10:30am – 5:00pm, Thursday 7^th July 2022, The Lowry, The Quays, Salford, M50 3AZ

BOOK HERE

Stories are powerful vehicles that build bridges between people and support common understanding. In recent years digital storytelling has helped to connect communities and has thrived as a tool for social transformation and justice.

Community Reporting falls into this arena. We see it as a tool to address inequalities in society and help to shift power from ‘systems’ to people. However, we all know changes in power dynamics don’t come easily. For the fourth annual Community Reporter Conference, we want to open-up a conversation about power and lived experience. PLACES ARE LIMITED, SO BOOK NOW!

The agenda for the day is:

10:30am / Registration and refreshments

Get signed-in, grab a cuppa and a snack, chat!

11:00am / Welcome and Stories from the Community Reporter network

A warm welcome from People’s Voice Media including some extracts from recent Community Reporter stories and an overview of the conference.

11:15am / On Your Soapbox – What’s your perspective on the topic of lived experience and power?

Invited speakers will get ‘on their soapbox’ and have 3 minutes to share their thoughts about this year’s conference topic – lived experience and power. You’ll then have some space to chat in small groups about any issues connected to this topic. We hope it will be a great way for people to share their perspectives, get some stuff off their chest and have their perceptions challenged. 

12:00pm / Closed Cultures – How do we prevent and tackle them?

Working with Ideas Alliance and commissioned by the CQC, Community Reporters spoke to people about their experiences of closed cultures in health and social care environments. The people involved in this piece of work will share the key findings with you and ask you to think about how you can be a part of tackling closed cultures.

12:45pm / Lunch 

1:30pm / Democracy – are we talking the same language?

Researchers from the EUARENAS project Matilda and LangWork projects and UEF, will create a space for a conversation about the future of democracy. The session will focus on language barriers and communication challenges in people’s involvement with democracy.  

2:30pm / Break and refreshments

2:45pm / Co-production – How do we create the ‘right’ conditions for co-production? 

We’ve been working with Co-production Collective and Curators of Change to gather stories about people’s experiences of co-production in services, research and policy. Based on the insights in these stories, we will host a workshop about what ‘conditions’ need to be in place for co-production to flourish and how we go about establishing them. 

4:00pm / Our 15(ish) minutes of fame 

Members of the Community Reporter network will be sharing some highlights of the work they’ve been doing over the last 12 months. We will also launch our social impact report (2021 – 2022) and ask you for your input into our future plans. 

4:30pm / Drinks, chinwags and goodbyes 

We’ll be providing some post-conference drinks and a social space for people to chat, swap contact details and unwind!

Parts of this agenda will be hybrid and we will be launching the booking link for online attendance in May.

Since May 2021, People’s Voice Media have been partnering with Ideas Alliance on Not Another Co-Production Project.

The aim of the project is to move co-production from a buzz word into an embedded practice within grassroots organisations across England. We want to facilitate a knowledge exchange which ensures local people become active citizens, are involved in decision making and can shift power in their community, creating equitable partnerships between residents, services and local authorities. We want a future where policy, research and service design are informed by the lived experiences of local people and where collaboration is the norm not the exception.

As part of a 3-year project, Ideas Alliance will work with People’s Voice Media to deliver a co-production development project. This project will benefit local people, professionals and organisations across England, through engaging them in co-production workshops, Community Reporting, annual community learning festivals and a peer support network that connects people and creates a partnership of practice.

The first year of the project has been based in Greater Manchester and has seen a series of workshop delivered on co-production, community reporting and storytelling.

Most recently planning has begun for the first of three community learning festivals, which is set to take place in Manchester this summer. Last week members of Ideas Alliance came together with project contributors from across Greater Manchester at the Science and Industry Museum to discuss what should be included in the festival. The day will be a chance for people to learn more about co-production, challenge their understanding of what it is and most importantly celebrate how it can be used as a tool to create positive change within a range of different settings.

Stay tuned for future updates on the project and keep a look out on socials for invites to the festival!

Last month the team at PVM were joined by members of the Community Reporters Network for our first catch-up of the year!

We run two 1hr online meet-ups a year, which provide space for members to keep up-to-date with what is happening within the Community Reporters Network. This time around we provided an update on actions from the last meeting – the main focus being the development of a community reporting project themed around anti-racism. At this moment in time the funding application is underway, the outcome of which we will know by June, if all goes to plan delivery will commence in summer 2022!

We also discussed PVM’s commitment to anti-racism and our actions towards becoming actively anti-racist. You can find out more about this in our blog post here.

We then provided some information on the upcoming Community Reporters Conference 2022, which is set to take place on Thursday the 7th of July 2022. This year we return to in-person delivery at the Lowry in Salford Quays and will be focusing on the theme of power. There are three financially supported places available up to the value of £150.00 to cover the cost of taking part in the day. You can find out more through the eventbrite page, which will be going live this Friday, where you’ll be able to sign up for your free ticket, so keep an eye out on socials for the link!

It was great to catch up with familiar faces and introduce some new ones to the Community Reporters Network – we look forward to welcoming you to the conference in July and the 2nd ICR catch-up later in the year.

Last week members of the PVM team ventured out to Valladolid to take part in a series of training workshops as part of the Narrative of Impact Project.

We were joined by project partners from across Europe and together we tested a series of storytelling activities, each of which had been adapted in order to be used as a way of measuring impact. These activities, alongside a series of video guides, will combine to form a toolkit – which will provide instructions on how to implement storytelling as a tool for measuring impact.

A huge thank you goes out to INTRAS Foundation (Spain) for hosting the training and the rest of the partners for your efforts in presenting and testing the activities: Comparative Research Network (Germany), Coordinamento delle Organizzazioni per il Servizio Volontario (Italy) and SNDE (Poland).

Stay tuned for more updates!

The second newsletter to be published as part of the CONTINUE project is available now!

See below for the full PDF which contains updates on the local Conversation of Change events and the youth training in Vilnius. If you’d like to view the stories which have been gathered so far as part of the project, you can do so on the ICR website here.

The European COC event took place on Thursday the 7th of April and saw partners and young people come together online to discuss the impact of COVID-19 on young people’s lives on a pan-European scale. Stay tuned to our blog for updates on the learning that emerged from this event and future project activities – you can also visit the CONTINUE Project website here for more information.