Just before Christmas I was lucky enough to go to Valladolid in Spain to get together with our European partners on the Narratives of Impact project. Valladolid is charming old University city, and it houses one of the partners and the host for this transnational partnership meeting, Fundación INTRAS.

Fundación INTRAS is a non-profit organisation dedicated to research and intervention in mental health in the region of Castilla y León, Spain. 

The meeting was held so we could review the video guides that we have produced for the final toolkit and decide on final decisions for the final edit. But we also had the opportunity to –

• meet with stakeholders who are linking into the project 
• explore more creative storytelling activities 
• look at Quality Indicators that help us have a framework to measure success against.

One stakeholder is Abi Horsfield from Collective Encounters, UK. She brought some creative energy along and shared some different creative activities and methods that can be used to help measure impact. Encouraging ‘active listening’ with an activity called Concentric Circles this helped us to really consider the questions that we ask and how well we listen.

Elisha Chiesa from the Consorzio Comunità Brianza in Italy, showed us an interesting presentation about the important EPPICA project that she is working on. And we also heard from Maria from Zamora Rehabilitation Centre outside Valladolid, who showed us a film about how they have been using lived experience storytelling to support their work.

The energy and interest from these stakeholders have emboldened the project and demonstrated how relevant the toolkit and video guides that we are producing are. It’s great to have feedback and interest from other proactive organisations that are doing such important work.

As well as having the contributions from stakeholders we also explored the best way to use Quality Indicators and how to embed this when measuring impact using storytelling. We looked at what specific Quality Indicators each partner organisation would use to measure success against helping each organisation to build a Quality Indicator framework in which to measure success against.

Over the 2 days in the daytime, we were busy being developing creative and robust ways to measure impact, in the evening we were entertained by the fantastic Christmas lights that were throughout the streets of the city and were all lit by solar led lighting. This added a touch of festive magic to the whole experience without adding to climate emergency. What a delight.

Kath Peters – PVM Narratives of Impact project manager

@COSV, @CRN, @digitalstorytelling, @erasmusplus, @INTRAS, @livedexperience, @measuringimpact, @narrativesofimpact, @SNDE, #communityreporting, #livedexperiencestorytelling, @collectiveencounters

Over the past couple of years we’ve been working with Gordon Moody to gather people’s experiences of overcoming gambling addictions. The team at Gordon Moody are dedicated to providing support and treatment for gambling addiction, and want to support people reclaim and rebuild their lives through recovery in a safe, supported environment.

The stories we’ve gathered explore the impact that gambling has on people’s lives, what supports people through the addiction and what people have learned along the way. Our team and Gordon Moody hope that these honest, open and very real experiences of gambling addiction help to reduce the stigma surrounding this specific form of addiction and ultimately enable more people to reach out for support when they need it.

We really appreciate people’s time and bravery in coming forward and sharing their experiences with us. Take a look at this playlist of extracts from people’s stories to find out more…

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated existing inequalities across communities in the UK and beyond. As part of the CONTINUE Project, (a pan-European consortium of eight NGOs, co-funded by the European Union’s Erasmus+ programme) People’s Voice Media has published a policy and practice briefing, which details specifically how young people living in Trafford, Greater Manchester have been adversely affected by the global crisis.

Young people in the area are experiencing challenges with their health and wellbeing, disengagement with education and are being further disadvantaged by poverty and disability due to lack of local support. As the briefing demonstrates, at present there is significant pressure on local support provision and this is leading to young people not being able to access the support they need. Furthermore, young people’s voices (particularly those facing varying degrees of marginalisation) are not regularly present in the political or decision-making sphere on a local level.

The evidence that has contributed to this briefing includes lived experiences of young people from Trafford, interviews with local policy- and decision-makers, learnings from the application of social actions in the local area, and a knowledge exchange sessions attended by a range of local actors and stakeholders. This briefing presents specific recommendations for policy and practice intended to have long-term positive effects on young people and relates to policy areas around mental health, political engagement, and safe spaces. They demonstrate what can support young people and their communities during COVID-19 recovery, while simultaneously increasing their socio-political engagement in local governance. And although the recommendations have been written with Trafford in mind, they have the potential to be rolled out and applied at a national level.

The CONTINUE Project has also developed a pan-European policy and practice briefing with recommendations at the European level, which can be downloaded here.

We are pleased to announce that the Eventbrite booking links for the Community Reporting Online Session and Coaching Programme as part of the Not Another Co-Production project are now ready! 

The full listings are detailed below. Please book quickly as places are limited. All sessions are on Zoom and links will be provided upon booking. 

Online Sessions – These sessions are open to anyone living and or working in West Midlands

Audio recording & audio editing – #NACP Workshop

Friday 3^rd March 2023, 10:00am – 11:30am

Video recording & video editing – #NACP Workshop

Friday 10^th March 2023, 10:00am – 11:30am

Digital Tools For Co-Production #NACP Workshop

Tuesday 14th March 2023, 10:00am – 11:30am

CAPE is the Consortium Against Pain Inequalities, and they are working with People’s Voice Media on an important new project. 

The CAPE team is investigating whether exposure to adverse childhood experiences contributes to higher levels of chronic pain in the most deprived communities and the consequences of this. The interaction between the CAPE project, People’s Voice Media and the Community Reporter network will explore how lived experience stories can be used with the research.

As someone living with chronic long term pain (CLTP), I’ve found it hard to get the right holistic support and understanding for many years, so it’s wonderful to be part of this initiative. Through people’s stories about living with CLTP, we hope to help the wider health, social care, housing and Department of Work and Pensions systems that come into contact with people like me. It’s vital that these agencies understand what it’s like to live with CLTP, and what impact this has on our lives. Additionally, the dialogues and recommendations will cover what needs to change and what such changes will do for people like us.

Combining the CAPE project and our work here at People’s Voice Media is central to what I believe in. By retaining and highlighting the personal aspects of real people’s experiences, we can start to change society so that it is truly inclusive and inequalities are eradicated.

So far, we’ve had two Community Reporting workshops and we’ve collected 4  stories from Advisory Members connected with the CAPE project, plus one other person living with CTLP. We have a sense-making workshop scheduled for 6th December, when we’ll have a deeper look at what people have said, and what we can do to recommend changes that will enable people to live good lives. Here is a small selection of what people have been sharing so far:

“People need to be more tolerant. They also need to realise we are not the minority. There’s tons of us, people just don’t talk about it. ….. We judge people and how able they are through their health. And it’s apparently a badge of honour. If you’re healthy….. We need to educate on invisible conditions, but also on all the conditions that people face. And people need to be educated rather than say this is going to be something that’s going to cost me in the workplace to deal with. We need to realise how much we should value and incorporate people in the workplace that have challenges.”

“There’s a lot of fear for not being believed.”

“It’s not necessarily that the pain is for the same diagnosis, but there’s a lot of similarities and a lot of frustrations people are living with.”

“I wish that health professionals and allied health professionals would actually just listen and think. Does this person need some other kind of support as well? And treat you as a whole person.” 

People’s Voice Media will be working closely with the CAPE team to explore what the next steps need to be, and an update on the project will be shared with you all in the new year. 

Isaac Samuels, Community Reporting Lead

You can find out more about the CAPE project and other similar research projects here: https://www.ukri.org/news/new-data-hub-and-research-into-chronic-pain/