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.

A #Bit of Company Chat is a talk show with a difference brought to you by Camerados and People’s Voice Media. Think ‘The Last Leg’ meets ‘The Graham Norton Show’, with a bit of ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’ and ‘The Big Breakfast’ thrown in for good measure and you might be somewhere close… in truth, we’re not too sure how it’s all going to turn out, but we do know we will have fun making it!

For five weeks starting at the end of January, we’ll be live-streaming twice a week for about 40-minutes (ish) and chatting with folk from the Camerados movement and beyond, about the issues that really matter to them. We’ll cover topics from creativity and the great outdoors, through to systemic racism and we’ll be looking for you folk at home to be throwing your 2 pence worth in on social media as well. The shows are based on the ideas that have come from stories gathered as a part of the ‘Emerging Futures’ project and we wanted to open-up the conversation with you all about them.

Join us, get involved and let’s talk about the stuff that matters to us!

You can watch live on YouTube via the links below… or Camerados Facebook Page and Twitter Feed, People’s Voice Media’s Facebook Page and Lankelly Chase’s Twitter Feed. 

12:00pm Tuesday 26th Jan 2021 / A #Bit of Company Chat – Episode 1 – YouTube Link

7:00pm Tuesday 26th Jan 2021 / A #Bit of Company Chat – Episode 2 – YouTube Link

12:00pm Tuesday 2nd Feb 2021 / A #Bit of Company Chat – Episode 3 – YouTube Link

7:00pm Tuesday 2nd Feb 2021 / A #Bit of Company Chat – Episode 4 – YouTube Link

12:00pm Tuesday 9th Feb 2021 / A #Bit of Company Chat – Episode 5 – YouTube Link

7:00pm Tuesday 9th Feb 2021 / A #Bit of Company Chat – Episode 6 – YouTube Link

12:00pm Tuesday 16th Feb 2021 / A #Bit of Company Chat – Episode 7 – YouTube Link

7:00pm Tuesday 16th Feb 2021 / A #Bit of Company Chat – Episode 8 – YouTube Link

12:00pm Tuesday 23rd Feb 2021 / A #Bit of Company Chat – Episode 9 – YouTube Link

7:00pm Tuesday 23rd Feb 2021 / A #Bit of Company Chat – Episode 10 – YouTube Link

Last week we teamed-up with the Italian pilot in the CoSIE project to deliver their local summative knowledge exchange that look at what they had learned during their pilot and what they were going to do next.

The Italian pilot has been focused on reducing childhood obesity in Reggio-Emilia and have been working with different health care professionals, families and other wider stakeholders to co-design an App aimed at addressing this issue. This summative knowledge exchange took the format of a ‘Living Lab’ and used different ‘boundary objects’ created during the pilot as stimuli for reflective discussion, as well as linking this learning to future activities.

In the event we explored ideas about how to launch the App and how language would play a key role in connecting it with families. Learnings from previous engagement activities with families about the words they used to describe health and wellbeing were used as a basis for this discussion. We also reflected back on the different co-creation activities that had been incorporated into the pilot. Using a stakeholder map from the beginning of the pilot, attendees of the event identified a range of activities they had been involved in. They are now using these on a matrix document to evaluated the impact of them.

A key part of the event, was reflecting on the role of the Consulting Committee in the project. The Consulting Committee is a group of cross-sector professionals who have been part of the co-creation activities in the project and this innovation has helped to breakdown silo working and thinking, thus promoting collaboration and expertise-sharing. The attendees of the summative knowledge exchange used Flinga as a way of organising their thoughts on the Committee and how this approach (or group of people) can be used in future to drive forward social innovations in health care in Reggio-Emilia.

The People’s Voice Media provided the online facilitation that supported this exchange and also captured some people’s experiences of the pilot via a storytelling activity. What we loved about this event, is that it was using ‘evaluation’ not as an end point, but as a driver for on-going change, learning and development. So despite it being called as ‘summative knowledge exchange’ due to the pilot and CoSIE project approaching their end, the session was focus on what is going to happen next, which we believe is key to maintaining and improving public services.

Community Reporting is a digital storytelling movement that started in 2007. At its essence, is people using digital tools such as smartphones, tablets and now Zoom to gather lived experience stories from people that they know. Using the Internet, digital media, events and much more, the Community Reporter movement shares these stories with other people, groups and organisations who are in a position to make positive social change.

Fundamental to Community Reporting is the belief that stories are vehicles that build bridges between people and support common understanding. The Community Reporters gather stories on all kinds of topics from across different countries. Take Patrick’s story for example. In this story he shares his experience of volunteering during the pandemic. You can also look at aar0nn’s story about their visit to the Poppy Trail in the Remembrance Woodland area at Rozelle Park or listen to the story Mistarareunite captured in Germany about a Computer Science student’s experiences of physical distancing measures. You also might want to hear what vanessa123 says about her experiences of with social workers or Shaked’s story about applying for asylum.

The Community Reporter website currently has over 5700 stories of people’s experiences of world and here at People’s Voice Media we are completely committed to working with our movement to use the knowledge in these stories to create social change. We do this in various ways, such as writing policy papers (like this one on re-humanising public services), creating short video edits on specific topics (like this one aimed at opening up a conversation about FGM), releasing playlists of extracts on specific topics that share different perspectives (like these on co-production) and much more.

But we know that none of this would be possible without our Community Reporters and their stories. So as part of Make A Difference Day 2020, we want to say a heartfelt thank you to everyone who has shared a story with us over the years and have played their part – one story at a time – in making our world a better place to be!

Digital Collaborations was the final event of Doing It With Others: Why Proper Collaboration Really Matters, the ICR’s second annual conference and, with circumstances being what they are, it couldn’t have been more apt.

Held as an online knowledge exchange, the event was a chance to talk about one of the European projects on which PVM is a partner: Co-Engage, although naturally the talk also turned to the necessity of digital collaboration as we live through the age of COVID-19.

The panel of speakers included Martin Barthel (CRN), Belén Fernandez (l’Échappée des Copropriétés), and PVM’s own Hayley Trowbridge. Martin gave a great overview of the Co-Engage, a project bringing together a range of best practices for engaging citizens across Europe, which the participants were very excited about. Next, Belén posed questions on her own experience of taking her work online – an environment to which it’s not normally suited – during the global pandemic. The participants found this very engaging and there was much discussion on whether we’re evolving online consciously, or whether we are being pushed by circumstance into something less than ideal. Finally, Hayley spoke on taking storytelling online, reflecting on what PVM has learned over the last few months and the tools we’ve been using.

After our panel spoke, we opened the virtual floor to a lively and interesting discussion on our own experiences of and musings on digital collaborations. It was exciting to see so many new collaborations forming, both in the main room and in the text chat, with participants networking with each other and forming new connections.

Digital Collaborations was a great way to end what had proved to be a very different annual conference. It was our most international event, with UK participants joined by those from Germany, France, Hungary and even Australia (this is the furthest flung participant we’ve ever had, as well as the latest anyone has ever stayed up for one of our events!). It brought up interesting questions and endless debate during a time when digital collaborations have become an absolute necessity.