Earlier this month our team finally – after almost a year of working remotely – managed to me the EUARENAS consortium in-person in Helsinki, Finland. Although, the jam-packed meeting schedule meant that we didn’t get to see much of what Helsinki has to offer, we did get to get into discussions about participatory and deliberative democracies. So, here’s a bit of a run down of what we took away from the meeting…

On day one, the City of Helsinki presented a case study of how they’d been engaging with citizens. A big takeaway for us was that the first step in this process was the creation of principles for participation that help guide all future activities. The importance of being clear on what underpins participation was a key point highlighted by the City as this helps you to navigate what follows – sort of like how Responsible Storytelling practices underpins Community Reporting, an acts as a guide on storytelling practice.

When discussing how the case study research into existing deliberative and participatory practices would be conducted, partners exchanged thoughts on how Community Reporting and focus interviews could be used to gather different perspectives on each case study. Questions over how authentic people would be with their accounts if it was not anonymous and how we could enable political leaders and other decision-makers to speak honestly given that what they say may cause issues in their careers were raised. The takeaway from this discussion for us was how fundamental relationships of trust are to this type of work, and the importance of creating spaces in which people can share their experiences openly. Hopefully, the project’s forthcoming guidelines on how to work with different actors in the research processes will help in this respect.

On day two, we started to create a common project language – or glossary of terms – that we would use with consistency across the different research activities in the project. What was interesting during this activity was the different perspectives that people from academic, policy and civil society brought to the discussion. Some opted for more pragmatic and to-the-point definitions of key terms, whereas others went for more nuanced and intricate definitions. For us, it seemed that people’s sector played a bigger role in how they approached the definitions than cultural differences.

This day was also our time to shine and provide the partners with some training in Community Reporting. We played a clip from a story from the EuroCohort project and it was great to see how people reacted to it. When the clip was playing our ‘agenda less’ and ‘peer-to-peer’ approach made sense to our partners and they quickly got to grips with some of our techniques and dialogue interviewed each other about their own experiences of democracy. We also showcased an initial set of guidelines that we’ve been working on that combines lived experience storytelling and future-thinking. Partners will be testing out these guidelines over the coming months and by Summer 2022, we’ll have a public set to release – so please do, watch this space!

On the final day, LUISS delivered an interactive workshop on impact. As part of the workshop we worked in groups to start to determine the impact indicators of the pilots in the project. A key point in the subsequent discussion was how do we develop indicators for less tangible impacts (i.e. better quality relationships). This is something that purely quantitative evidence could not demonstrate and is a core thing the project will be grappling with.

And finally, we wanted to give a bit of a shout out to a new tool we were introduced to LUISS – Aha slides: https://ahaslides.com/v2/ This online tool helps with live quizzing and word cloud generation via a presentation format, and seemed to work really well from a range of devices. Definitely one we will be trying out in the future!

People’s Voice Media have teamed up with the NHS in Greater Manchester to gather local people’s recent experiences (i.e., the last 12 months) of GP services. We are gathering these stories to explore what GP services are like for people who are accessing them, exploring what is working well and what could be better. The stories will be used to open up a public conversation in Greater Manchester about GP Services by sharing different people’s stories online and in real world settings.

Who we are looking for

We are looking to commission existing Community Reporters and/or people with experience of storytelling and lived experience based in Greater Manchester to help to gather these stories from communities they are connected with. We are interested in hearing from a diversity of voices from across the area. If you would like to apply for this commission, you would need to:

1. Be able to attend a briefing/training session online at 10am – 12:30pm, Thursday 14^th December.
2. Be able to gather at least audio and/or video 3 stories (this could include you own) about recent experiences of GP services and return them to us (with consent forms) by 7^th January. These stories must be from people living in Greater Manchester. Stories can be gathered in-person or online.
3. Be able to undertake this commission on a freelance/self-employed basis.

Fees

The fee for attending the training AND gathering 3 stories with consent forms is: £200 
The fee for attending the training AND gathering 5 stories with consent forms is: £275

A member of our team will support you remotely to undertake this commission and help overcome any difficulties.

People who contribute their story will also be provided with a £10 e-Gift voucher as a thank you. 

How to get involved

To apply for this commission please complete this short form by 5pm Tuesday 30^th November and we will let successful applicants know by 3^rd December. 

Or if you’d like to share your story you can:

1. Email enquiries@peoplesvoicemedia.co.uk and we will find a way to include your experience in this piece of work
2. If you have an account on the Community Reporter website, you can upload your own story directly to it (and on ‘ICR Activity’ label it ‘Experiences of GP Services’. Drop us an email to tell us it is there on enquiries@peoplesvoicemedia.co.uk and we will arrange your £10 e-Gift voucher as a thank you.

Alternatively, if you are an organisation or group in Greater Manchester that would like us to run a free online (or potentially in-person) storytelling session with you, to give you the opportunity to contribute a story then please do get in touch by 30th November on enquiries@peoplesvoicemedia.co.uk

Since September People’s Voice Media have been working on a new project with volunteers and community members from across the different areas of Manchester.

The project is aimed at using lived experience storytelling to build and enhance meaningful relationships between healthcare professionals, the VCSE sector and communities experiencing health inequalities. There is also a focus on COVID-19 and the vaccination roll out, but the intention is that techniques adopted can be used in different ways in the future. The approach taken will use elements of the Community Reporting methodology to support the activity.

As part of the project, people with existing connections with communities in Manchester experiencing health inequalities have been trained in how to gather lived experience stories around the topic of COVID-19 and the vaccination rollout from their community. They have also taken part in workshops covering how to share these stories – or extracts from them – within their communities to help initiate and hold conversations about health.

Participants who took part in the initial story gathering training went away and gathered 3 stories from individuals in their communities, utilising the digital skills and storytelling practices they had developed to engage with people and start conversations. In the second workshop they learnt about story curation and mobilisation, developing their own plan on how the stories could then be shared within their communities. They are now in the phase of distributing the stories in order to encourage conversations around the topics of health and COVID-19.

The project will run until December 2021, with the final workshop focusing on the key learnings that have emerged from the project and what impact it has had on the communities involved.

Follow us on Twitter, Facebook and the PVM Blog for future updates on the project!

Back in October, PVM delivered a 2 day Community Reporter training workshop in Chester as part of the CONTINUE Erasmus+ Project.

Over the two days, project partners from across Europe and the UK learnt about story curation, how to facilitate sense making workshops with young people, the steps behind creating an insight report and the process of producing a Conversation of Change Event.

In the coming weeks partners will deliver a series of curation workshops with young people in their local communities. The aim of the workshops is to make sense of the stories that have been gathered earlier on in the project. Groups will work collectively to review stories exploring young people’s experiences of the pandemic, identifying the key themes, common experiences and anomalies.

After these curation workshops, an insight report will be written by each of the partners, highlighting the findings from the stories, helping to build a pan-European picture of young people’s experiences of the pandemic. The reports will then help to set the agenda for a a series of Conversation of Change Events in March 2022.

Stay tuned for updates on the CONTINUE project.

Since September PVM have been working with Gorse Hill Studios – A Youth Arts Charity based in Stretford, Greater Manchester – on a new project focused on gathering young people’s experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic.

COVID-19 was a challenging time for many young people, leading to an increase in financial, material and health related vulnerabilities. Existing connections to the social care system, institutions, job opportunities and vital support networks were strained, contributing to a decrease in social integration. This decline in connectivity was particularly difficult for communities who need support with developing digital communication skills. The CONTINUE project aims to support young people who may be experiencing social exclusion, through helping them to tackle the challenges of living in a world impacted by COVID-19. Activities are centered around keeping people connected and integrated into European communities. There are a total of 8 NGOs involved in the project, with expertise in sectors ranging from youth work, education, community-work and policy recommendation as well as an extended network of organisations from across Europe.

The initial stage of the project involved delivering a series of community reporter training session with young people. For PVM in the UK this happened at Gorse Hill Studios in Stretford, Greater Manchester. Young people learnt storytelling techniques and developed digital skills before recording their own lived experience stories reflecting on their experiences of the pandemic. Each young person’s story varied with some exploring the negative impacts such as feelings of isolation and loneliness and others highlighting the opportunity it provided them to focus on developing hobbies and interests. You can listen to the stories recorded by the young people in the UK and across Europe on the Institute of Community Reporters website.

In November, when the story gathering process is complete, partners will carry out a series on knowledge curation and mobilisation sessions. Young people will analyse the contents of the stories, picking out key themes and learnings which will then feed into a series of Conversation of Change events. These will take place in the localities where story gathering has taken place and invite the young people, local leaders and members of the wider community to collaborate and discuss what findings have emerged from the stories.

Stay tuned for project updates and to find out more about future activities!