Is physical change a celebration or challenge to our neighbourhood? Have we lost our social connections or are they just different? What is my role in, and responsibility to my community?

As part of the VOICITYS project, People’s Voice Media and Inspiring Communities Together have been using Community Reporting to gather stories about what life is like in Charlestown and Lower Kersal (CHALK) and have interviewed local leaders and decision-makers about their experiences of working in the area. From these stories and interviews, it was clear that the area had seen a lot of physical and social change over the years and we’d like to you to help us explore these topics further.

We’re inviting you to a Conversation of Change event in which you will listen to some of the stories gathered, explore the points raised in the interviews and have the opportunity to share your own perspectives. As part of this participatory workshop, we will discuss what we have learned from the research and what we can do at a local level in response to these findings. Together we will co-create ideas for overcoming the issues presented and build on the positive things already taking place. This will help us to make a set of recommendations for key policy drivers for the area.

Exploring Physical and Social Change in CHALK: A Conversation of Change Event
Tuesday 26th February 2019 / 1pm – 3pm / St. Sebastian Community Centre 1 Douglas Green, Salford M6 6ES (Refreshments provided)

This event is being co-organised by People’s Voice Media and Inspiring Communities Together as part of the VOICITYS project that has been funded by The European Union’s Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme 2014 – 2020.

Interserve is committed to developing and evaluating more personalised ways of working with service users in order to: promote positive life choices; tackle root causes of lifestyle problems; and to build personal capacity and resilience. As part of the Cosie Project – a pan-European scheme looking at the co-creation of public services – Interserve has piloted new ways of co-designing more personalised probation services. Within the pilot process, one of the co-creation tools adopted has been Community Reporting which has been used to gather insight stories from staff and service user on their perspectives of probation services.

Key learning has emerged from these stories. For example, the experiences of service users highlighted many of the things that they valued about the service such as the opportunity to engage in peer mentoring, as well as shedding light onto areas that could be improved such as support provision for low risk offenders. The staff stories focused on people’s motivations for working within the sector with many explaining how the desire to help others was a key factor for them entering this career. However, the stories also brought up issues such as changes within the service that were preventing them from doing the job to the standard they would like.

This toolkit looks at these stories and the insights within them through the lens of personalisation, exploring what can be deciphered from the stories about how probation services can better meet the needs of the individuals involved. The overarching message from this is that personalisation is not something that can be delivered by staff to service users in a linear fashion. Rather what must be established is a working culture of personalisation – for both staff and users – that permeates all aspects of service delivery. Through examining what the contributing factors of this culture could be and by asking probing questions to its reader, this publication seeks to support professionals working in probation to understand how they can enhance personalisation their roles.

The People’s Voice Media team are pleased to tell you that we have recently started work on two new Erasmus+ funded projects with our European partners. Earlier this month we went to the kick-off meetings for the Co-Engage and Eurospectives projects.

Co-Engage is exploring co-design methodologies from across Europe and Eurospectives builds on our previous Digital Natives project, to explore different digital storytelling approaches. We will be contributing to both of these projects by researching and presenting case studies on relevant topics as part of the knowledge exchange process and by taking the lead on dissemination.

Watch this space to see how the projects develop!

Working with communities in Germany, Hungary, Italy and the United Kingdom, the VOICITYS project and People’s Voice Media trained residents in specific neighbourhoods as Community Reporters who have used these skills to tell, understand and share their own stories on topics and issues pertinent to diversity where they live. This report provides an overview of this methodology and its implementation within the project, the findings from the stories gathered, and pan-European reflections on emergent trends across the dataset.  Download the full report below.

In November, the Our Voices team made their way to Spain, to participate in a transnational partnership meeting. With the intellectual outputs – the curriculum, the toolkit and the resource bank – ready to be finalised, now was the time for the partnership to start thinking about the impact they can make with these products and turn their focus to dissemination and sustainability.

As part of the meeting, the team also participated in a radio workshop ran by INTRAS, Radio Atlántida. This is a pioneering activity started by INTRAS aimed at improving people’s communication skills “on air” (i.e. reading articles and books, film festivals shows, radio slots) and provide different and innovative solutions to empower people with mental health issues. Partners were all interviewed about what they think about the development of the project.

The next step for the project will be the piloting of the Digital Curation Training Programme in each partner’s context. Each partner will implement aspects of the Our Voices methodology via training programmes and workshop in order to explore to what extent this intellectual output can be adapted to different target groups. Also, during the next few months, relevant stakeholders in higher education, health sector, user-run organizations, informal trainer providers and research/policy institutes will be participating in webinars with the project team. We will ask them to give feedback on the outputs created in terms of their future usages and accreditation of the curriculum.

Following this, the main focus of the project will be on the multiplier events that are set to take place in the UK and Germany. Full details of these events will be available soon, including how you can attend!