COVID-19 has greatly impacted on the wellbeing of communities in South and West Yorkshire. This project looks at health inequalities with a particular focus on the disproportionate impact that coronavirus is having on our BAME communities. (This work may include other priorities and look at how children and young people, the homeless, those in contact with the criminal justice system, the LGBT community, and those suffering domestic abuse have been affected, depending on local information.)

To explore this further and see how creativity can support people in these communities, People’s Voice Media and Creative Minds have partnered on a collaborative project, with funding from the Association of Mental Health Providers, using digital storytelling to listen to the voices of people in Barnsley, South Kirklees and Wakefield. We trained people from the area as Community Reporters in order to gather stories from others about their wellbeing throughout the pandemic, and how creativity has helped them. These stories of lived experience were then examined by the Community Reporters in a series of sense-making sessions in order to pull out common themes, which have been used to make recommendations for developing creative mental health interventions with local communities. The insight report produced focuses on the insights from the stories and what can be done with the learnings from them.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had many people asking what wellbeing means to them, what stops them being well, and what keeps them healthy. As part of a collaborative project taking place in Calderdale, West Yorkshire, People’s Voice Media has worked with residents and people who work in North Halifax to better understand their health needs.

We trained people from North Halifax as Community Reporters in order to gather stories from others about their health and wellbeing, and what really matters to the people in the area. These stories of lived experience were then examined by the Community Reporters in a series of sense-making sessions in order to pull out common themes, which have been used to make recommendations for commissioning health and wellbeing initiatives in the area. These findings were put into an insight report, which focuses on the insights from the stories and what can be done with the learnings from them. It is now available for download, demonstrating the stark health inequalities that exist and have been exacerbated by the pandemic.

During the last couple of weeks in March, some of the PVM team took part in a training lab designed as part of Co-Engage, one of the Erasmus Plus projects we are a part of. The project aims to contribute to the development of co-creation skills, enabling citizens to become social innovators. Based on the exchange of experiences and learning through co-creation, the consortium’s method will bring in light know-how and competences, engaging citizens for innovation and creativity and, through this, creating bridges between diverse sectors and fields of activity.

Held online, the labs aimed to get us thinking about co-creation practices and how these could better engage citizens as social innovators. Hosted by German partners CRN and Future Fashion Forward, the labs took on the topic of textile waste in the fashion economy and had us work in groups on different scenarios that would encourage citizens to engage with this issue and work on finding solutions, such as a co-created social media campaign aimed at getting people to organise clothes swaps.

While it was a shame that we could not travel to Berlin for the training, as had originally been planned, it was great to see all of our partners and participants all together and working on some fascinating ideas.

Some of our projects, particularly our European ones, are catching back up after being delayed for so long due to the pandemic. One of these is Co-Engage, an Erasmus+ project designed to contribute to the development of co-creation skills enabling citizens to become social innovators. Part of the project is a series of labs, the first of which takes place at the end of March in a digital form.

We’re looking for a volunteer to attend from the comfort of their own home, with the chance to network with organisations from across Europe as well as learning a thing or two about co-creation practices. A member of the PVM team will also be in attendance. Details of the lab are below:

Topic: Co-discovery.

Overall Goal: Experimenting and testing old practices and new models, focussing on generating participation of citizens as co-implementers and activating people.

Lab Umbrella Topic: Fashion Consumption and Textile Waste problem in cities.

Organisers and facilitators: Future Fashion Forward and Comparative Research Network.

Day 1 – Monday 22nd March 2021 / 9am to 12pm GMT

Day 2 – Tuesday 23rd March 2021 / 1pm to 4pm GMT

Day 3 – Wednesday 24th March 2021 / Self-learning day

Day 4 – Monday 29th March 2021 / 9am to 11.30am GMT & 1pm to 3.30pm GMT

Day 5 – Tuesday 30th March 2021 / 1pm to 4pm GMT

Each of the days presents opportunity for learning, co-creating and networking with a blend of presentations and group work on a variety of challenges, with a fuller agenda being available nearer the time.

A small accessibility bursary is available for each of the days to help meet access costs.

If you are interested in volunteering to take part and have availability on the specified dates, email Sarah at PVM by Thursday 11th March.

During the coronavirus pandemic, North Kirklees has suffered a very high number of deaths compared to the other areas of the South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Trust. In some cases, two members of the same family have lost their lives to COVID-19, and the wider repercussions on physical and mental health have been numerous.

Between September and December 2020, People’s Voice Media, the Trust, and other local partners, with funding from NHS Charities Together, worked with a group of people from North Kirklees in order to gather stories of lived experience from affected BAME communities in the area, using the Community Reporting methodology. We trained these individuals as Community Reporters and, as part of this training, they have learned different storytelling techniques to enable them to share their own stories and capture stories from across their peer networks. Working with People’s Voice Media, they have curated these stories into a set of findings that we have laid out in an insight briefing which you can download below.

The report presents a picture of an area struggling under a disproportionate amount of bereavement and hardship where, as one storyteller puts it, “everyone is grieving at home on their own.”