Join the team at People’s Voice Media and members of the Community Reporter network as we host our 2nd online catch up of 2023.

People’s Voice Media hosts 2 online catch-ups per year for the people, groups and organisations that make-up the Community Reporter network. These meetups are a great way for members to keep up-to-date with what is happening in the Community Reporter network, learn new stuff, share expertise, exchange knowledge, find out about opportunities they can get involved in, meet other members, network and much more and connect to other peers.

And if you’re not a member of the Community Reporter network… then don’t worry – you can still come along and find out more about us! Everyone is welcome and we are always looking for new members.

It’s only an hour, so grab a brew and a biscuit if you like, log on and find out what exciting stuff is happening across our network! This will be held on Zoom.

You can sign up to get involved through eventbrite (we’ve conveniently included a checkout link below) and best of all it’s free!

If you’d like a little more information about what we’ll be discussing – you can find that here.

Financially supported places

A quick heads up – we have 2 financially supported places available for this catch-up that will be allocated on a first-come, first-allocated basis. The financial support is up to a maximum of £25.00. This can be used to cover:

1. Expenses such as childcare costs etc. that you incur through attending the meet-up. To claim this, you’ll need to send us an expenses form and receipts.

2. Other support costs such as a PA to support you to attend. To claim this, you’ll need to send us an expenses form and receipt OR ask your support to invoice us directly.

3. Internet costs – These can be paid at a rate of £5.00 per hour, or if you are purchasing a online connection for this session (i.e., internet cafe etc.) then you can claim the full cost, up to £25.00 with a receipt via an expense form.

4. Contribution fee. To claim this, you’ll need to send us an invoice and be responsible for your own tax and insurance as a self-employed person.

To request a financially supported place, please indicate this on the registration form and our team will get in touch before the meet-up with further details.

The  report to the COVID Inquiry has now been completed. It has been sent to the COVID Inquiry team and you can access the report here. Below you have a summary of some of the key points and links to the conversations that PVM had with people, to give you a preview of what the report includes. 

Links to extracts from 6 of the 22 participants

Keymn explains why having an understanding of the value of lived and living experience is training that healthcare professionals must have.

Miro explains why society has to re-think and understand disability differently.

Amanda tells us why COVID information was not fully accessible for Deaf people and what could have been done differently. 

Andy explains to Isaac the reasons for involving people with lived and living experiences.

Hameed discusses both the positive and negative aspects of the pandemic.

Baroness Brinton talks about health and social care problems that were highlighted during the pandemic.

Links to full conversations with all participants

The PVM process starts with individuals narrating their experiences, facts and feelings. We did this by talking to 22 people as part of the joint work with DRUK, so that the lived experiences of Deaf and Disabled people could be input to the COVID Inquiry.

There was one point in the process, where the information given by individuals seemed overwhelming. This was partly because everything felt important and relevant, but also because the task of determining key themes seemed a difficult or limiting process.  For example, when it felt as though every point people made was important, it then seemed like we might be trivialising the topic if we tried to distil it to a few main aspects.

However, the PVM process means that meaning emerges, although this doesn’t happen by magic.  We listen and highlight what we think is important. We might colour code, group together or count how often topics are talked about. We also consider how frequently a contributor might return to talk about a lived experience, as an indication of how strongly they feel about the issue.

For the COVID Inquiry work, we began with some open questions to allow people to give their lived and living experiences in a broad way and in their own words. As the work progressed, and by the time we had recorded 10 narratives, we were able to include some more focussed questions, e.g. Other people have said _____, did you find this was the same for you or what was your experience of this? There was definitely the need to balance the open questions against more focussed ones, because we did not want to lead the participants down a specific route, but we were aware that being able to give the COVID Inquiry team specific details would be important.

In the report we’ve included direct quotations from many of the people who shared their lived experiences. Where necessary, we’ve also offered explanations, based on the conversations and online sense making workshops we held. This is because we wanted to clarify for the Inquiry why particular aspects were different or difficult for Deaf and Disabled people. The key points from the report are:

·  There was confusing and frightening information from national government and local authorities to Deaf and Disabled people.

·  COVID both highlighted and exacerbated existing systemic problems and Inequalities (including racism, ageism and ableism) within statutory services

·  Even though there is legislation, little understanding exists about Deaf and Disabled people’s needs.The report is comprehensive and has had an emotional impact on some readers. We hope it will give people’s voices meaning so that the COVID Inquiry can make recommendations that will support Deaf and Disabled people, together with their carers. As Keymn Whervin stated in the foreword to the report: “The Inquiry must ensure that people affected by COVID have their voices heard, particularly in respect of how we co-produce health and social care”.

Isaac Samuels

A few weeks ago, in July I met with our EU partners from the Narratives of Impact project for our last Transnational Partnership Meeting in the fair city of Liverpool. For me this was a fitting place for us to meet for the last time as it is a place that is close to my heart as are the brilliant EU partners.

There were many potential hazards on the path of this project what with Covid and with project managers leaving, (with only one original project manager, Marco from COSV, who is still with us). It is a testament to the partners excellent communication, enthusiasm, and commitment to this project that we achieved the goals without any disruption, despite the hazards.

We have been working on this project since September 2020 with the aim to produce a toolkit (resource pack) with video guides created for NGO’s, charities, and voluntary organisations to use storytelling to measure impact. It is designed to help organisations, teams, and individuals to use storytelling to find out what is working and what needs to be improved.

You can access the toolkit here (pdf download available in English, Italian, German, Polish and Spanish) and find out more about the project if by visiting the website.

Each partner has worked hard over the past three years to co-create this as well as carrying out their role in each organisation. Some of which are grass roots organisations providing important services for people. I feel privileged to have had the chance to share practice, knowledge, and skills with our partners across the channel. I do hope that our paths will cross again and say à bientôt, not au revoir.

Kath Peters, Narratives of Impact project manager, PVM.

The Consortium Against Pain in Equalities (CAPE) from Dundee University and People’s Voice Media have been working with and using Community Reporting to help with research.

CAPE are conducting research into whether there is a link between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and high levels of chronic pain in adult life in the most deprived communities and looking at the consequences of this.

The interaction between the CAPE project, People’s Voice Media and the Community Reporter network has demonstrated how lived experience stories can be used as a valuable research tool. To contribute to this research, People’s Voice Media collected stories of people’s experiences of living with pain. At the heart of these stories have been many challenges, but also many opportunities. We’ve now pulled together these narratives and an animator has been commissioned to produce an animation.

The animation will be used in training settings to help practitioners and people supporting people with long term chronic pain to understand the importance of empathy and communication. Understanding individuals’ lived and living experiences of pain can lead to effective change for all. 

In all the collected narratives, being believed and understood were key. Many participants reported that a turning point for them in managing their pain had been when just one person believed them and showed empathy. Sometimes this was from a clinician, but many had found peer support invaluable, to know that they were not alone. Empathy is crucial for people living with pain, and it’s needed within all the interactions people have, from interpersonal relationships to statutory health and social care providers in addition to employers.

Key themes from the lived experience narratives included; work, access to information, advice and guidance and feeling able to do the things that most people take for granted like leisure activities.

These are often difficult because people living with chronic pain might only use their energy for essential tasks, like going to the chemist or doing the household laundry. It might also mean they feel excluded from leisure activities because they can’t do the same or as much as their friends, or perhaps their pain is just not understood by others.

Additional key points are around the prejudice and discrimination experienced by people living with chronic pain. It’s clear from these narratives that chronic pain affects every part of people’s lives, including intimacy and how people view themselves in respect of a relationship. These lived experiences demonstrate the various responses people receive when seeking help and understanding to manage their pain. Many had negative or indifferent responses from others.

Empathy is vital if we want effective and sustainable change in society and the services people access. We need to consider the challenges people face from different perspectives. Then we need to develop more inclusive and equitable solutions, and ultimately, work towards a better world for those living with pain. All this starts by putting ourselves in another person’s shoes and experiencing their emotions and struggles.

The narratives that PVM collects is one way to do this, by listening to individuals’ stories first hand and thinking about what we might do or feel if we were them. Empathising means we can acknowledge their experiences and validate their feelings. It can also mean recognising the barriers that stop people from accessing resources and opportunities.

Through empathy we can start to understand different groups’ lived experiences and develop solutions that are more inclusive and equitable.

During Refugee Week in June (19 – 23) there will be significant events across the North of England where the personal stories of migrants and refugees living in the UK will be heard.

The stories have been collected as part of a Heritage Lottery project running in the North of England. The project is managed by Peoples Voice Media and aims to preserve and archive current stories of migration to the UK over the past 10 years.  From these stories there will be the creation of; an educational toolkit, a database of local new articles and an animation, to share with communities so people can gain a better understanding of the current position of migrants and refugees. These resources will give communities the tools to help to build communities of sanctuary.

Peoples Voice Media have been working with Refugee Women Connect in Liverpool, LASSN in Leeds, Global Link in Lancaster, Dragons Voice in Manchester, MAP in Middlesbrough and using peer-to-peer Community Reporting have gathered lived experience stories as well as undertaking archive research and collected local newspaper stories from the past 10 years. 

There will be 5 in-person events in each area Lancaster, Middlesbrough, Leeds, Liverpool, and Manchester to look at the stories gathered during Community Reporting workshops, as well as reviewing key themes from the archive research activities.

The aim of these events is to bring people together from each area; members of the wider local community, cultural and heritage organisations, to explore the findings of the workshops and research. The events seek to open-up a dialogue between different local people about the heritage of migration in their area, how that relates to their current thinking and perceptions and what can be done to better understand, learn from and preserve this type of heritage in the future.

The theme of refugee Week this year is compassion, and this certainly resonates with some of the stories we have heard from participants on the project who have found the British people very welcoming.

“I’m very happy because we met here very nice people, very kind people.’ Karina, Lancaster.

If you’d like to find out more, please reserve your free space by completing the Eventbrite booking forms below:

Monday 19th June: 12:00pm to 3:00pm – Lancaster

Tuesday 20th June: 12:00pm to 3:00pm – Middlesbrough

Wednesdav 21st June: 12:00pm to 3:00pm – Leeds

Thursday 22nd June: 12:00pm to 3:00pm – Liverpool

Friday 23rd June: 12:00pm to 3:00pm – Manchester

Or get in touch with Kath Peters at People Voice Media at kath@peoplesvoicemedia.co.uk