‘Sunlighting in Kent’ won Best Prototype award in a competition to promote digital innovation in public services. The competition was organised by Noel Hatch and sponsored by Kent Connects, Geovation, Lagan and the Kent Business School.
The decision was announced at the end of the Developing Solutions Day held on 25th November at Gravesend Civic Centre. The award comes with a £1,000 cash prize.
The Sunshine Bank was the winner of the first phase of the ‘Help People Help Others’ challenge proposed on the DotGovLabs Innovation Hub platform. To build on this, we proposed to develop a prototype for ‘Sunlighting in Kent’: a tool for community connection and action.
‘Sunlighting’* is the opposite of ‘moonlighting’, doing things that you really enjoy and want to share with others in your communities, be they of interest, location or identity. We proposed helping individuals and organisations (community groups, charities, businesses and council services) to connect with each other to exchange skills, resources and opportunities. We plan to integrate this feature with the Sunshine Bank, adding recognition and reward to this activity.
James Togut (Founder of the Sunshine Bank), John Barton (Co-Creator of the Sunshine Bank), and Rodrigo Diaz (PHP developer for the Sunshine Bank) briefly presented their ideas at the start of the Developing Solutions Day and were joined by critical friends and helpers Tom Philipps (Community Development Manager with Kent Council, retired), Tracy Jones (web designer with Kent Council), Kevin Elam (teacher and writer), and Alan Kennedy (Regional Innovation Manager at NHS Innovation). Together, we developed the Sunlighting in Kent Prototype which we presented to the judges in afternoon.
*The term ‘sunlighting’ appears in an article in the Guardian in 2003 to describe negotiating a cut in your working week to concentrate on something you really want to do for a living, which has some echoes in nef’s recent call for a 21-hour working week.