For the past six week, people from across Greater Manchester have been taking part in the Changing Futures Community Reporter Training Programme.

PVM have partnered with Greater Manchester Combined Authority to deliver a series of eight workshops as part of the project. So far we have covered the core aspects of community reporting, and people have started to gather and upload stories to the Community Reporter Website. 

The end goal of the project is to gather stories of peoples lived experiences of multiple disadvantage, specifically from people whose voices are often not listened to. GMCA plans to use these voices to improve the range of support services available to communities across Greater Manchester. In the process, people will be upskilled in Community Reporting and by the end of the project will be experienced enough to conduct their own story gathering projects in their own communities.

Over the course of the first 4 sessions, participants developed a basic understanding of community reporting. They learned interview techniques, digital literacy skills and explored their understanding of ‘multiple disadvantage’ in the context of their own lives experiences. 

“Being around the team and learning – it’s good to open up“

A group member reflecting on what they’ve enjoyed in the sessions.

For the past two weeks the group have been out gathering stories in their own communities – take a look at the Community Reporter website to view some of them!

“There’s not just me going through what I am going through”

A group member reflecting on what they’ve learnt during the sessions.

For the remaining four sessions, the group will review the stories they have gathered, picking out the key themes and learning points. They will then learn how these findings can be shared more widely and used as tools for creating positive social change – hopefully putting these techniques into practice.

Stay tuned for more updates on the Changing Futures Community Reporting Project!

In a world of increasing uncertainty and complexity, foresight and future thinking techniques can act as a key tool in the innovation of policy development, bringing citizens and decision-makers together to define solutions about our shared futures (Fox, 2020). As part of EUARENAS we’ve been working with social media signals to explore the future of democracy across Europe.

Social media provides a window into current debates, social issues and topics pertinent to communities. Whilst the presentation of such content is not necessarily a reflection of society, and like traditional media representations is more of a refracted view on current trends rather than a mirror image, it is still a valuable source material for understanding society. Social media accounts, particularly those associated with civil society and social movements can provide us with signs of what issues and debates are pertinent to people (as opposed to institutions) and simultaneously offer a glimpse of emerging trends in the social sphere. Such content can be useful for hypothesising over the future of our world.   

The results of this work are still being analysed and will feed into an insight briefing that we will launch later in the year about the future of democracy across Europe… however, we’ve turned the methodology we used for this work into a handy toolkit to help researchers, practitioners and policymakers work with social media content to explore the future of topics pertinent to their worlds.

This toolkit uses social media posts combined with elements of the Delphi method and policy stress testing approaches to explore future trends in society and the policy environments needed for potential future scenarios. The toolkit is underpinned by theoretical and conceptual framings of foresight practices. However, they are presented in a manner than enables them to be practically applied and implemented as a means of engaging experts from across policy, practice and research in conversations about the future.  Included within the toolkit are step-by-step instructions that outline how the research tasks can be implemented, alongside templates and tips. 

Our first Community Reporter catch-up of the year is set to take place in March and you’re invited!

We host two Community Reporter catch-ups each year and they’re a great way to meet other Community Reporters and learn about what people have been up to in the wider movement. Whether you’ve attended before, or are completely new to Community Reporting – join us for a catch up and a natter.

When is it happening? Monday 27th March 2023 from 12:00pm – 1:00pm

How can I get involved? Sign up for a free ticket through Eventbrite below

Who else will be there? You’ll meet people from the PVM team, Community Reporters from the wider movement and people who are curious to find out more!

Sign up for your free ticket through eventbrite.

We’ll see you soon!

EUARENAS has been investigating how cities and urban spaces can support democracy. Specifically, the work has revolved around exploring how participation and deliberation in democracy and decision-making can be increased, and how voices and communities who are excluded from such arenas can be more actively included.

Over the next few months we will be working across Europe to create ‘visions’ for how cities and urban spaces can better include residents in decision-making and local democracy. We are looking for an Illustrator/Designer to work with us in May/June 2023 to bring these visions to life in a poster format.

Full details can be found by downloading the brief below. A fee of £1500.00 is available for this work.

To apply, email Hayley (hayley@peoplesvoicemedia.co.uk) with the following by 5pm on 28th February:

• 250 – 500 words OR up to 3 minutes audio or video file, about yourself and relevant skills/experience
• 2 – 5 examples of your work

We will let everyone know the outcome of their application by 17th March 2023.

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