Background of Area | Project Overview | Community Meeting | The Way Forward | ALL MULTIMEDIA

The neighbourhood meeting was therefore able to indicate key factors that would need to be addressed if residents were to truly engage with the issue of the psyche of crime in the area. 

One of the strongest points that came across, as mentioned briefly in the previous section, was the urgent need for an information-sharing system of some sort. Stories and feedback from residents in the area was quite varied, with many residents experiencing crime in ways that their neighbours, for example, had not. Sharing of information in the area, whether relevant to crime or not, would therefore go a long way in ensuring that residents feel that they have a platform to voice their concerns, share ideas and most importantly, be part of an immediate community with which they can identify. 

The blog would undoubtedly serve as such a platform but would rely completely on residents’ participation and updates after the Critical Media Production course has been completed. As one of the attending residents suggested, the most effective way of keeping an area safe is to know your neighbours and take an active part in the safety of the neighbourhood. For this reason, a more progressive way forward would also be based along the lines of a “Get To Know Your Neighbour” campaign, whereby residents in the area are urged to introduce themselves to their immediate neighbours, swapping contact details and information with one another.

Overall, the group were able to identify a need for the community to view crime, whether occurring within the areas or not, as a product of many contributing factors. Residents should then be able to engage with these factors and causes of crime, and act accordingly as a community in order to break the psyche of crime.