Love Thy Neighbourhood Project by Bimble
Hello. We are Bimble. And we’ve been shortlisted for the Oxford Playable City competition for a project we have developed called Love Thy Neighbourhood. We thought we’d use this space to explain more about this, in the hope that you feel inspired to follow us on this journey and, should we win, join in the project. Here is the link to our Playable Cities application page where you are able to leave your comments in the space provided. Please do, we’d love to hear your thoughts.
‘Oxford is a small city with a global reputation, one of the fastest growing cities in the UK with a rich heritage that attracts seven million tourists every year. The Playable City commission asks creatives to uncover, reveal and explore the less known parts of Oxford in new and exciting ways. How do we reveal the layers underneath? How can we use technology to encourage new connections in the city? How can the Shared City reflect the diversity of experience, from visitors to residents? The commission challenges creatives from around the world to produce an idea that puts people and play at the heart of the city of Oxford. Smart Oxford will work with Playable City to select a project that will capture the imagination of those who live, study, visit and work in and around Oxford. Creative uses of smart city technology must be integral to the proposal. A Playable City approach to Shared City will start new conversations, imagine new futures and make new connections — person-to-person, person to city. The winning proposal will be publicly available in Oxford, UK for the public to play in late 2017.’
Our company name, Bimble comes from an actual word. A bimble is ‘a walk without a purpose.’- Oxford Dictionary. ‘It’s not required to achieve nothing, though it is a frequent side effect.’ - Urban Dictionary. A bimble is the trail you create when you mooch around a neighbourhood you are out and about in. It can be close to home or further afield. Three to five stops you like to make, threaded together into a little journey. Or a bimble, as we call it.
We are building a social platform where people can share bimbles. We’ll make it quick, easy and fun for you to create your bimbles, in your own words and with your own photos, using beautifully designed templates that make everything look its very best. The technology will do the hard work for you. All you need is your idea, the desire to create a lasting memory of it and the willingness to share it with others.
In our response to the Playable Cities Smart Oxford commission we will create and install a visual campaign which goes hand in hand with the technology. Working with Oxford based artists and authors we will design and write a stimulating mixture of colourful visual media and poetry to be emblazoned throughout the city, uniquely for Oxford. Colourful, dramatic and beautifully designed interactive stickers with QR codes on them will appear all over Oxford overnight. Scan the code with your phone and it will show that your current location is part of an existing bimble. You will see a little map, and on this the other few stops that make up that micro-journey. You will also see other bimble trails close by for you to browse or explore. Bimble creators can have a public profile which means you can choose to go on a bimble created by an artist or perhaps a sous-chef or a local parent depending on your interests at that time.
The poem Ode by Arthur O’Shaughnessy has been the inspiration for the colourful and emotive artistic campaign as the final element of the proposal. By celebrating the diverse personalities and ideas behind all the different bimbles we will illuminate poetic descriptions on large posters to intrigue and evoke. Here are two rough examples, though the finals will have been commissioned by a selection of local artists and writers.
“She had a gypsy soul and a warrior spirit. She made no apologies for her wilful heart. She left normal and regular to explore the outskirts of magical and extraordinary” with a link to her Oxford bimble which takes you down to Hythe Bridge and the narrow boats along the West Oxford canal.
‘He watched with glittering eyes the city before him and realised the greatest pleasures are often found in the most unlikely places. Novelty became his forte’ with a link to a Bimble which includes a small chocolate shop where all produce is made on site. By night the side-gate opens to a courtyard festooned with fairy lights, a ‘speak-easy’ where cocktails are served until dawn.
Bimble is a new approach to local discovery, solving a series of problems around how to get the best out of Oxford and what different things have significance to all the people who study, visit, live and work here. We want to capture people’s imagination by making it easy and fun to create, share and explore bimbles in all their different interpretations. And thus Bimble allows everyone, whether they are close to home or from further afield, to enjoy authentic, tried and tested little routes about the place. We’d like people to take pride in creating their bimbles and our technology helps you make them look good so they become your beautiful memories too.
It’s neither touristy nor sightseeing. It’s what people actually do in the neighbourhoods they know well, shared on a digital platform. Things that seem obvious to the bimble creator but are of interest to those looking to be inspired. At Bimble, we see them as mini itineraries for Oxford but with a very personal, curated feel. These are not stand-alone, one restaurant or one place reviews but instead a meander through the eyes of another.
We have our own little wanderings and favourite places in the city but have really enjoyed seeing how and where we can hang out on the Cowley Road for example – with more of a Brick Lane vibe than the rest of the city, this is where we discovered Arbequina, a young, modern tapas restaurant disguised as an old pharmacy.
Through sharing bimbles I have discovered that Oxford has its own ice cream shop called G and D’s where the owner commissioned an ice cream making machine from America “in the spirit of a Rolls Royce” in order to create his super premium ice cream on-site in Little Clarendon Street in the heart of Oxford. And a very different Bimble included the ruins of the controversial Cutteslowe wall.
The project brings together the entire community; from those who frequent Oxford because they live, work or visit here, to those whose businesses depend on the trade therein. Oxford is a diverse community and Bimble encourages integration and celebrates this by helping us to see things through the eyes of others. Bimbles also provide a valid structure for those reluctant to start exploring by themselves.
It encourages people to get outside and explore either on foot or by bike and uncovers routes to places that are as yet undiscovered by the bimble user. There are obvious health benefits for all, getting people off screens and engaging with the city.
But most of all, it expresses how much Oxford has to offer and that a great deal of it is closer than you might have imagined.
