Subject: Forum for community around "Let's Imagine Newcastle" hackathons

Description: Let's Imagine Newcastle is a series of hackathons initiated by researchers at Open Lab, Newcastle University in collaboration with Newcastle City Council, but hopefully a rich community of stakeholders will evolve around the issue of how council services should look in a more digital future. The initiative is an attempt to see how hackathons can be used as an effective method for public engagement on various topics by local councils.

We welcome anyone with a general interest in shaping future digital council services or with an interest in the topic of any specific hackathon to get involved in organising these events. Contrary to traditional consultations, we want this to be a mutual conversation between citizens and the council. This mail list is for communication between everyone within this community, whether you are interested in the organisation of these events or just want to be kept up to date on what is going on.

The project is part of a research project on democratic participation in a digital age and your participation on this mail list will constitute part of this research. All names and identifiable information will be removed from any presentations of this research. If you have any questions about how your participation on this mail list will be used in our research or you do not want your contributions on this mail list to be part of our research please write PhD student Nikolai Gad at n.g.w.sorensen1@ncl.ac.uk