Co-Production Collective has teamed up with People’s Voice Media and the Community Reporter network to explore the question – What is the value of co-production? 

Over the next few months, we will be gathering people’s experiences of co-production and then working with the storytellers to identify what key changes co-production processes bring to services, research and policy. 

Sounds interesting. Tell me a bit more…

We are looking for people from across the UK who have been involved in co-producing services, research and/or policy to share their stories with our team of Community Reporters. We hope to gather a mixture for stories – both positive experiences and negative ones – from different types of co-production projects and activities. 

You may be a person with living or lived experience of a topic or service, a researcher, a policymaker, a service manager, someone working in service delivery, a co-production practitioner, a resident, a tenant, a strategic leader… or any other role within co-production that you can imagine. 

We are looking for people who are happy to attend a 30 minute online, 1-2-1 storytelling session with one of our Community Reporters and have their story captured as a 10 – 15 minute video or audio recordingduring this session. The whole stories will be shared publicly on the Community Reporter website (https://communityreporter.net/co-production-stories) and an extract from your story will be added to this playlist (unless otherwise requested by the interviewee).

The ideas and insights from the stories will be used as the basis of a report and other materials that will seek to answer the question – What is the value of co-production?

How can I get involved?

To get involved, please express your interest here on this form by the 18th May 2022.

This short form helps us to understand who wants to share their story and what their story will be about. We hope to be able to offer everyone who wants to share a story, the opportunity to tell their story. You can also withdraw your participation and consent to be involved at any time pre, during or post storytelling activity – You are in control of what you share with us. 

However, if we are inundated with responses we may have to (a) hold some group sessions or (b) select the most representative and diverse expressions of interests from those that we received. 

The time commitment will be 30 minutes and we will be issuing ‘thank you’ e-gift vouchers to everyone who takes part. 

We also have a budget to cover any expenses/support costs (e.g., Internet costs, Personal Assistant support to attend the session) that you will incur through taking part. You can let us know about these on the expression of interest form. To claim the expenses, you will need to complete a short expenses form and send us receipts of the expenses – our team will send instructions about this and support you to do it. 

What happens when I’ve completed the form?

1. Within 2 weeks, one of the team will get in touch about your expression of interest. 

• Within 2 weeks, one of the team will get in touch with you and arrange a time for your 1-2-1 storytelling session. These will take place between April and May 2022, and our team will contact you during this timeframe.

• In April or May 2022 – you’ll also be invited to take part in some online workshops we are organising in June and July 2022, in which we will decide together what the key findings are from your stories and how they demonstrate the value of co-production. Payment will be offered for these workshops to people who are attending in an unwaged capacity and expenses/support costs will also be covered. 

• In July 2022 – there will also be some public events (in-person and online) that we will invite you to, at which we will share what we’ve learned from the stories with the wider public. These events will look at what can create the ‘right’ conditions for co-production to be successful in services, policy and research.

• By the end of September 2022 – we will have produced a short report that summarises the key learning from the stories and have edited all the story extracts. We’ll send you links to them when they are ready!

If you want any more details about this work before getting involved, are experiencing difficulties with filling in the expression of interest, or if there is anything we can do to help you in completing an expression of interest please email Hayley on hayley@peoplesvoicemedia.co.uk

Over the last few months, People’s Voice Media and the EUARENAS project have been using Community Reporting to gather people’s experiences of democracy in towns and cities across Europe.

Earlier in the project, the team identified different case studies that were examples of ways in which citizens can be more involved in decision-making and their local democracies. The case studies ranged from participatory budgeting initiatives to asset-based community development role outs.

The case studies that we have been a part of are a citizens’ jury project (find out more about what a citizens’ jury is here) that took place in Galway, Ireland called PeopleTalk and The Deal from Wigan, UK – an initiative that aims to redefine the relationship between residents and the Council. With help from the facilitators behind the PeopleTalk project and our colleagues at UEF, we delivered an online session for members of the citizen jury. During this session, jurors were able to catch-up with one another, share their reflections on the project and talk about what has happened since. The jurors helped us to piece together a set of key themes and findings from their stories.

In Wigan, we delivered some in-person and an online storytelling session specifically for residents. At these sessions, residents shared their various experiences of being a resident of Wigan, what aspects of the Deal they have encountered, how the values of The Deal worked in practice and much more. The spaces created a chance for residents to connect with one another, have their voices heard and discuss the similarities and differences in their experiences.

The stories we have gathered that we can share with you publicly, will be online here soon and we’ll be writing up a feature article on the Community Reporter website with the findings from the stories in the next month – we’ll let you know when it goes live! The findings from the stories will be combined with some desk-based research we’ve done earlier in the project on these two case studies and with insights from some focus groups we are doing in the coming months. This combined research (desk-based, stories and focus groups) should give us a full picture of the case studies and enable us to identify key insights into how residents can be more involved in their local area in terms of democracy and decision-making. We’ll be sharing these fuller reports later in the project.

Last week PVM took part in a two day training workshop in Vilnius, Lithuania as part of the CONTINUE E+ Project.

Young mentors from across Europe came together – including Georgia, a Project Worker with PVM – to learn about mentoring and social actions. The training was facilitated by Active Youth and Artemisszio and included a range of interactive activities that helped broaden the mentor’s understanding of how to develop social actions with young people. The workshop consisted of step by step activities which helped them explore social issues, identify what impact these issues have, then produce their own social actions to combat the negative effects.

Hate speech, inequality in the workplace and discrimination towards refugees were all topics that the mentor’s explored. They even got the chance to put their ideas into practice, demonstrating their social actions in Vilnius town centre! The social actions ranged from street theatre, flyer campaigns and public discussions and helped the mentors to gain valuable experience, which they can now pass on to the young people they are working with in their communities.

The next stage of the CONTINUE Project will put the learnings of the Lithuania training into practice. In the case of PVM, Georgia will be working with young people from Gorse Hill Studios in Trafford. They will work with Georgia to develop their own social action project, based on the findings of the Community Reporting sessions and Conversation of Change event that they have been involved with earlier in the project.

We’re really looking forward to seeing what emerges from the next stage of the project, remember to stay tuned for updates!

Since September People’s Voice Media have been working on a project with volunteers and community members from across Manchester. In February an online evaluation session took place in which people fed back their experiences working on the project.

The project has been delivered in collaboration with Manchester Local Care Organisation and a variety of VCSE organisations from across the city. Local health development coordinators from MLCO have helped support representatives from the VCSE organisations both in and out of the training sessions. Last week HDCs and team members from MLCO came together to provide feedback on their experiences of the project, reflecting on the aims of the project. Below are the key themes and questions that emerged in the evaluation session:

To utilise the knowledge & expertise of VCSE organisations working in Manchester neighborhoods

• The people involved in the project reflected the communities that need more representation
• The range of VCSE orgs involved in the project meant a diverse range of stories emerged
• The trainings provided opportunities to build connections between Manchester VCSE’s

To train staff & volunteers as Community Reporters

• Trust & confidence levels were impacted by the amount of organisations and representatives in the training sessions
• The practical aspects of the training helped to solidify people’s learning
• People would benefit from learning how Community Reporting could be used in different contexts outside of the project

To build relationships & develop trust between communities & healthcare professionals

• The trainings offered a chance to build relationships between VCSE organisations
• The payment offered for taking part in the project strengthened links between MLCO and community organisations as people feel their contributions are valued
• Difficult to measure cause and effect in terms of developing relationships and building trust in this context

To gather, curate & share stories of people’s experiences during the pandemic to bring about positive change in local communities

• A series of films have been produced as a result of the project including voices from various communities within Manchester reflecting on their experiences of the pandemic
• Confidence levels increased in some of the people who took part in the Community Reporter training sessions
• Future potential for discussions around the content that has been created

Develop trust in public health messaging (Questions raised by MLCO)

• How could we use lived experience stories in health messaging?
• How can we adjust health messaging to reflect the complexities of people’s lives?
• How do we understand from a community perspective what matters?

The evaluation session marked the end of the project and was a great opportunity to regroup and reflect on people’s experiences. We hope the people involved in the project continue to use Community Reporting in their work in the future, and look forward to seeing how the stories gathered continue to generate conversation around the impact of the pandemic on Manchester’s communities.

Over the last few months, PVM has been working with a consortium of European partners on the CONTINUE Project. Co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union, the project has set out to gather the stories of young people across Europe, specifically relating to their experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic.

PVM trained the project partners in Community Reporter methodologies so that they (along with PVM) could host story gathering workshops followed by story curation sessions with marginalised young people in order to garner insights from their lived experience stories. These insights have now been collated and put together in a series of reports, one for each partner.

The findings of these reports are currently being discussed in a series of Conversation of Change events in each of the partner countries, and the findings from these will be taken forward into the next stages of the project, as well as an online pan-European Conversation of Change event, which you can register for here.

In the meantime, you can download each of the English language reports as a PDF using the following links:

• UK insight report by PVM
• German insight report by CRN
• Lithuanian insight report by Active Youth
• Hungarian insight report by Artemisszió
• Italian insight report by Per Esempio
• Danish insight report by Crossing Borders
• Portuguese insight report by FAJDP

About the CONTINUE Project

Connecting European Youth through Storytelling

CONTINUE will support young people suffering from social exclusion to tackle the specific challenges of post-COVID times in terms of staying connected and integrated into European communities. 

CONTINUE will directly involve young people with migrant and other marginal backgrounds in the project activities in order to enhance the interaction between individuals, their communities and the pan-European levels. .

CONTINUE will be realised by a Consortium of 8 NGOs working with marginal youth groups, experienced in youth education, community-based activities, policy recommendations, working with an extended network of organisations from different sectors.