We use the tools we know about to find tools we don't know about to help solve problems we know about and find problems we don't know about.  We have recently been doing lots of good work with one of our projects called Heritage Hackers.

Heritage Hackers was the idea of No Worries IT Ltd: about ten years ago.  Paul Woodhead, of No Worries IT Ltd, was very active in community learning groups, and especially around digital and creative commons.

Paul setup as a freelancer in 2006, and set up PH Woodhead Ltd offering traditional IT Solutions and Support to small and medium enterprises throughout the North West.  He retrained into the IT sector in 2003, after enjoying a reasonably long career as a chef.  There was a clear route into the IT profession that incurred thousands of pounds worth of training to acquire the relevant certifications: which he achieved.  However, he was disappointed/frustrated with the obvious built in planned obsolescence of most systems/devices.

As part of Paul’s learning journey he had to learn an open source scripted programming language called PHP.  This opened a door to a World that was a clear epiphany: with the alignment of a belief system of cooperation, value management, and providing genuine robust solutions.

In 2011, PH Woodhead Ltd became No Worries IT Ltd.  The company pushes and promotes Open Source, and endeavours to exclusively use Open Source in all the solutions it provides to organisations, individuals and community groups.

Heritage Hackers was set up to address a problem, in Rochdale Town Centre residential areas, of Malienation.  Heritage Hackers has resounding successes in getting the unengaged involved in numerous technological/arts projects.  It was evident from the outset that project based learning engages with most learners, and enables them to learn some quite difficult concepts that would otherwise seem abstract and irrelevant to their lives.  For example making a gas sensor/alarm for an elderly relative, with a history of leaving the stove gas on (unlit,) embeds the knowledge in a productivist way, and gives the learner an understanding of why we need “code.”

Heritage Hackers have operated on a voluntary basis since March 2020: having lost funding to run in person events.  However, we (voluntarily) ran sessions online throughout the pandemic, for a core of learners: many of them now having progressed from disengaged to full time education, better mental and physical health, but most importantly connected to supportive peer communities.