Last week we held our second Institute of Community Reporters (ICR) catch-up. The catch-ups are all held online as our members are in various locations across the UK and Europe, and are a 1-hour ‘hello’ and news sharing event.

At the catch-up we were joined by Shelley from The Men’s Room in Manchester. She shared with us how they had been using digital storytelling and lived experience as part of an arts project that looks at ‘what stops us from being well?’. It was great to see Community Reporting being used in this creative way and pushing its development in new directions. Other people on the call felt inspired by this and started to think about how they could adapt how they use Community Reporting too. Result!  

Sarah from the People’s Voice Media team also shared an update on the new Community Reporter site. It’s currently nearly ready from a technical perspective and over the next couple of months we will be bringing the design up to scratch. We are going to try and make it look similar to the current site but enhance it’s usability a bit. The key thing with the new site is that it will work better on mobiles… HURRAH! We should be launching it Dec/Jan time… but this is just phase 1… Next year we will work on enhancing the site further, to make it more usable and accessible. We will be running some sessions to help us in this task – so watch this space, we’d love it if you could give us some ideas!  

There was even time for people on the call to discuss projects they were currently working on that involved storytelling and get some help and advice from one another. We’d love to see more of this informal sharing and support at future sessions… so thanks to everyone who contributed and got involved in the chinwag.

We hold two catch-up’s a year, so save the date for the next one… full agenda and booking link will be available in the coming months. Catch-ups are open to members of the ICR and also non-members too!

*Save the date for the next ICR Online Catch-Up – Tuesday 9th March 2021, 2pm – 3pm (UK time)*