We are thrilled to announce the launch of the HOME? Heritage Project website alongside our animation and toolkit.

Partner organisations have already organised screenings and launches throughout February. Global Link in Lancaster and Dragons Voice in Manchester launches were well attended by the local community members and other organisations. Attendees were engaged, informed, and enlightened by the issues highlighted in the animation and toolkit. Some audience members expressed that they gained a deeper understanding of the migrant experience and the valuable contributions made by migrant communities in the UK. 

Additionally, the majority felt they had ideas to effect positive change within their communities based on the insights gained. One audience member commented on how to create employment networks.

The Home? Heritage project is funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and started back in May ’22. Working in partnership with the following vital organisations who offer crucial support – GLOBAL LINK in Lancaster, MAP in Middlesbrough, LASSN in Leeds, DRAGONS VOICE in Manchester, REFUGEE WOMEN’S CONNECT in Liverpool, and NACCOM who are a national organisation who supported us with the creation of the toolkit. We worked across Northern England, collecting and curating the lived experiences of migrants (including refugees, people seeking asylum, and other migrants) living in Northern England during the last 10 years.

The animation and the toolkit is designed to assist groups in listening to the stories of lived experience of people who have come to the UK in the last 10 years and promote discussion about how we can help people arriving in the UK feel at home. In listening to the stories, we can gain a better understanding of the challenges that displaced people living in the UK face and this understanding will deepen, helping empathy and compassion to grow.

We hope that these resources will support schools, youth groups, community groups, informal education projects, charities, local councils, and other organisations to work with lived experience stories that focus on recent contemporary migration to the UK. Helping to foster a culture of compassion and understanding to counteract the culture of the ‘hostile environment’.

The next and final stage of the project will be the Co-Evaluation Workshop that we will be holding on 18th March 2024. This will be attended by our 5 organisation partners and some of the participants who took part in the project. As a substantial part of the workshop, we would like to carry out some Ripple Effect Mapping. This is an interactive, group evaluation method that encourages people to think about the consequences, effects, and outcomes from a social change project – intended and unintended, big and small.

Friends United Together are a group of adults with learning disabilities from Swansea. Last year they became Community Reporters as they wanted to create a video to share their story about setting-up a co-operative.

This short film is a story about of how their friendship and determination helped them to overcome challenges and achieve better life choices. The film charts the Friends’ journey in setting-up a care co-op, improving their lives and being in control of the support they receive. This process and film was supported by IMPACT.

The video was co-produced by the Friends United Together Co-operative, Community Lives, Anna Sellen and People’s Voice Media, with contributions from Swansea Council and Cwmpas Coop.

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.

Between May and October 2023, People’s Voice Media has been delivering a series of Ripple Effect Mapping Workshops and Storytelling Sessions with members of the Camerados Public Living Room movement. 

Camerados is a social movement – which really just means that there are lots and lots of people (from Baltimore to Blackpool) who think being a bit more human is a good idea. The movement started in 2015 and the main thing you’ll see them doing is opening Public Living Rooms in different communities across the world.

During November, we spent time curating the insights from the stories and Ripple Effect Mapping sessions to create a set of initial findings which we will build upon in the next round of story gathering and Ripple Effect Mapping. The findings reveal the positive impacts that Public Living Rooms have on the lives of the people who use them.

1. For some people, Public Living Rooms have a transformative or healing effect, simply through offering a space where they can be themselves and verbalise what’s on their mind.
2. For people who have spent time if various systems and services, Public Living Rooms provide an antidote to that. The lack of social stigma and the emphasis on not trying to fix people and just being alongside each other makes them a low-pressure environment for people used to the stresses and pressures of services.
3. Public Living Rooms have demonstratively brought communities together simply through allowing people to meet each other. They grow spaces and initiatives by creating a nice space to be in.

In all, this demonstrates that people benefit from spaces – like Public Living Rooms – that are a bit more human and that allow them to be human too.

We will continue working with Camerados over the coming months to further these findings.

This year, the People’s Voice Media team has worked incredibly hard on our Annual Learning Report, trying to encapsulate the learnings from our social change work during the 2022/23 period, but also how we have acted upon the learnings from the previous year’s report. In its pages you’ll find out more about our impact, our learning and development, and the future of People’s Voice Media – as well as how this work aligns to our strategic goals.

We’re proud to launch it here today although, in truth, we’ve already begun working on several of the learnings found within. If you have any feedback or questions about the report, feel free to get in touch at enquiries@peoplesvoicemedia.co.uk.

Please note: We’ll be recording and releasing an audio summary of the report in the coming weeks.