Funded by a National Lottery award from the National Lottery Community Fund.
 

This Black History Month, we are thrilled to announce that we have been awarded funding from the National Lottery Community Fund’ to run a 18 month Global Majority Community Reporter project. The project is set to start in November 2024 and builds on our existing work in this area. 

This funding will allow us to continue strengthening our Community Reporting network, with a dedicated focus on training and supporting Global Majority Community Reporters. Through our work in Community Reporting, we strive to broaden the narrative, making sure that storytelling is a powerful movement for change and becomes increasingly inclusive of underrepresented voices.

Changing the World, One Story at a Time

At People’s Voice Media, we believe that stories are a powerful tool for creating change and we are committed to amplifying the voices of those from Global Majority backgrounds in our work. They are not only reflections of our experiences but also agents of transformation. However, we recognise that this journey will look and feel different for Global Majority individuals, and therefore this project will recruit, train and mentor people from Global Majority communities to use lived experience storytelling to support racial justice.

The aims of the project are to build the capacity of people from Global Majority communities to be leaders in co-production and social change fields. Through a mixture of training, peer support and mini-social action projects we want to create a space where the experiences of global majority individuals are not only amplified but also central to the change we aim to achieve. Also establishing an England-wide Global Majority peer support network for people from Global Majority communities working in co-production and social change arenas. We know this work is essential to addressing the deep societal inequalities that persist, and storytelling can be the key to unlocking new possibilities for justice and equity.

A New Chapter for Inclusive Storytelling

Through this initiative, we want to further embed anti-racist practice across our Community Reporter network and create spaces for people with experiences of racism to talk about this safely. We hope that this will contribute to transformational change in our own work and the boarder co-production sphere, creating racial justice in these settings. 

The work will be led by Isaac Samuels – the Community Reporting lead at People’s Voice Media. It builds on their current work with the Co-Production Collective that has been researching the lived experiences of racialised communities in co-production and research and working with organisations in this arena to turn the insights from people’s stories into applied action. 

In the coming weeks, we will be sharing more about this exciting project, including how people can get involved. Stay tuned for more updates as we continue this vital work!

Late last year the Adult Social Care All Party Political Group came together to take part in some Community Reporter Training.

Over the course of the online sessions, people developed a core understanding of Community Reporting techniques including the basics of snapshot stories and dialogue interviews, responsible storytelling considerations and usage of the Community Reporter website.

The focus of the training was to support the group to gather stories of peoples lived experiences of adult social care. These stories will shine a light on voices from within the community of people receiving support from adult social care, that have otherwise gone unheard, in an attempt to create positive change within the sector. Through sharing personal experiences of what works and what doesn’t with people in positions of power, we hope to influence a progressive shift in service provision.

Since then PVM have delivered follow up workshops to train more Community Reporters and help the group with action planning for the future.

Thank you to everyone who came along to the sessions and shared their experiences, we’re excited to see you continue to use Community Reporting in the future and look forward to hearing even more stories emerge from this work.

If you’d like to share a story on your experience of adult social care – get in touch with Georgia from the PVM team georgia@peoplesvoicemedia.co.uk

Back in July, partners from the NACP project came together in Stratford, London to host the final learning festival event to take place as part of the 3 year project.

Community members, volunteers, local groups, organisers and people from across the UK came together to celebrate 3 years of the project and discuss all things Co-Production.

We kicked off the day with a group meal, sharing delicious Indian street food from Ghara – something we felt was important to do given the theme of the day was sharing our cook book which included ‘recipes’ for Co-Production.

During the first part of the event, people were invited to share their own recipes (or methods) for Co-Production, after which the project team began to present ideas and examples of projects rooted in Co-Production.

Towards the late afternoon our marketplace was opened up. Pop up activities took place throughout the venue, from collaborative collage, to community reporting, an interactive recipe wall and even a human library, people got stuck into some Co-Production themed activities.

Camerados came along and generously hosted our very own Public Living Room, which was complimented perfectly by our resident DJ and biscuit dunking competition.

Another significant part of the day was the launch our Co-Production Cook Book. This cookbook includes recipes from some of the fantastic people who adventured with us over the last three years, from Greater Manchester, the West Midlands and North East London.

We invite you to use these recipes freely in your communities and see where they take you! Please be sure to credit the authors when you do, in the spirit of Co-Production. Follow the link above to access the full cook book.

A huge thank you goes out to the project team, Ideas Alliance, Camerados, and everybody who came along to the event – your contributions and support made it a truly amazing day.

We’re now in the process of reflecting on the project, if you’ve been involved and would like to share your experiences with us – get in touch with Georgia to find out how georgia@peoplesvoicemedia.co.uk

Back in November we launched the 3rd and final year of the Not Another Co-Production Project

Since then PVM, alongside project partners Ideas Alliance, have delivered a series of online and in person workshops centered around Lived Experience Storytelling, Community Reporting and Co-Production for London based communities and beyond.

Community Reporting & Co-Production

Over the course of 3 workshops, people developed core Community Reporting skills including interview and recording techniques, responsible storytelling methods, practical approaches to action planning and discussed how storytelling could be used in their unique contexts.

Each session brought up valuable conversations around how storytelling & lived experience links in with Co-Production. We thought collectively and challenged each other to think about how these concepts can gel together in the unique context of this years project.

Newham Community Researchers reflecting on their Community Reporting Training

Take a look at one of the videos gathered by Community Reporters during the training workshops that took place in November & December – Newham Community Researchers reflecting on their Community Reporting training.

Looking ahead to 2024…

In the New Year PVM will be hosting a series of online skills session further developing Community Reporter’s understandings of topics such as Responsible Storytelling, Recording Techniques, Lived Experience, Research and more!

We’ll also be hosting Peer Learning Spaces alongside the team at Ideas Alliance to provide the group with a space to reflect and share ideas.

The project will culminate with an in-person learning festival taking place during Co-Production week in July 2024, which we’re still in the process of Co-Producing, but stay tuned for updates on progress and how you can get involved!

A huge thank you to everyone who has been involved so far – we’re so excited to build on the work that’s already been achieved in 2024 & can’t wait to see what will come from the project.

Dragons Voice CIC started working with People’s Voice Media (PVM) on the HOME? Project in May 2022 after discussions with Hayley (CEO of PVM). We feel privileged to be part of this project as we have worked with another organisation on a similar type of project. Initially we intended to gather stories from the BNO new arrivals from Hong Kong but this was not welcomed by that community as many feared for their safety and did not want to participate in a project that will showcase how they are living now since arriving in the UK.

We discussed this with PVM and Kath kindly agreed that we could look at alternative sectors of the Chinese community. In the end we recruited mainly from Mandarin speaker from mainland China who arrived in the UK within the last 10 years.

We found members of the PVM team to be very understanding and willing to adapt to our changing circumstances. As the director authorising the partnership agreement, I felt that PVM as an organisation stands true to its values. I have met Hayley a few times when I attended some training (early 2021) and at a conference way back in 2017. What came across was the philosophy of non-exploitation and letting people take control of their own stories.

How have the participants benefited from the project?

The participants who attended the Community Reporter training gained skills in doing short snapshot and dialogue interviews. They used a tablet to record the videos at the training sessions. The interviews were spoken in Chinese languages so they did not have to struggle with speaking in a second language. Some gathered stories after the training and uploaded them onto the Community Reporter website.

Those who attended the archive research training completed summaries of stories they found in the Manchester Evening newspaper. The focus was on finding stories on positive contributions from migrants. The skills they developed were firstly to locate the articles online and then sifting through the articles to find relevant stories. To conclude, they had to summarise and transfer core information onto the spreadsheet.

The training provided opportunities for strangers to meet up with other peers and transfer some of the learning into practice. Those who struggled with the archive research due to language were supported by those who had better English abilities. The project provided opportunities for participants to talk about and reflect on their migration journeys. Dragons Voice created 2 part-time posts for its volunteers, one to co-ordinate and the other to support in recruitment and organising activities.

Has Dragon’s Voice learned anything from taking part or from the stories?

There are many similarities in the stories, namely people migrate for better opportunities in life. There are always challenges to overcome in the initial transition, be it the weather in UK, availability of food they normally eat, language barriers or employment opportunities. The approach to interviewing in Community Reporting is very different to interviewing to mine for information, which is how we normally work when interviewing guests on our radio shows. In future we should be less focused on getting information we want and instead adopt a facilitative approach for the individuals we interview to tell their stories.

As a director I have learned to devise employment contracts for freelance workers but is not quite sure what to do when they pull out mid-way. I have had to step in and luckily as I had overall management of the project, I was able to pick it up without much trouble.

The Knowledge Exchange event puts the stories we gathered into a wider context and the roadmaps produced offers a sense of direction for future actions. It was good to meet up with other partners at the partners meetings, who worked across broader areas and are much more politically aware. Their comments provided different perspectives and food for thought.

At the conference in Liverpool, I found out about the other great projects that PVM is involved in and it opened my eyes to the broader work of community reporting.

I am painfully aware that Manchester has diverse migrant communities and it was with regret that we did not include these other groups in our project. We did offer the archive training to ALLFM presenter but there was no uptake advertising it on the volunteers steering group meetings and at ALLFM studio. We need to consider in future how to engage with other migrant groups within Manchester.

It is with much appreciation that Dragons Voice CIC was able to be a partner on this project. We hope to be able to work with People’s Voice Media again in the future.

Denise Yuen Megson

Director

Dragons Voice CIC