Back in October PVM joined project partners online for the kickoff meeting for SCRED.

SCRED (Sport Community Report ED) employs the potential of Sport and Community Reporting to empower youth workers in Europe and Africa in stimulating the recognition and use of Sport in its quality as agent of community participation and approach to address the problems and needs of society and, particularly, disadvantaged young people. Sport has a social, economic and educational value as well as presents a substantial potential as agent of inclusion for disadvantaged groups. Sport is widely employed at the level of grassroots youth and civil society groups as an instrument to gather people together for reflecting and acting on common challenges and concerns. In this context, the project employs the methodology of Community Reporting as an instrument for empowering the bottom-up role of social aggregator played by Sport for communities and particularly for disadvantaged categories of youth.

During the kickoff meeting PVM delivered a presentation about Community Reporting and partners took part in group activities to get up to speed on what the methodology involves. Partners learnt about dialogue interviews and snapshot stories and the importance of working with people’s lived experience. We also discussed how Community Reporting will be used in the context of the project and explored the proposed training outline which is set to be completed by Christmas this year.

In March next year the project will deliver a training course in Kampala in Uganda where youth workers will be trained in the practice of Community Reporting, they will also learn how to pass these skills onto young sports leaders in their local communities. This training will feed into a youth exchange where young people who are active in Sport will be trained as Community Reporters who will then carry out a phase of local activity where they will collect community interviews.

Stay tuned for more updates about the project!

Since September PVM have been working with Gorse Hill Studios – A Youth Arts Charity based in Stretford, Greater Manchester – on a new project focused on gathering young people’s experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic.

COVID-19 was a challenging time for many young people, leading to an increase in financial, material and health related vulnerabilities. Existing connections to the social care system, institutions, job opportunities and vital support networks were strained, contributing to a decrease in social integration. This decline in connectivity was particularly difficult for communities who need support with developing digital communication skills. The CONTINUE project aims to support young people who may be experiencing social exclusion, through helping them to tackle the challenges of living in a world impacted by COVID-19. Activities are centered around keeping people connected and integrated into European communities. There are a total of 8 NGOs involved in the project, with expertise in sectors ranging from youth work, education, community-work and policy recommendation as well as an extended network of organisations from across Europe.

The initial stage of the project involved delivering a series of community reporter training session with young people. For PVM in the UK this happened at Gorse Hill Studios in Stretford, Greater Manchester. Young people learnt storytelling techniques and developed digital skills before recording their own lived experience stories reflecting on their experiences of the pandemic. Each young person’s story varied with some exploring the negative impacts such as feelings of isolation and loneliness and others highlighting the opportunity it provided them to focus on developing hobbies and interests. You can listen to the stories recorded by the young people in the UK and across Europe on the Institute of Community Reporters website.

In November, when the story gathering process is complete, partners will carry out a series on knowledge curation and mobilisation sessions. Young people will analyse the contents of the stories, picking out key themes and learnings which will then feed into a series of Conversation of Change events. These will take place in the localities where story gathering has taken place and invite the young people, local leaders and members of the wider community to collaborate and discuss what findings have emerged from the stories.

Stay tuned for project updates and to find out more about future activities!

Co-Engage (an Erasmus+ project) was a cross sectoral project addressing the intersection of the key competence of Lifelong Learning through its methodology and partnership. By exploring the diversity of approaches of co-creation such as entrepreneurship-building, active citizenship, environmental quality, social inclusion, digital literacy, local policies, formal and non-formal education etc.

One of our key deliverables for the project was an e-book of co-creation best practices from across Europe but, at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, we decided as a consortium to produce two e-books, with one focussing on co-creation practices that emerged from lockdowns across the continent.

The e-book’s are now available to download using the below links.

Citizens as Co-Designer: Practices on how to engage citizens in community building

COVID Responses: Citizens as actors in a global crisis

COVID-19 has greatly impacted on the wellbeing of communities in South and West Yorkshire. This project looks at health inequalities with a particular focus on the disproportionate impact that coronavirus is having on our BAME communities. (This work may include other priorities and look at how children and young people, the homeless, those in contact with the criminal justice system, the LGBT community, and those suffering domestic abuse have been affected, depending on local information.)

To explore this further and see how creativity can support people in these communities, People’s Voice Media and Creative Minds have partnered on a collaborative project, with funding from the Association of Mental Health Providers, using digital storytelling to listen to the voices of people in Barnsley, South Kirklees and Wakefield. We trained people from the area as Community Reporters in order to gather stories from others about their wellbeing throughout the pandemic, and how creativity has helped them. These stories of lived experience were then examined by the Community Reporters in a series of sense-making sessions in order to pull out common themes, which have been used to make recommendations for developing creative mental health interventions with local communities. The insight report produced focuses on the insights from the stories and what can be done with the learnings from them.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had many people asking what wellbeing means to them, what stops them being well, and what keeps them healthy. As part of a collaborative project taking place in Calderdale, West Yorkshire, People’s Voice Media has worked with residents and people who work in North Halifax to better understand their health needs.

We trained people from North Halifax as Community Reporters in order to gather stories from others about their health and wellbeing, and what really matters to the people in the area. These stories of lived experience were then examined by the Community Reporters in a series of sense-making sessions in order to pull out common themes, which have been used to make recommendations for commissioning health and wellbeing initiatives in the area. These findings were put into an insight report, which focuses on the insights from the stories and what can be done with the learnings from them. It is now available for download, demonstrating the stark health inequalities that exist and have been exacerbated by the pandemic.