the suburb of Hemlington in Middlesbrough to show how they worked closely with these communities. In Middlesbrough an interview with the owner of the Cyber Village Media Café about how CIRA is also helping to bring information technology to small businesses. Title: CIRA. Connecting Communities to the Future In an office at the University of Teesside, an academic addresses the camera about the merging of telecommunications and computing technologies to provide a revolution transformations or ‘Informatics’. This is a new way of seeing the world and a move away from old industrial societies to a new information age. Outside St Mary Magdalene’s church in the village of Trimdon in County Durham the academic stands with another man. Along Front Street rows of terraced housing and a road sign pointing travellers towards Trimdon Colliery and Trimdon Station. Cars are parked outside the premises of Quest Leisure Wear factory just off Front Street. The academic introduces the man standing next to him as Rob Corthorn of the Durham Rural Community Council. He is asked what the new information technologies means for communities such as Trimdon. As Rob talks about issues of isolation and access to services and how information technologies can help combat these two problems, views around the village and two women standing together chatting. Gravestones in the local churchyard and more views around the village change to the interior of the Trimdon Labour Club where six project members of the Trimdon 2000 committee are interviewed about how they went about carrying out an appraise of the village’s needs for information technology via a questionnaire and what they did with that data. They also talk about the village wants from information technology based on the details found in the questionnaires. An empty playing field in the village with the commentator talking about the establishment of a ‘digital village’. A dog sitting outside the ‘Local Housing Office’ changes to an exterior of the labour club and Trimdon Community College and Junior School where hubs for the ‘digital village’ would be established. Inside the local library, another digital hub for a multi-media machine, librarians go about their work and a group of children listen to a story. Inside the community college a storage room which will be transformed into a ‘training hub’. Inside the library of Trimdon Junior School interview with its headmistress Christine Bitten about the importance of information technology for her children. It is essential that children are familiar with computer systems, it will be their future. Nearby four pupils sit around a multimedia machine using it to extract reference material from a CD-ROM. She would like to see the internet added so pupils can access information from around the world. An aerial of the chemical works at Wilton on Teesside changes to Middlesbrough Town Hall where Middlesbrough Borough Council is working with the CIRA on Middlesbrough Online, a project to link local communities to a range of information providers. Inside Hemlington Library five members of the local communities are asked why information technology would be useful to them. Inside the Cyber Village Media Café on Linthorpe Road in Middlesbrough interview with its proprietor Geoff Broughton about how information technology is important for small businesses. In his office he shows how to use the internet. In the café itself a couple chat over a coffee while a woman uses a computer to access the world wide web. Geoff explains that businesses have to be involved in the information age. A montage of children and adults using computers featured in the film. It ends with the academic explaining that the universities Community Informatics Unit is committed to supporting communities to help themselves. End credit: Produced for CIRA by L&IS Media Services University of Teesside. Middlesbrough, TS1 3BA. Tel: 01642 218121 FAX: 01642 342067