Participation in Thames Chase Community Forest: a multimedia elicitation tool

Describes the design thinking behind, and the outline structure of, a multimedia system to represent and elicit comments on some aspects of Thames Chase Community Forest in Essex. It is part of a programme of research projects being carried out at Anglia Polytechnic University intended to form links between the university and local communities and businesses. These projects are designed to be ‘dual use’, with benefits for both the community and the academic work of the university. In the case of this project, the aims are to provide Thames Chase with a multimedia facility for use in its schools outreach programme and, simultaneously, to be part of a wider research programme into the representation and consumption of countryside leisure sites. Written principally from an academic perspective, this paper outlines the background to the development of community forests, a rationale for the research project, and the conceptual design of the multimedia system.