This is the question posed by an Eramus + project called UNICORN that PVM are involved in. 

Well, in truth most third sector and non-profit organisations are often too busy working on the ‘coal face’ to put the time into audience building. But we all know how important it is to cut through the overwhelming noise of social media and reach the intended audiences.

Effective audience development can help third sector organisations thrive rather than just survive. However, audience building is very time consuming and needs specific skills, methods, and tools to make it effective.

PVM are working alongside Crossing Borders, Denmark,  Mine Vaganti NGO- Italy, VENSENYA – Germany,Comparative Research Network – Germany, and Change maker in Sweden to create a roadmap that third sector organisations can use to help implement and develop 4 specific areas.

• Audience design
• Storytelling and marketing (message building)
• Audience building
• Distribution. 

The aim of UNICORN is to produce a roadmap that supports organisations to get to know, find and address audiences and their needs, and to build trust and grow a community.

It was refreshing to meet up in person in with all the partners at the end of November in the wonderful city of Copenhagen where Crossing Borders have an office. We were able to continue to co-create the roadmap and start to design training that will happen in Berlin at the end of Jan beginning of Feb 2022.

Crossing Borders gave us a warm welcome and it was great to be in their homely office in the centre of Copenhagen. Surrounded by some superb wall hangings by the artist Anne Hedvard from 1977, that have powerful messages that are unfortunately still so relevant today. And, to meet the team and hear about the exciting and crucial projects that they are currently working on.

Kath Peters – Unicorn PVM project manager

Every year PVM have 2 meet ups with the Community Reporters. This is a chance for PVM to update the Community Reporters with news, opportunities, and developments and to find out what they have been up to and to get feedback from them. 

In September we had our second meeting of the year. The meet up took place online and we update the attendees of the work we have been doing developing our anti-racist commitments and the actions that we are taking to ensure that they are part of PVM’s everyday work, so they won’t be just words without substance.

Actions that we have taken so far –

• using anti-racism as examples in our Responsible Practice training
• increased the diversity of our board members
• increased the visual representation on our website and in the visual content that we gather, use and share.

As well as updating the Community Reporters it’s also a chance to gain feedback. This was 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 brought about the idea of creating a regular support group. It was just the beginning of an idea, but we shall be exploring it further.

We also talked about the feedback, reflections and actions from the ICR conference that took place in the spring and discussed how we can take these ideas forward to shape next years conference.

The next online meet up for the ICR will be Thursday 24th of March 2022 from 12:00 – 1:00pm

Sign up through Eventbrite here.

Kath Peters – PVM Project Manager

PVM have been working alongside Camden Disability Action training participants in Community Reporting. Collecting lived experiences of employment and the workplace with people who have Disabilities and/or long-term health conditions. 

This source of lived experience is the starting point of a co-production process with Camden council and to kick this off PVM and Camden Disability Action facilitated an online ‘Conversation of Change’ workshop.

During this workshop a short film was shown of the stories that were gathered during the Community Reporting process. These powerful stories of lived experience became the starting point for Camden residents and service providers to get together and plant the seeds of change in their local area. 

The workshop allowed everyone to reflect on the stories they had heard, relating them to their own life experiences and this was the focus of discussion in small groups.

Helping everyone to ‘shoot for the moon’ the workshop opened up the idea of the ‘dreamer state’. Posing the question ‘If you could have a dream service what would it look like?’ This approach inspired people to think a little bit out of the box. By the end of the workshop people had come up with initial ideas that of services that had imagination and gave hope.  

Camden Disability Action, the local Disabled resident’s and the council will now be collaborating and co-creating a local service together ensuring that the services are led by people who are Disabled or have long term health conditions and using these initial ideas as the foundation.

Kath Peters – PVM Project Manager

Last November I started to work with a group of community champions on a digital inclusion project called ‘Creative Connections’ at the CatStrand Arts Centre in New Galloway, Dumfries and Galloway. The CatStrand Arts Centre is based in a semi-remote rural area in Southwest Scotland, and it is an essential resource where local people can get together to participate in arts, crafts and well-being activities.

The project was initiated because of the impact of lockdown on the CatStrand in reaching out and staying in touch with its local audience. During this difficult time the CatStrand streamed arts events throughout lockdown and although this was a successful way to reach an audience many of their local audience were not accessing their content.

The community champions were trained as Community Reporters and explored ways to use Community Reporting in a creative way. The aim of the project is to encourage residents to embrace the use of digital technology and to discover how it can be used in a creative and interesting way.

Despite the project being held up due to lockdown the community champions have developed technical and creative skills as well as embracing the ethos of Community Reporting and have been using the methodology in their work.

Kath Peters – PVM project manager 

PVM have been working alongside Camden Disability Action training participants in Community Reporting. Collecting lived experiences of employment and the workplace with people who have Disabilities and/or long-term health conditions. 

This wealth of lived experience will be the starting point of a co-production process with Camden council. 

To kick start this off PVM and Camden Disability Action is facilitating a ‘Conversation of Change’ workshop on Sept 9^th from 1pm – 4pm where Camden residents and service providers will get together to make positive changes for the future. 

This workshop will explore the lived experience stories relating to employment of Disabled residents and people with long-term health conditions in Camden. Using the themes and topics from these stories, together we will come-up with initial ideas for a new employment service for Disabled people and those with long term health conditions.

Specifically, in this participatory workshop we will:

• Listen to Disabled peoples and people with long term health conditions experiences of employment and employment support
• Reflect on these stories and explore our own experiences
• Identify ideas about how employment provision and support into employment can be practically improved for Disabled people and people with long term health conditions in Camden.

British Sign Language interpretation and live (auto-generated) captioning will be used throughout the event.

This will be an online event held on Zoom. The links and details about how to join will be sent upon registration. Registration will be open until 5pm on the 7^th September.

If you are interested in attending, please register here.

If you would like further information about the event or assistance with registering contact Tom on 07908746927 or tom@camdendisabilityaction.org.uk