Here at People’s Voice Media we work across a range of projects in the UK and across Europe, from small-scale one-off local events to multi-year international programmes… and everything else in-between. We will soon be launching an exciting heritage project in the North of England called HOME? that has been made possible by the Heritage Fund.

The project will focus on the collection, curation and dissemination of lived experiences of people from migrant communities living in Northern England over the last 10 years. Specifically, it will look at contemporary socio-cultural experiences of migrant communities, focusing on how these communities have settled in (or not) to their new homes.

To help us deliver this project, we are recruiting a Project Worker. They will be responsible for the day-to-day coordination and delivery of the HOME? heritage project.

How to apply

To apply for this role, you should:

1. Download and read through the job description
2. Email a statement of why you are interested in working with us and how your skills and expertise match the job role (specifically the key qualities and responsibilities) and our values. This can be either a document (2 pages of A4 max), an audio recording (5 minutes max.) or a video recording (5 minutes max). This should be sent to Hayley on hayley@peoplesvoicemedia.co.uk by end of 27th March 2022.
3. In your email, please also include where you are based. We are a remote working organisation but we deliver our activities largely in-person, we also hold team working days monthly in the North West of England. This specific role is focused on delivery in the North of England and so a willingness to commute to those locations is a must. (Travel expenses are in addition to the salary).

What happens next?

We will review the applications by 1st April 2022 and select which applications we will be inviting for an informal interview. We inform all applicants of our decisions. We are not in a position to give individual feedback at this stage.

Interviews will be held online on 11th April 2022 between 1pm and 5pm. We will inform all interviewees of our decisions by the 13th April 2022. We would hope that the successful applicant can start on the 1st May 2022, or as close to this as possible. We will provide feedback to all interviewees.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Last year, People’s Voice Media teamed up with Genio and a team of experts within the social innovation arena to produce ‘Learning As You Scale’. This guide supports people and organisations involved in scaling social innovations to develop and embed a disposition to learn ‘as they scale’. We are now excited to be able to share this toolkit with you.

Social innovations aim to design and deliver solutions to social problems and seek to improve people’s lives and communities. They come in different shapes and sizes, including processes and practices, products and services. Such innovations usually start life as ‘pilots’ that are delivered outside of the wider system, market or environment already working to address a given socialproblem. Successful pilot innovations may then seek to ‘scale’ or ‘spread’ within or beyond their sectors, dependent on their initial results.

Learning As You Scale is not about the traditional formal post facto evaluation, rather it is about learning during a change process, system redesign or roll-out. This guide prompts social innovators to embark on the initial learning process in respect of one social innovation – and we hope that this will lead to a learning habit, becoming an essential part of the culture of an organisation or partnership leading multiple social innovations. Rooted in action research, this practical guide enables individuals and organisations working on social innovations to explore how they gather data and insights from their innovations, how they evaluate and assess these materials and how they can use these insights both within scaling plans and beyond.

Learning As You Scale focuses on supporting people working on social innovations which are scaling in complex change environments and are often addressing ‘wicked’ problems within the social sphere. This guide has been designed specifically for those involved in social innovations who are interested in involving the people for whom the innovation is designed to support within this scaling and learning process. It can be used by individuals and teams within these types of social innovations who occupy roles connected to evaluation, learning & development, and leadership, governance & strategy.

You can now download the full guide here: Learning As You Scale – Full Guide

Or download some key bitesized sections below:

1. Scaling a social innovation? Measure your impact with… the PICO framework (Dr. Gorgi Krlev)
2. Scaling a social innovation? Measure your impact with… Process Tracing (Dr. Gorgi Krlev)
3. Scaling a social innovation? Measure your impact with… Lived Experience Storytelling (Dr. Hayley Trowbridge)
4. Scaling a social innovation? Share your learning (Stephen Barnett)

Over the last few months People’s Voice Media and the Community Reporter Network have teamed up with the NHS in Greater Manchester, to gather people’s recent experiences of GP services.

We’ve gathered these stories to explore what GP services are like for people who are accessing them, looking at what is working well and what could be better. With the NHS in Greater Manchester we want to use the stories to open up a conversation across Greater Manchester about GP Services.

We have gathered 65+ experiences from residents in Manchester, Wigan, Salford, Tameside, Bolton, Rochdale, Oldham, Bury, Stockport and Trafford about how they’ve found accessing GP services during the pandemic. People have shared with us the changes they’ve experiences – such as telephone appointments or online consultations – and their perspectives on them.

For some people, the changes haven’t been so positive. For this resident, not being able to speak in-person to their GP has meant that they don’t feel they can express properly what they are feeling and they don’t feel they’ve got the healthcare that they needed. However, other people like this resident explains how new options around how to book appointments and get repeat prescriptions are real positive developments.

You can listen to all of the stories we’ve gathered here: https://communityreporter.net/experiences-gp-services and we will keep you up-to-date with any developments with these great pieces of insight. Watch this space!

Over the last year, – our staff team and Board members have been reflecting on how People Voice Media and as team members we can address systemic racism and be actively anti-racist. It is clear to us that simply not being racist is not enough.  We carefully looked at the make-up of the people who work at and lead our organisation, and the project partners we have and who is generally involved in our work – and the numbers spoke for themselves. At all levels there is an over-representation of white people involved. We recognise this needs to change and we agreed to commit at a team and leadership level to do work in this area, although we didn’t know where this work would lead us. 

Using the framework above has helped us to think about how where are we now and as the people who make the organisation where we would like to and recognised as actively anti-racist. Whilst we have never denied racism is a problem is a society, we had previously not fully acknowledged our role as an organisation in not actively and strongly enough seeking to dismantle the structures than perpetuate systemic racism and in being actively anti-racist. We have been in the zone of ‘not being racist’ and offering ‘equal opportunities’. We now see that this passivity is part of the problem and have and will continue to make moves both internally and externally to address this.

Our aim is to reach the Growth Zone and remain consistently in it. Yet our experience of becoming anti-racist is that it is not a linear journey with an end point. Parts of what we have been doing is situated in the learning zone – educating ourselves, having the uncomfortable conversations – and within the steps we have taken as individuals and as an organisation we are seeing glimpses of the growth zone – we have begun to surround ourselves with others who think and look differently than us. 

Reaching the Growth Zone doesn’t mean our work will stop. Being actively anti-racist is an on-going process. Therefore, rather than have an anti-racist policy or set of pledges that are static, we are instead going to:

• keep consistently reviewing what we are doing in this arena
• seek feedback and input from others on what we do
• be transparent about our work in this area and open ourselves up to accountability and challenge from ourselves, people in and external to our network and the general public. This blog post is the start of this. 

So, what changes have we been making and currently working on? 

• Working on including anti-racism work as a core part of our Community Reporting training and aligning anti-racism to our core purpose and values.
• Take responsibility for anti-racism in the spaces we have created (or are a part of) by actively challenging instances of racist behaviour, both conscious and unconscious, and not leaving it to others to do.
• Recognise and acknowledge the lack of diversity within our own team and seek to address this. (We’ve made a great deal of progress here at a leadership level via the Board and also in our Freelance Crew).
• Recruit people of colour, LGBTQ+ people, and other minority groups not only on projects related to their identity. (Again, hopefully you have seen some changes here already as well).
• Represent more clearly the diverse communities we work with in our communications and resources. Ensuring that we represent the people we work with in the visual content we gather, use and share. (Another area that we’ve had feedback that people have seen a different already). 
• Widening these discussions to include the Community Reporter Network, seeking critical reflections and challenge, and input into how we become actively anti-racist.

What next?

We want to be transparent and accountable for our work at becoming actively anti-racist, and so that we are not in ‘our own bubble’ we feel it’s important to share what we our doing with people. To do this we will:

• provide regular updates through blogs like this on our actions, progress, and commitment to anti-racism
• have anti-racism work as an item on our agendas at all team meetings and Board meetings
• continue to create spaces for anti-racism conversations to happen in both 

             internal and external meetings.

The feedback and input we’ve had so far at a recent Community Reporters’ catch-up has been positive and powerful, with people saying how important it is to have a place of support and solidarity for people to come together to discuss, offload, and support each other. This input has directly fed into a piece of work we are developing to support people from Black and minoritized backgrounds in co-production environments, which are indisputably very white spaces.

How can you help us?

We welcome critical reflections and challenge, as we are aware that we will mistakes on this journey. This will help us to transition from the ‘fear zone’ when you share these with us!

The Wigan Deal is an informal agreement between the council and everyone who lives or works here to work together to create a better borough. You can find out more about it here: https://www.wigan.gov.uk/Council/The-Deal/The-Deal.aspx

To better understand residents’ experiences of The Deal, People’s Voice Media and the Community Reporter network are hosting a series of storytelling sessions. In these storytelling sessions you will:

• Have the opportunity to share your experiences of The Deal
• Record your experience as a video or audio story
• Listen to other people’s experiences of The Deal 
• Determine what we have learned from the stories we’ve shared and heard 

We will share the results of these sessions with you later in the year.

How do I get involved?

You can choose to attend one of the following workshops:

• Workshop 1: 2pm – 4pm, Monday 21^st February 2022, Wigan Library, Wigan Life Centre, The Wiend, Wigan, WN1 1NH. REGISTER HERE.
• Workshop 2: 4:00pm – 5:30pm, Tuesday 22^nd February 2022, Online via Zoom. REGISTER HERE.
• Workshop 3: 2pm – 4pm, Friday 25^th February, Education Room at Leigh Town Hall, Market Street, Leigh, WN7 1DY. REGISTER HERE.

You can sign-up for the workshops on the links above, or get in touch with Hayley (who’ll be facilitating the sessions) on hayley@peoplesvoicemedia.co.uk Registration will stay open until 2:30pm on 17^th February. 

Refreshments and travel expenses up to £10.00 will be provided for the in-person workshops, and 3 financially supported places are available across the three workshops (see below). 

Why are you running them and why should I take part?

These sessions are part of the EUARENAS project that is looking at how democracy works in different towns and cities across Europe. You can find out more about the project here: https://www.euarenas.eu

By taking part in the storytelling sessions, you will be contributing to the research activities of this project. The learning from the project will be shared in a range of ways including blog posts, research publications, policy briefings and practical toolkits to support communities and institutions to work together to create better futures. 

Financially Support Places

We have 1 financially supported place available per workshop that will be allocated on a first-come, first-allocated basis. The financial support is up to a maximum of £60.00 per person. This can be used to cover:

• Other expenses than travel such as childcare costs, internet costs etc. that you incur through attending the workshops. To claim this, you’ll need to send us an expenses form and receipts. 
• Other support costs such as a PA to support you to attend. To claim this, you’ll need to send us an expenses form and receipt OR ask your support to invoice us directly. 
• Contribution fee. To claim this, you’ll need to send us an invoice and be responsible for your own tax and insurance as a self-employed person. 

About People’s Voice Media 

People’s Voice Media is a social charity who have been working with people since 1995 to create bottom-up social change rooted in people’s lived experiences of the world. Our approach – Community Reporting – uses digital storytelling to help people to share their experiences, connect them with others and create new ways of thinking and doing. You can find out more about us here: https://peoplesvoicemedia.co.uk