The team at People’s Voice Media are very excited about the prospect of working with Agora Koln in Cologne again. This project about civic participation is funded by the Cultural Bridge Fund which enables nonprofit organisations from the UK and Germany to connect by sharing knowledge and practice. 

Drawing on case studies from a revitalised neighbourhood public space in Cologne, Germany and a publicly owned community centre in Dalry, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, this project investigates the motivations and challenges experienced by individuals engaged in civic initiatives. By comparing these distinct contexts – urban and rural – the project seeks to identify shared values and generate insights into participation, belonging, and the impact of collective action.

The research will explore the factors motivating civic engagement, strategies for sustaining involvement, and the barriers participants face, with particular attention to interactions with local authorities.

It will give us a fabulous opportunity to continue our research into volunteering and dig deep into why civic participation matters to people.

We’ll use People’s Voice Media’s Community Reporting methods to train participants in how to collect stories from peers in an ethical and non-extractive way and share them digitally. They’ll interview individuals, record audio, take photos, and collaborate with those involved. Through online meetings, participants will share their findings and there will be a chance to meet in person when three delegates from each community will visit one another, tour the sites, and share their thoughts about their own experience of civic participation. During the year, this hybrid and international project will link both communities, amplify their voices, and demonstrate the impact of civic engagement on places and people.

The fund empowers ‘hands across the sea’ partnerships where together nonprofit organisations can co-produce, co-design, share skills, knowledge and practice. We are so excited to get started – watch this space for updates!

From May to October 2024, we partnered with Macmillan Cancer Support and NHS Herefordshire and Worcestershire ICB to train health workers and volunteers in Community Reporting. The aim was to improve access to cancer care services, particularly for South Asian and Roma/Traveller communities.

At the final session, we explored key themes from the stories collected. The insights were clear:

• Better communication is needed, using multiple languages and accessible formats.
• Misinformation about cancer must be addressed to build trust and awareness.

Though the training has ended, the work continues. Macmillan and NHS Herefordshire and Worcestershire ICB will implement these learnings by:

• Establishing Community Champion Advocate schemes.
• Embedding Community Reporting into future engagement.

One participant summed up the impact perfectly:
“I’ve learned to zip this (pointing to her mouth) and open these (pointing to her ears).”

This project is a step forward in embedding lived experience into service development. By training professionals to listen, share, and act on real patient experiences, we are driving social change in cancer care access. With Macmillan and NHS ICB committed to using Community Reporting long-term, this is just the beginning of a patient-led approach to service improvement.

Last summer, People’s Voice Media partnered with Black Country Integrated Care System (ICS), the VCSE network, and Wolverhampton Voluntary and Community Action (WCVA) to launch the REND Project. Over 18 months, we trained 51 Community Reporters and gathered 38 powerful stories exploring healthcare access across the Black Country.

The project aimed to:

• Build capacity within the VCSE sector to support research and engagement.
• Capture qualitative insights into people’s lived experiences of healthcare.
• Develop a community-led intelligence library to inform decision-making.

Through Community Reporting, we uncovered key challenges that needed addressing, including:

• Improving communication and training for healthcare staff, particularly around cultural competence and accessibility.
• Addressing digital inequities to ensure fairer access to online healthcare services.
• Embedding person-centred approaches that actively listen to and act on community feedback.

These findings were shared at a workshop, where local people and decision-makers came together to explore practical solutions. The stories will now inform ongoing improvements within Black Country ICS, ensuring that community voices remain central to service design.

This project is a step towards making healthcare more accessible, inclusive, and responsive to the people it serves. We were privileged to hear these stories—and even more excited to see how they drive real change.

This Black History Month, we’re excited to announce that People’s Voice Media has received funding from the National Lottery Community Fund to launch an 18-month Global Majority Community Reporter project starting in November 2024.

Building on our existing work, this project will train, mentor, and support Global Majority Community Reporters, ensuring that lived experience storytelling plays a central role in racial justice and social change. By strengthening our network, we aim to make storytelling an inclusive and transformative movement.

The project will:

• Equip Global Majority individuals with skills in co-production and social change leadership.
• Foster a peer support network across England for those working in these spaces.
• Embed anti-racist practice within the Community Reporter network, creating safe spaces for people to share their experiences.

Led by Isaac Samuels, this initiative builds on previous work with the Co-Production Collective, turning lived experiences into real-world action. We’ll be sharing more soon on how to get involved— stay tuned as we work to ensure Global Majority voices are at the heart of co-production and storytelling for change!

Dragons Voice CIC started working with People’s Voice Media (PVM) on the HOME? Project in May 2022 after discussions with Hayley (CEO of PVM). We feel privileged to be part of this project as we have worked with another organisation on a similar type of project. Initially we intended to gather stories from the BNO new arrivals from Hong Kong but this was not welcomed by that community as many feared for their safety and did not want to participate in a project that will showcase how they are living now since arriving in the UK.

We discussed this with PVM and Kath kindly agreed that we could look at alternative sectors of the Chinese community. In the end we recruited mainly from Mandarin speaker from mainland China who arrived in the UK within the last 10 years.

We found members of the PVM team to be very understanding and willing to adapt to our changing circumstances. As the director authorising the partnership agreement, I felt that PVM as an organisation stands true to its values. I have met Hayley a few times when I attended some training (early 2021) and at a conference way back in 2017. What came across was the philosophy of non-exploitation and letting people take control of their own stories.

How have the participants benefited from the project?

The participants who attended the Community Reporter training gained skills in doing short snapshot and dialogue interviews. They used a tablet to record the videos at the training sessions. The interviews were spoken in Chinese languages so they did not have to struggle with speaking in a second language. Some gathered stories after the training and uploaded them onto the Community Reporter website.

Those who attended the archive research training completed summaries of stories they found in the Manchester Evening newspaper. The focus was on finding stories on positive contributions from migrants. The skills they developed were firstly to locate the articles online and then sifting through the articles to find relevant stories. To conclude, they had to summarise and transfer core information onto the spreadsheet.

The training provided opportunities for strangers to meet up with other peers and transfer some of the learning into practice. Those who struggled with the archive research due to language were supported by those who had better English abilities. The project provided opportunities for participants to talk about and reflect on their migration journeys. Dragons Voice created 2 part-time posts for its volunteers, one to co-ordinate and the other to support in recruitment and organising activities.

Has Dragon’s Voice learned anything from taking part or from the stories?

There are many similarities in the stories, namely people migrate for better opportunities in life. There are always challenges to overcome in the initial transition, be it the weather in UK, availability of food they normally eat, language barriers or employment opportunities. The approach to interviewing in Community Reporting is very different to interviewing to mine for information, which is how we normally work when interviewing guests on our radio shows. In future we should be less focused on getting information we want and instead adopt a facilitative approach for the individuals we interview to tell their stories.

As a director I have learned to devise employment contracts for freelance workers but is not quite sure what to do when they pull out mid-way. I have had to step in and luckily as I had overall management of the project, I was able to pick it up without much trouble.

The Knowledge Exchange event puts the stories we gathered into a wider context and the roadmaps produced offers a sense of direction for future actions. It was good to meet up with other partners at the partners meetings, who worked across broader areas and are much more politically aware. Their comments provided different perspectives and food for thought.

At the conference in Liverpool, I found out about the other great projects that PVM is involved in and it opened my eyes to the broader work of community reporting.

I am painfully aware that Manchester has diverse migrant communities and it was with regret that we did not include these other groups in our project. We did offer the archive training to ALLFM presenter but there was no uptake advertising it on the volunteers steering group meetings and at ALLFM studio. We need to consider in future how to engage with other migrant groups within Manchester.

It is with much appreciation that Dragons Voice CIC was able to be a partner on this project. We hope to be able to work with People’s Voice Media again in the future.

Denise Yuen Megson

Director

Dragons Voice CIC