News from February, 2005

My Brighton and Hove volunteers, 2005
Winners of the 2005 Virtual Festival Awards. My Brighton and Hove won the award for the Best Community Site.
Copyright: Laura Dodson - www.lauradodson.com

By February 2005, the My Brighton and Hove website was in its sixth year, had over 2,400 pages and received about 4,000 visitors a day.

This period saw the website publish its new Green Havens feature on a week by week basis. They were also in the final stages of bringing a brand new version of the site into being which would have greatly enhanced features – we know how that turned out! There was also, by now, a new team of volunteer interviewers and site editors, with about 20 people helping out on the site.

In 2005, the site collaborated with Brighton Museum by taking then and now photos for the Brighton Boozers exhibition at Brighton History Centre. It won the Virtual Festival award for Best Community Site in Brighton and Hove for the third time.

In 2004, it won the Virtual Festival award for Best Community Site in Brighton and Hove for the second time, and created a History Trail for the 24 Hour Museum. The site also radically improved its PageMaker feature to help people easily add their words and photos to the site. Without any technical expertise, it was now possible to create a page, preview it and edit it, before submitting it to the site – while being able to come back and work on your pages at a later date!

Earlier in 2004, the site published the new Three Centuries photo tour, in collaboration with the East Brighton Bygones Group, and also collected photos of the 1960s for the Brighton Museum History Centre.

In 2003, six volunteers were trained in interviewing techniques and website creation, so they could seek out the views of some of the city’s under-represented communities for inclusion on the My Brighton and Hove website. The results were the Lesser-Heard Voices tours.  Find out more about the My Brighton and Hove project by clicking here.

Awards for My Brighton and Hove

The site won Best Community Site in the 2005 Brighton and Hove Virtual Festival Web Awards. It was the third time we have gained this prestigious award having won previously in 2002 and 2004, and been runners up in 2001 and 2003. 2005’s win was especially significant because in addition to the award, the site was presented with a very valuable piece of equipment from the sponsors of the Best Community Site category. Geeks on Wheels  donated a laptop computer which was an enormously useful resource for the volunteer group.

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