Over the past 6 months PVM have been working with Creative Minds and the Mental Health Museum, on a project looking into people’s lived experience with mental health.

A multitude of sessions have taken place across West Yorkshire, specifically in Wakefield and Huddersfield, sharing Community Reporting techniques and providing the opportunity for people to share their stories.

The project initially set out to speak to people who had a connection to the former Stanley Royd Hospital and Fieldhead Hospital, something which we were able to achieve. Head over to the Community Reporter Website to take a look through and listen to some of the stories that have been recorded as part of the project so far – including accounts from former staff members of the hospitals! What also emerged from the project was a wider collection of stories exploring people’s personal mental health journeys.

We’d like to give a huge thank you to the MHM, Creative Minds and of course everyone who took the time to share their stories and take part in the Community Reporter training sessions.

Whilst PVM’s involvement in the project will shortly be coming to an end – if you want to find out more or contribute your story get in touch with the MHM.

Last month EUARENAS partners came together for two days of training led by PVM at FACT, Liverpool.

Over the two days representatives from PVM, CRN, UEF, SWPS and the pilot cities of Gdask, Voru and Reggio Emilia engaged in a series of creative workshops, providing insight into how future scenarios can be explored using interactive play style activities. Each activity was geared towards getting groups to work collectively to imagine a future in which deliberative democracy has been achieved.

Serious Play

Groups used ‘Lego’ style building blocks to construct their vision of the future.

Collaging / Annotation

Groups worked together to create an annotated collage containing imagery and text cut out of newspapers, magazines and other printed media.

Photo Voice

Groups were provided with an instant camera, then instructed to take to the streets and capture images which represented participatory democracy. They returned to the workshop after gathering their pictures and created a visual mind map of what their future scenario could look like.

The activities were really fun to take part in and each group was able to sample each of the methods, with new ideas emerging at every stage. Following this section of the training partners reflected on each of the activities discussing the positive, negatives and potential adaptations – in preparation for the delivery of a series of future thinking workshops which are set to take place over the coming months.

On the second day partners worked within their country teams to produce an action plan for the delivery of the future thinking workshops. These plans were then peer reviewed and will now be utilised to achieve the next steps of the project.

Check out the blog post over on the EUARENAS website to find out even more about what we got up to.

On Wednesday PVM hosted a Knowledge Exchange Event at Gorse Hill studios in Stretford, Greater Manchester, as part of the CONTINUE Project.

Young people, youth workers, staff from Gorse Hill and other community organisations came together to discover the learnings from the project so far and develop policy recommendations to benefit the lives of young people.

“Living in an area that sees lots of tourists – what’s here for us?”

During the workshop, groups worked together to brainstorm ideas and create a vision for what they’d like to see in their community in the form of community maps. These ideas are going to feed into a policy briefing which will summarise the findings of the session and set out a clear list of recommendations to local decision makers.

Some key themes that emerged from the discussions include…

• Parks and public spaces lack facilities for older young people (aged 13+) – equipment should be installed to make these spaces more inviting to this age bracket e.g. a skate park, parkour course or outdoor gym equipment
• Litter is an issue in the local area – providing more bins would improve this problem
• Poorly lit streets & areas can be scary for young people – having more streetlights would help young people feel safer
• Local stadiums and venues attract tourists and visitors from outside of the community who don’t always respect the local area – what can be done to provide people with a space they feel is built for the local community

Outside of the project, Gorse Hill Studios have scheduled to meet with local MP Kate Green to discuss how they can continue to work on influencing policy change in their community. They have also been invited to take part in a project – PLACEHOLDERS – which is looking into how young people’s voices can be included in the co-design and creation of spaces in the area like Stretford Mall.

It looks as though the work that has been done so far will continue to develop into the future – stay tuned for further updates and the release of the policy briefing!

This week, members of the PVM team have been in Palermo, along with partners from the CONTINUE Project, to deliver training on Knowledge Exchange activities and share updates on work package progress. A representative from Gorse Hill Studios – our local partner based in Stretford, Greater Manchester – also joined us, for a week of shared learning and development.

We kicked off the week by exchanging key learnings from stakeholder interviews which partners had conducted with people in their local communities. The interviews were with a range of different people including teachers, youth workers and representatives from local government and explore their thoughts on how the COVID-19 Pandemic has impacted the lives of young people. Each partner presented the key learnings from each of the interviews, then we moved on to discussing how we could share this information with other people working in the field.

As part of the training, the group exchanged ideas for activities that could be used in the knowledge exchange event to facilitate discussion – ideas ranged from the Fishbowl technique to Focus Groups, creating safe spaces and World Café. We were then provided with a template session plan which each of us will adjust to suit the needs of the groups we’ll be working with.

Partners are now fully equipped to organise and deliver their knowledge exchange events. This stage of the project will be wrapped up by the end of September. Each partner will then write up a set of local policy briefings (using the learnings from the KE events) which will be shared in the hopes of influencing change.

A further Pan-European Knowledge Exchange event is set to take place by late November, combining the learnings from the local sessions and building further understandings – this will feed into a final Pan-European Policy briefing which is set to be released in the New Year.

The TNP took place the day after the training sessions and enabled partners to update on the progress of the project and discuss future plans.

Stay up to date with project happenings on the PVM blog and be sure to follow us on social media for more frequent updates. 

We are working on a new and exciting 2 year project called Home? – a project made possible by the Heritage Fund, that focuses on the recent lived experiences of migrants in Northern England. Through Community Reporter stories and Archive Research, we will be exploring what it is and has been like to migrate to Northern England over the past 10 years.

On this project, we will be gathering 100 stories to document authentic lived experiences, looking at how people have settled in (or not) to their new homes, how migrant communities have contributed to the places they now live and much more. Through the stories and archive research we want to give a platform to the diversity of voices that make-up communities across Northern England and explore our very recent heritage – making sure it is preserved for future generations. We will also be embedding a social justice and anti-racist agenda into this work.

These stories will then be showcased in the public arena at a variety of venues such as Museums, Libraries, Schools, Colleges, Universities and we will be creating an animation to bring the key messages from the stories together, as well as a toolkit that will offer guidance in exploring migration in community and informal learning settings. 

To achieve all of this we are not working alone and have partnered up with some great folk to help us bring this vision to life. Specifically, in Northern England we are working with: 

• Refugee Women Connect, Liverpool 
• Global Link Development Education Centre, Lancaster
• Leeds Asylum Seekers’ Support Network, Leeds 
• Methodist Asylum Project (“MAP”,) Middlesbrough
• Dragons Voice, Greater Manchester

These local partners will help connect the project and us into communities and engage different people in the heritage activities.

And on a national level we are working with NACCOM – a national network of over 140 frontline organisations and charities across the UK, working together to end destitution amongst people seeking asylum, refugees and other migrants who aren’t able to access to public funds because of their immigration status. NACCOM will be helping us to create the toolkit and tie in the issues and debates from the stories and research into national level conversations.

Stay tuned for more updates!