Earlier in June we ran an online knowledge exchange that shared our learning from the CoSIE project with fellow practitioners from across the UK and beyond. The workshop focused on the ways in which we had worked with public services across 9 different European countries to embed storytelling into co-creation processes. We explore some of the successes, and also the challenges and issues, we had encountered when working with stories and the knowledge of experience in this way. We’re hopeful that some of the people in the workshop were able to take away ideas and techniques from this workshop to apply in their own contexts!

As part of the knowledge exchange, people discussed how they had used lived experience and storytelling in their own work and fields, what opportunities there were for them to adopt such an approach and what are the potential barriers to this way of working. Some points raised by people in the workshop were:

• Whilst people are likely to listen to lived experience stories and make some changes, it is more difficult to get people to really ‘handover’ power.
• Stories help people to connect properly at a human level – they get underneath ‘professionalism’ and connect people emotionally
• Stories are useful for reflective practice – we can also learn a lot from positive experiences, not just negative ones

People’s Voice Media and the CoSIE project are also interested in how we can better share our learning about storytelling and co-creation with a wider audience. As part of this workshop, we asked our fellow practitioners to think about how we can do this… and create a toolkit of sorts! Some ideas were:

• Including in the ‘toolkit’ elements of what doesn’t work and why
• Covering topics such as ‘growing a network’ so you have people alongside you who have “got your back”
• Exploring how you can create inclusive and accessible environments in which people feel comfortable to share their stories
• Making the format more interactive than a document – helping people to connect with the material in a more direct way

We will be working on this with our colleagues in the CoSIE project throughout this year and hopefully by the end of 2020 we will be able to share with you what we have made!

Stories are vehicles that build bridges between people and support common understanding. Digital storytelling in particular, helps to connect communities and has thrived as a tool for social transformation and justice.

#COVIDConversations is a pan-European storytelling project that we launched with members of the Community Reporting network with the vision to create a shared public space for ‘COVID conversations’. The project focuses on hearing the ‘unheard’ voices during the pandemic and providing a platform through which people with the least resource and power in society can share their experiences. You can hear some of the initial stories here: https://communityreporter.net/covid-conversations

This project will enable people to not only share their lived experience with one another and but also with institutional powers, to build a better society post-pandemic that is focused on cooperation and solidarity. We will be working with our partners later in the year (and probably next year too) to host knowledge exchanges based on the learnings from the stories to inform and influence what happens next.

COVID-19 has exposed and enhanced society’s inequalities. It is important that we do not go back to normal and sweep these issues under the carpet. It is vital that people’s voices are heard during and post-pandemic, and that we truly understand the ways in which these uncertain and turbulent times have impacted on people’s lives. There is a real danger that the narrative of the crisis will be dominated by those with existing power and resource, and that recovery responses will be paternalistic and delivered in a ‘done to’ manner. #COVIDConversations seeks to ensure that other, more diverse voices are not only a part of the conversation, but are also actively involved in the recovery and are key players in how we re-build our communities for the better.

In this light, we have launched a ‘SHARE YOUR STORY’ function on the Community Reporter website. Here you can submit your experience of the pandemic as a text, photo, audio or video file and one of the team will review it to ensure it is in-line with our Responsible Storytelling practices before it is published to the site. Click the button below to submit your story.

Tuesday 7th July / 2:00pm – 3:30pm / Register here!

People’s Voice Media have teamed-up with the National Co-Production Advisory Group to facilitate this interactive knowledge exchange as part of #NationalCoproductionWeek.

Over the last couple of years, we’ve been collaborating and using Community Reporting – a pan-European storytelling movement – to gather people’s lived experiences of health and social care from across the country. A key purpose of this work has been to better understand, at a human level, how people experience different health and care services, what it is like to work in this arena, what works well and what doesn’t. These stories have shown us that we need to ‘rehumanise’ services and put heart-led practice at the centre. We must step out from behind the spreadsheet and connect with others at an emotional level in order to move forward.

As part of this workshop, you will have the opportunity to:

1. Listen to some of the stories we have gathered and hear direct accounts of people’s experiences of health and social care

2. Explore how you can use some of the learnings from the stories in your own context 

3. Discuss how what ‘rehumanising the system’ looks like at a practical level and how you can contribute to this (r)evolution!

Following this knowledge exchange, we will be coproducing a policy briefing about the rehumanisation of services – drawing on the stories in this workshop and other lived experiences from different types of services from across Europe. We’ll be incorporating the ideas you share with us as part of this workshop into this later in the year!

REGISTER NOW!

Lockdown working has presented a fair few challenges for PVM. We’re a largely face-to-face organisation: delivering training, attending project meetings, performing dialogue interviews… It’s all done in person.

As a result, we’ve had to rethink a lot of things. Where we’ve been able to, things are being done remotely. Workshops, knowledge exchanges and meetings have been moved online and we’ve all become experts in a range of video conferencing software and online collaboration tools. Where online hasn’t been a possibility projects have been paused with their deadlines extended, to be picked up again once lockdown measures have eased.

This has triggered a huge rethink in our workflow priorities. Projects that, just weeks ago, were massive priorities with imminent milestones have now shuffled to the back of the queue while work that has been put off in favour of more pressing deadlines (you know how it can be…) has suddenly found itself in the foreground.

For Sarah, this meant spending May taking a deep dive into our curation reports for the CoSIE project to form one of our project deliverables. The deliverable itself isn’t due for a good few months yet, but getting these analyses drafted now means that later this year the team isn’t juggling writing several thousand words, editing stories into a film, and trying to catch up with projects that have been on-hold.

So what are the curation reports?

The curation reports form a key part of the Community Reporting methodology. It involves looking at the stories gathered, pulling out the key themes that span them, and writing them up into an analysis that summarises our findings.

For the CoSIE project, this means looking at the stories gathered in each of the pilot projects. For Sarah, this meant examining the stories from Houten and Nieuwegein (both in The Netherlands), and Hungary, resulting in around 11,000 words of analysis. The insights gleaned were sometimes surprising. For instance, the Hungarian pilot which is all about rediscovering home economics and self-sustainability in disadvantaged communities, demonstrated that many of the participants show that there is a large demand for homemade produce, so much so that some participants are looking at turning their home enterprises into small businesses. Some stories, meanwhile, demonstrated the strengths and weaknesses of co-creation – sometimes showing it can only work when everyone involved is wholeheartedly invested.

While lockdown has forced us to reassess our entire working practice, it has perhaps given us opportunity to take time over things we would have ordinarily put back, and given us the time and space to properly examine them without distractions.

That being said, we can’t wait to be back organising workshops and conferences, and delivering training again.

Date: Thursday 9th July 2020 

Time: 1:30pm – 3:00pm   

Register here!

Within the on-going COVID-19 crisis there is a danger that the most marginalised communities across Europe are left out of this conversation. It is important to us, that people who are under-resourced and who often occupy the positions of least power are involved in this dialogue. This is why we launched the #COVIDConversations project that uses Community Reporting techniques to gather stories about the crisis from voices that may go unheard.

As part of National Co-Production Week 2020, we are running this online, interactive workshop to share with you our experiences during the #COVIDConversations project, covering topics such as:

• Collaborations that led to this project
• Techniques for delivering storytelling activities online
• Initial learnings from the stories 

As part of the session, you will also have the opportunity to participate in a bit of digital storytelling and share your experiences of the pandemic with others. Your story will contribute to the growing lived experience archive we are creating. 

The workshop is open to anyone and instructions of how to attend this online event will be sent out to attendees upon registration and via email. All you will need is a laptop/tablet/smartphone with an Internet connection to take part. Places are limited so please only book if you 100% intend to join.