Last month we launched a brand new project over in Yorkshire called #softandfluffy.

Partnering with Creative Minds and the University of Huddersfield, the Community Reporter movement will be working with participants from Creative Minds projects across Yorkshire to gather stories about the role that creativity plays in people’s lives. As part of this project, we will be delivering training sessions that people can attend to become a Community Reporter and learn how to tell and capture stories as well as running storytelling sessions at which you can come and share your stories. All of the stories gathered will go onto www.communityreporter.netand become part of our online storytelling community.

With the stories gathered, the Community Reporters will work alongside Creative Minds and the University of Huddersfield to pick out some findings from them and use these to help us understanding how people value creativity and what impact it has on their lives. We will package this learning as short report and edit the stories into a film that will be shared publicly. 

At the end of the project we will run a workshop that will take key learning from the stories and use it to support health and social care services to think about how creative activities can support people wellbeing.

Watch this space, to see how the project progresses! 

Earlier this month we worked with education professionals from a set of Spanish universities to train them in Community Reporting methodologies as part of a 5-Day Erasmus+ funded project. This 5-Day programme provided the attendees with an introduction to Community Reporting and how it can be used to support the gathering, curating and mobilising of stories of lived experience. As part of the programme, participants took part in storytelling activities, developed digital skills, learned about story analysis and became Silver Members of the Institute of Community Reporters.

During the training, the participants focused on gathering stories about how education professionals used digital technologies and the roles they played in their lives. Using our dialogue interviewing methodology they collected 8 stories and analysed them using the ICR’s framework. From this, the group produced a short report and edited video based on the findings.

The project they are a part of is a learning exchange in which participants explore different digital practices and think about how this learning can support their work with older people. They will be producing a book (in English) on their learnings and our practice of Community Reporting will feature in it… so watch this space!

For now, anyone who speaks or reads Spanish, can download the report they produce during their training below or have a listen to the stories in their edited video here.

As part of the Institute of Community Reporters 1st Annual Conference – From the margins to the mainstream: Putting people’s voice at the heart of decision-making processes – we are pleased to announce we are running a 1-Day symposium focused on co-creation in public services.

Co-creating public services with stories of lived experience: A 1-Day Symposium
Thursday 6th June 2018 / 9:45am – 4:30pm / Engine Room @ The People’s History Museum, New Ct St, Manchester, M3 3ER.

Join us and learn about the practical implementation of the Community Reporting methodology in the co-creation of public services across Europe through a mixture of case study presentations, participatory workshops and panel discussions. The symposium programme will include:

• A case study on how the Making It Real framework has used insight storytelling, and a practical storytelling activity delivered by Community Reporters from TLAP and the National Co-production Advisory Group (NCAG).
• An interactive story curation session led by the Our Voices project.
• A workshop exploring how Conversation of Change events can be used to co-design policy recommendations run by the VOICITYS partnership.
• A collaborative keynote quick-fire, inspiring and provocative talks on topics pertinent to co-creation in public services led by the CoSIE consortium

Be a part of this dialogue and sharing event, and bring your experience of working with people’s voice and stories of lived experience with you! This event is being organised collaboratively between People’s Voice Media, the Institute of Community Reporters and the Our Voices, VOICITYS and COSIE projects.

Over the last year, this is the question that the VOICITYS project has been asking people across Europe to explore what life is like in diverse communities. Working in neighbourhoods in Berlin, Budapest, Salford and Sassari, the VOICITYS partnership have been gathering Community Reporter stories with residents and interviews with local and national decision-makers to find out about people’s perceptions of diversity, what diverse spaces look like, how diversity is governed and the policies related to this. Through combining traditional social science methods and story curation approaches, we have produce a set of core findings on these topics

With the results of this research, we’d like to invite you to a Conversation of Change event that will use the findings as the basis for a discussion about the priority areas for diverse communities across Europe. People from participating countries – UK, Germany, Hungary and Italy – will come together to listen to different perspectives and share their own experiences. As part of this participatory workshop, you will help us to co-create a set of key proposals to inform pan-European policy around diversity.

What does diversity mean to you? A Conversation of Change Event
Tuesday 26th March 2019 / 2pm – 4pm / 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.

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.