Imagine Peckham- Public Access Kiosks for Community Information

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PUBLIC INTERNET ACCESS KIOSKS

We have been telling local interested parties, Governmental or otherwise, that just about any information resource, especially jobs, training, childcare finding etc is available from the Internet, so that the creation of additional databases etc is not necessary or advisable. The response however is often "no-one round here has the Internet". Certainly you have to go to a decent library, pay at an Internet Cafe, or queue for the PC in your school, although statistics do point to steady growth of home access in the most under-privileged of Estates.

To help to break this perceived log-jam, we arranged for two Public Access Kiosks to be installed in Burger King Peckham, with the collaboration of the concession operator, and Stone Telecom, equipment owner/ operator. At least some web-based activity is free to the user, paid for from advertising by national companies, but with the chance for us to slip in local/ community based information.

We, together with Stone Telecom, have developed a Peckham Portal page which gives access by touching the Community Information button on the main screen. The portal gives a selection of the web sites of useful groups or bodies such as Worktrain with current data from the JobCentre system. We have co-operation from Peckham Town Centre Management for local businesses, Fusion-Lifesyle for Peckham Pulse and other health and fitness resources, the Foundation for Human Development for access to the on-line version of Peckham Views, content from Peckham Young Peoples' Magazine, PECAN, and arts and entertainment sources.

Stone Telecom tell us that the kiosks were not seen by the public generally as "a computer" or "accessing the Internet"; whilst giving "free" access, the public are not able to enter directly addresses or use search engines, and so undesirable content should not be accessible. Some pages are stored locally, others are on community or commercial websites. The units include a touch screen for making selections, and a keyboard for sending e-mail and Text messages.

The equipment and commercially provided content is paid for by those commercial advertisers, like Exchange & Mart, newspapers like the Sun and the Guardian, and so on.

We are in an informal trial period of perhaps 3 months, and we may have to seek funding for its continuation and/ or for more community portals (more kiosks are going in to Burger King Restaurants in other areas as a result of our enterprise!)

There are several other ventures to provide Public Access Kiosk in progress at present, funded directly by Government such as the Cabinet Office/ Treasury Invest to Save Budget or via the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund (eg the Southwark and Lambeth Primary Care Trusts' Health Kiosk Project.) There are already a large number of commercial Kiosks provided by British Telecom Payphones. We feel we are in good and constructive company!

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