Broadband for the Rural North (B4RN)

During the pandemic, communities in Lancashire banded together, using human networks they had developed while building the internet network for B4RN. They also ran an online “Computer Club” via Zoom to stay connected and offer technical support to B4RN members. The focus of this podcast is the online Computer Club – how it has evolved from the in-person Computer Club that B4RN hosted every Friday at their modest headquarters in Melling, Lancashire, and how it facilitates vital knowledge-sharing alongside the technical hardware that makes internet connectivity possible.

As the conversations in the podcast illustrate, the Computer Club offers a lot more than simply technical advice. It’s a community space, where people have developed friendships and cultivated a language for talking about the digital world that is accessible to their communities. Their unofficial motto is something along the lines of “if I can do it, you can do it.”

Play and listen to the audio  bellow.

A podcast by Cherry Soup Production, written and hosted by Kira Allmann for the special edition of GenderIT.org "Infrastructures of Resistance: Community Networks Hacking Global Crisis".

Original illustration by Gustavo Nascimento. Creative Commons BY-NC-SA.