The Co-Production Collective wanted to explore people’s lived experiences of co-production within health and social care research. Working with People’s Voice Media, they used Community Reporting – a pan-European storytelling movement that supports people to use digital technologies to tell their own stories – to capture a series of dialogue interviews with people who identified as ‘co-producers’. These co-producers come from different sectors, work on different projects, and participate in different ways in co-production.

The key findings that emerged from this piece of work are:

• Co-production should be approached as a practice governed by a set of values, rather than an exact science or process.
• Co-production can bring real value to research projects and be key to ensuring that services are more effective and better meet the needs of the people who access them.
• Co-production can be challenging but with support and encouragement, embracing continual and shared learning and by creating spaces for co-producers to connect, barriers can be overcome.

During the coronavirus pandemic, North Kirklees has suffered a very high number of deaths compared to the other areas of the South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Trust. In some cases, two members of the same family have lost their lives to COVID-19, and the wider repercussions on physical and mental health have been numerous.

Between September and December 2020, People’s Voice Media, the Trust, and other local partners, with funding from NHS Charities Together, worked with a group of people from North Kirklees in order to gather stories of lived experience from affected BAME communities in the area, using the Community Reporting methodology. We trained these individuals as Community Reporters and, as part of this training, they have learned different storytelling techniques to enable them to share their own stories and capture stories from across their peer networks. Working with People’s Voice Media, they have curated these stories into a set of findings that we have laid out in an insight briefing which you can download below.

The report presents a picture of an area struggling under a disproportionate amount of bereavement and hardship where, as one storyteller puts it, “everyone is grieving at home on their own.”

In Calderdale, coronavirus has further exacerbated existing health inequalities. Local insight and data has illustrated that a range of socio-economic factors that impact on people’s health and wellbeing have worsened during the pandemic. To understand these issues further, People’s Voice Media has been working with local organisations and people to use Community Reporting to gather people’s lived experiences of life during the pandemic and explore the impact of it on their wider health and wellbeing. 

Between September and December 2020, we have worked with a group of people from Central Halifax who are from the communities most affected by COVID-19, with a specific focus on engaging with different BAME communities in the area. We trained these individuals as Community Reporters and as part of this training, they have learned different storytelling techniques to enable them to share their own stories as audio and video recordings, and capture stories from across their peer networks. Working with People’s Voice Media, they have curated these stories into a core set of findings that are have been evidenced in an insight briefing. Key topics within the stories include systemic racism, faith and spirituality, outdoors and the environment, creativity, isolation, advocacy, support services, and the political and global impact. The insight briefing sets out the key findings derived from these stories and links this learning to a set of recommendations aimed at supporting the commissioning of health and wellbeing interventions for the area.

Back in September People’s Voice Media came together with representatives from the European partners collaborating on Co-Engage to discuss project progress and share ideas on co creation. The meeting took place in The Quaker Meeting House in Liverpool and proved to be a productive couple of days in terms of developing the project.

Stakeholders from Stockport council and Manchester Access Project also came and presented the framework for the projects they have been working on.

You can read more on the meeting over on the Co-Engage project website.

For quite some time now we’ve been part of the Voicitys project, which has now come to an end. As a pilot project, it aimed to “strengthen social dialogue between residents, stakeholders and policy makers in diverse urban neighbourhoods.”

The project studies four diverse European neighbourhoods: Berlin, Budapest, Manchester and Sassari through three main activities: 1) collecting and curating stories of citizens through Community Reporting (80 citizen stories) 2) collecting and analysing stakeholders’ views through semi-structured interviews (45 interviews); 3) comparing the results of the two methods and elaborating a series of policy recommendations through participative workshops and consensus meetings.

Voicitys.eu

As Voicitys was a pilot project, it was testing a complex methodology and allowed the team of transnational partners to identify problems and make recommendations. Part of the project was to put all of these findings into a handbook so that other diverse neighbourhoods can benefit from the methodology. This can be downloaded here and details the methodology and findings in full.