It's been a hectic start back but week 0 of our 6 week project in Kent has been a good one - this report is the first of a series of updates on our project as it progresses. Our new years' resolution is to make this our most open project yet, we'll be sharing details of our approach, our research and our difficulties. We'll posting work in progress and asking for your comments.

I hope to keep the posts concise and include stuff that's actually interesting to those of you on the outside - however this one's going to require a bit of an extended entry. Read more to find out about the aims of our project, what an Activmob is and the team we're working with.

The aim of our project, a partnership with Kent County Council, is to increase physical actvitiy in older people because (the bad news for some of you is that includes people aged 40-70), increasing activity has significant impact on reducing age related disease. It's part of our health project which is testing the hypothesis set out in the RED paper Co-creating services. In parallel to our project in Kent there is a sister project happening in Bolton where we are developing services to enable people with diabetese to live better with their condition, they both finish in February so RED is a busy place these days.

Our project in Kent is situated on the Park Wood estate in Maidstone, an estate of around 4000 people situated in an area of depravation. Last year we spent 3 days on site, talking to local residents in their home to understanding how they lived their lives day to day, their perceptions of the area they live in and to understanding how activity fits into their lives. We used flashcards to understand what activities they did, what the barriers are were to doing activities they would like to do, and what activities they would never do. We spent time walking dogs and walking to the shops to experience what activity means in practise.

From our research we found that:
The reasons that people don't exercise are many and complex, and similarly the activities that the express an interest in taking up are varied.

Family and close friends play a big role in creating the motivation for activity and the experience of that activity.

The complexities of interfacing with anything official, like hiring a sports hall or even using the football field for a kick around provide a significant barrier to activity.

Despite the perception of apathy on the estate, amongst the residents themselves the people we met were very passionate (if not active) for various activities from gardening to history - yet these energies remain untapped.

There is a large volunteer economy on the estate influenced by the prevalance of benefits.

The estate has a large amount of unused resources

Crime is very much part of the community image though as usual it's the perception of crime not actual crime that is high.

From these key findings and our experiences in Park Wood by the end of November last year the team had created a series of scenarios for co-created services that would encourage activity (download the ideas here ) ranging from creating a farm economy on Park Wood to putting cctv prodcution into the hands of the residents. One concept above the others stood out as being suitable, fitting with our hypothesis and being scalable nationally - the idea that became Activemobs.

Activemobs - (or fitmobs as they were then) draw on the organisational modles of tupperware partys, flashmobbing, friend of friend networks and nectar-like reward schemes to encourage activity in small groups. Our current thinking is that Activemobs are groups of 5-10 people who meet regularly to carry out beneficial physical activity. They choose what they want to do, when they do it and where. Activemobs will be validated by an organising body and incentivsed for continuing to meet and be active. The detail is to be worked out over the next 5 weeks

To develop the Activmob service we'll be facilitating the development of three mobs in Park Wood, we'll be testing the relevance of the idea with residents and working with them to co-design a service and interfaces with that service which are appropriate for them. We'll be tackling the key issues of how to motivate participation, the role of incentivisation, what should be measured (if anything) and what professional input might be required in the system.

As well as these three mobs we're attempting to seed unfacilitated mobs in Park Wood and beyond. Already this week we've designed, produced and half the team have been lucky enought to distribute (thanks guys) 2000 leaflets on Park Wood and surrounding estates, as well as adverts today in the Maidstone Messenger. These mobs will give us a wider feel for what people will start and how they will organise themselves - if you fancy mobbing yourself and telling us about it see activmob.org.uk

At the end of the 5 weeks we hope to have some successful mob stories, active mobs, and a blueprint for the service that will deliver it and, following the just in time nature of our unit at the end of week 0 we've got a great project team together, in addition to the multi talented RED team providing the usual support, direction and ideas in the face of adversity.

This week we've already been busy working with Kent Lyons on the identity. The key challenge has been to develop something that is credible - but not authoritarian. In the nature of the project we've come up with something that can be developed and adapted and owned by Activmob members themselves.

Matt and George are heading up the development of the website - from the start it felt that the web would play a big role in Activmobs - so prototyping and co-designing a website as we go seems an appropriate approach. Here are some early CATEGORY: HEALTH PROJECT