Turned down by 4IP

[Andrew Dubber]

Paul Long and I wrote a bid today that we thought in the interests of openness and transparency, we would make available to the wider 4IP community - and, to an extent, by doing so - we are partway towards realising the project right here.

It's called Turned Down By 4IP:

Description
4IP provides a new architecture for dispersing funds for public service creative ventures. However, the vast majority of proposals made to 4IP will necessarily be turned down. Turned Down By 4IP provides an online community that helps reflect and develop upon unsuccessful bids, and leverage collective consultancy to not only encourage transparency and openness - but also generate worthwhile, fundable and otherwise unthinkable collaborations. We believe that the opportunity to learn from failures and draw on the wisdom of the crowd will encourage the 4IP constituency to grow and develop in a connected and Web 2.0 fashion.

Needs and Benefits
Despite apparently clear descriptions about what does and does not make up a 'good' 4IP bid, it seems surprisingly easy to miss the mark. Rejection notices by email are necessarily brief and do not provide any route to appeal, modify or explain a rejected bid. As a result bidders are often left disheartened, confused and perhaps resentful rather than supported and supportive of 4IP. There seems a lack of transparency and accountability.

Approach
We propose a multi-platform community enabling a 'We-Think' approach that will reveal patterns of approval and disapproval from the otherwise inscrutable decision-making processes at work within 4IP itself. We regard this as providing 'tools to make trouble' to a community of British creative professionals, inspired citizens, and the wider wise crowds - and providing them with a window through which to 'keep an eye on money and power'.

Turned down by 4IP enables a process of Peer evaluation, and we propose a method of collectively panelbeating promising rejected bids into successful projects for resubmission. It will then provide a model for further community public scrutinty projects (Arts Council grants, RDAs, Film Agencies, Banks, etc.).

Costs will include development of the site, mobile platform integration, hosting, etc. promotion, administration, research and dissemination through public and virtual events.

Competition
To our knowledge, there are no online communities that provide the opportunity for peer feedback and evaluation of rejected grant proposals - and nor is there any genuine open accountability for the discussion of how these funds are allocated - and on what basis.

To our mind, the only competitor we may have in this respect is 4IP itself.

[Stef]

Love it! But what about the other end of the spectrum?

I did a day's training at the Work Foundation a few weeks back on "Rapid Idea Improvement Sessions" - effectively a way for a group of people to meet for a short period of time and collectively improve ideas by using a defined format.

I can imagine a lot of people won't want to openly share their ideas, but for those that do, this could fit into what you're getting at here, but from the other end?

Once a month a bunch of us meet up to improve our ideas before those that are submitting them do so?

[Ewan McIntosh]

As one of the untransparent commissioners, I love it! Emails are brief by necessity, not choice, but having a Commissioner based in Scotland means I've made an attempt to do offline what you and Stef are proposing above. In the next few weeks, the rest of the country will get the same treatment, I hope. If people are prepared to share their ideas publicly, then I think this would be great. Put it in as a proposal and we could commission you do build it.

[Paul]

Thanks for the comments - Stef raises a fair point about the sharing of ideas which might be problematic for wholly commercial ventures (albeit here one is invited to share with a relatively big media corporation in the first place!).

Fair response from Ewan evidencing transparency.

We have indeed submitted our proposal so we await the official response. Do note that we understand the necessary brevity of email responses too!

[Keith Duddy]

Cute - and wonderfully ironic if 4ip fund the building of this platform.... I think it's a great idea, good luck with it!

[claire hancock]

There's a real benefit to this outside of the sharing of the actual idea. The pooling of resource may very well be a necessity on the majority of 4iP projects.
I've picked this one up Andrew and it rather tickles my fancy!