Kings Cross Environment

Kings Cross Environment is a suite of simple blog-based civic websites run by volunteers in a deprived area of North London. We have a team of about six writers and 20 or so contributors. We use the blogs as information and campaigning platforms in an area overlooked by trad. media. The sites have coalesced social action by better information sharing and acting as a rallying point. Two examples: a campaign against Network Rail extracted £1million for the community, A campaign using youtube video against Cemex the world's biggest concrete company forced them to capitulate and change their operations.

The main site www.kingscrossenvironment.com is typepad based with over 650 articles about an area one mile long by half a mile wide. Pro-rata in the target population the site gets about the same traffic as the most popular national current affairs programme on TV. www.kingscrosstv.org is an internet TV station using youtube videos about the area embedded in a typepad site. We have other spin off campaigning sites www.kingscrossaccess.com and http://tolpuddlekx.wordpress.com and a Facebook group I Love Kings Cross. This is all run on a budget of £12 a month. Also see my writing on local publishing for civic action at www.talkaboutlocal.org