The Medici project is a two-year EU funded project which aims to map digital inclusion best practices across the EU and beyond. It is the only project funded from its stream of work in the EU and so represents a unique and ambitious programme.
Digital exclusion is an important topic and becoming more so as services continue to migrate from the face to face realm to the virtual. Digital inclusion involves getting more people online, improving the digital skills and confidence of citizens from socially excluded communities, such as older people, the unemployed, migrants, disabled people and marginalised young people, and re-designing services to take the digitally excluded into account.
What are we doing?
The main activity of the project is to find, research and catalogue best practices in reducing digital exclusion. To date, we have found nearly 300 relevant practices, which are currently being uploaded to the Medici platform.
The added value that the Tavistock Institute has provided is our expertise in evaluation and replication. We have developed a bespoke standard of evidence, which has a low threshold for entry, allowing promising interventions that have not been evaluated to be included in the catalogue alongside those which are fully evaluated and ready to be replicated elsewhere.
The next stages of this project are to attract and develop a community of practice to engage in the Medici platform with the aim of building a sustainable group who are able to add to the catalogue and use the catalogue to find and deliver best practices in their own localities. If successful, Medici can provide a central information and meeting point for all policymakers and practitioners who wish to address digital inclusion across the EU.
Why does this project matter?
The Medici project matters because there is currently nothing else like it. No other platform exists that has collected these types of practices to fight digital exclusion. Not only is the project unique, but also urgent in an ever-developing digital society. Statistics state that 15% of Europeans have never been online, and this number has not changed in the past five years.
The Medici project is important because it strives to understand what’s stopping people from taking that step to being online and to discover different paths to help people get online. When so many services and resources now exist online, not having access to online services excludes you from society. One of the EU’s priorities is to get better digital inclusion, and this project is one of the first steps to doing so.
Podcasts
As part of our evaluation and replication for the Medici project, we have created a series of podcasts that look at digital inclusion for five groups that are vulnerable to digital exclusion: disadvantaged young people; migrants; people with disabilities; elderly people; and unemployed people.
The Medici Digital Stories podcasts are hosted by Rachel Hastings-Caplan and David Drabble, produced by Lucy Walker with theme music composed by Philip Corran.
You can listen and subscribe to Medici Digital Stories on Spotify or listen by clicking on the episodes below:
Animations
Where can I find out more about this project?
Project Team:
David Drabble – Project Manager
Joe Cullen – Project Director
Philip Corran
Georgie Parry-Crooke
Kerstin Junge
Rachel Hastings-Caplan
Greg Holloway
Lucy Walker
Partners:
UNIR
TIHR
CEPCEP – Catholic University of Portugal
Smart Bananas
Diesis
Kethea