Never one to miss a megatrend, here at Livity we’ve been sporting collaborative consumption with a number of our projects (such as nationwide space-sharing project somewhereto_ http://somewhereto.com/), and on March 28 we represented at the second Collaborative Consumption Europe event to find out what other innovative companies were doing, and what advice they cared to share.

Building and rebuilding trust in sharing is the first step says Kim Hardane (CEO of Wimdu UK, who recommended holding first time consumers by their hand and taking them through the process; if that is successful, he said “they will come back and be able to do it alone”.

Antonin Leonard (Co-founder of Ouishare), said there were two factors to success in collaborative consumption: “Knowing why first time users would come to you, and knowing why repeat users keep on coming back.” Antonin also states more targeted dialogue on social networks, and building online forums to promote and share service (without spamming of course!) has a massive impact, as “People who share online are more likely to share offline… Social media is a gateway to collaborative consumption”.

And Martine Parnell (Marketing Director of Zopa) added: “Promoting the success/impact of your service acts as secondary motivation for users, and will increase your own success”.

To find out more about collaborative consumption, click here http://collaborativeconsumption.com/ – or watch the TED talk (above) by Rachel Botsman, co-author of “What’s Mine is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption”.

For more information on our projects, and to see how we’re making collaborative consumption a success, click here http://livity.co.uk/2011/zeitgeist-young-minds-2/.

Last night was a momentous milestone for Livity as we were recognised for our achievements at the Marketing Agency Association Best Awards.  We scooped up three awards for NSPCC’s ChildLine Final Verse including Best Consumer Campaign, Best Social Media Campaign as well as Best of the Best Campaign given for overall campaign of the evening at the discretion of the judges.

Kate Brundle, Associate Director at Livity sums up the evening: “Final Verse is a project we are incredibly proud of.  To create a campaign that reaches your audience with an important message and also receives industry recognition is a fantastic feeling.  Winning Best Social Media Campaign and Best Consumer Campaign is an amazing achievement.  We are so pleased we stood out to the judges and thank them for awarding us Best of the Best against so many other high quality campaigns.”

“Final Verse deserved this award because it was an absolutely inspired piece of work.  It was built on a genuine understanding of their core male teen target group who are very difficult to reach and to get talking about ChildLine issues.  Urban music, MCing and performing is at the heart of their culture and they create an authentic highly shareable idea which made it so successful in social media” said the judges.

Our rapturous celebrations were echoed at an event hosted by NESTA, for our nomination as one of ‘Britain’s 50 New Radicals’, awarding Livity with the distinction as one of the few organisations who are ‘changing Britain for the better, applying fresh approaches in practical and scalable ways, through social, technological, scientific and artistic methods’.

As The Observer pointed out in their article, “Thomas Edison famously said genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration” and if last night’s celebratory-antics are anything to go by we would say Livity are on the right side of genius!

Take one social problem. Add a hundred young developers and social innovators. A million post it notes. A thousand litres of soft drink. And tens of thousands of lines of code. Mix em together. You’ve got yourself an Interactivism hackweekend.

Just in case you’re wondering what the heck a hack weekend is it’s an event for programmers and designers to get together and collaboratively create programmes, apps and websites.

Interactivism had a social purpose and a youth twist, which made it even more fun. It was truly awesome to see people working together, developing their idea on the go and make it a reality over the two days. Coders hands were a blur they were coding so fast.

All the teams’ ideas were amazing. I particularly liked Slurker, which embraced online procrastination and used people’s social likes and appreciations to recommend jobs, careers and contacts to them. Because it’s based on existing behaviours and platforms it seemed likely to be adopted and I liked how it turned a behaviour and data into something useful.

Huge congratulations to everyone who took part.

Interactivism hack weekend was organised by Google, the RSA, FutureGov and Livity.

Google Interactivism: Young People’s Hack from The RSA on Vimeo.

The Stake meets the challenge of engaging young people on personal finance head on in an interactive, learn by doing, peer-to-peer led format. Throughout the competition thousands of young people will be pitching their ideas and completing various challenges along the way that help them get to grips with managing their money.

The top 20 ideas, as voted by the stakeholders on the site, will be reviewed by a panel of Channel 4 and Barclays judges and up to 6 winners will be awarded up to £20,000 prize funding for their ideas. The winners will be supported by Livity and Barclays mentors throughout the implementation of their projects.

The Stake is a non-traditional way of teaching finance or enterprise. It’s not about homework or complicated jargon. It’s about learning by doing, the process of peer-to-peer collaboration, sharing and supporting fresh ideas whilst helping to improve young people’s financial capability in the process.

Throughout all the work we do, we hold on to the belief that if you trust young people, they become trustworthy. If you give them responsibility, they become responsible. Our longest running project, Live Magazine, is a prime example of this, and so too is The Stake…

Watch The Stake TV advert here

Delivered by Livity in media partnership with Channel 4 Education, somewhereto_ is inspiring people to think differently about space and what it can be. We know that all young people need space: it might be a dance studio, a warehouse, or a basketball court. But it could also be a digital space – a well-known blog, column inches in a magazine, time on-air or on-screen.

In every region of the UK, regional coordinators are working with young people who need space, and individuals or organisations with access to or influence over how spaces are used in their local communities.

We’re also unlocking high-profile, ‘dream’ spaces: spaces young people would never usually be able to access for everyday use. Most recently, we were at Number 10 where free runners, boxers and spoken word artists spent the day doing the things they love and filming a trail about what space means to them:

somewhereto_ are currently partnering with Catch 22, UnLtd, Junction 49 and O2 Think Big, engaging a huge network of young people across the UK. And with space partnerships with organizations like LandAid and Telereal Trillium, somewhereto_ are unlocking thousands of square feet of underused space nationwide.

-”Young people need to be given the chance to chase their dreams and the space to land them. A space to play, a space to perform, a space to meet, a space of their own.”

Clive Jones CBE, somewhereto_ Advisory Board

somewhereto_ is funded by Legacy Trust UK, an independent charity set up to help build a lasting cultural and sporting legacy from the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games across the UK.

www.youtube.com/somewheretochannel

www.flickr.com/somewhereto_

https://twitter.com/#!/somewhereto_

Livity secured urban music artist Devlin, who composed, wrote and recorded ‘Teardrops’, a bespoke track and video for the campaign. Devlin recorded the track except for the ‘final verse’, which was left for our audience to complete with their own performance.

Entrants sent in their own videos, which were then integrated into Devlin’s master video and hosted on YouTube for people to see, share and ‘like’.

The winning entry was professionally re-recorded, filmed and promoted through our youth networks and partners. Livity partnered with influential digital broadcast channel SBTV to help amplify the campaign.

This activity created conversations not only around the entries and lyrics, but also around ChildLine.

Final Verse received:

- Over 1,000 entries,
- Over 100,000 comments and ‘likes’
- Over a million channel views

Final Verse was awarded three times at the 2012 Marketing Agency Awards:

- Best social media campaign
- Consumer campaign
- Best of the Best

http://www.youtube.com/finalverse2011#p/u/6/0_jwZJK8uAs

We identified amazing young people making a difference in the world and highlighted youth led social projects across EMEA. We started conversations with young social entrepreneurs, developing a peer network of young people who are passionate about making a change in the world.

We brought 12 of the most outstanding young people to Google Zeitgeist Europe 2011 – the first time young people had attended the event. They were mentored by top Google staff and took to the stage in the first ever Zeitgeist Youth Panel to challenge and inspire the world’s leading thinkers and innovators.

• Entries from across Europe, Middle East and Africa
• 46,000 website visitors (KPI 10,000)
• 13,500 video views (KPI 7,000)

http://www.youtube.com/user/ZeitgeistYoungMinds

“Livity, you brought the Young Minds idea to life – they inspired our Googlers and delegates at the event”
Amy Brown, Google

“This was a life changing experience”
Sadiq, Young Mind

I visited Belfast to see Pocket Park, a somewhereto_ created by a group of architecture students who wanted to get creative with space.

Their aim was to create some green space in the city and redress the balance with the number of car parks. In Belfast city centre there’s the equivalent of 15 football pitches of parking spaces compared to only two and half football pitches of actual green space.

somewhereto_ is all about opening under-used space. We do this by getting young people and space-holders alike to think creatively about how they view space so that it can be used to allow young people to do the things they love.

Aaron and his friends transformed four on-street parking spaces into green space for the evening with the permission of Belfast City Council, with grass and flowers replacing the road, and bird-song replacing the drone of traffic going by. Passersby could take a seat in the somewhereto_ Pocket Park created by Aaron and his friends and children were able to make their own art with chalk drawings on the pavement.

The young people’s somewhereto_ coincided with Culture Night Belfast, a celebration of culture and the arts across Ireland with over 150 events spanning theatre, music, circus and literature. In the short time that I was in the city I came across a pop-up cinema, comedy in a caravan, street magic, live music in a square and a parade. Lots of spaces were opened to the public as part of the event as well as the somewhereto_ Pocket Park which helped to show the potential of linking young people and their passions to events like these to make their somewhereto_ happen.