Late last year we started working with Barnsley Museums to explore how Community Reporting and lived experience storytelling can support their evaluation activities, and contribute to their on-going learning and development. We wrapped-up the initial part of this work – and here is what we learned!

The group felt that the strengths of using Community Reporting as an evaluation tool are:

• it gave a platform to participants to voice their perspectives
• it gives detailed insights into people’s experiences
• it can feel less pressured/formal than other approaches to evaluation
• it can be tailored to the needs of a project

When reflecting on the weaknesses, the group felt that Community Reporting faced challenges such as:

• people finding the time to dedicate to it properly and resourcing from the organisation
• some people may be missed if they don’t feel comfortable with being filmed/recorded

However, despite some challenges in implementing the methodology, the opportunities it provides far outweighed them. For example, it provides a more engaging way of presenting learnings and information. It also allows organisations to better respond to community needs by listening to them directly. More so, it gathers meaningful evidence of impact that other methods do not. And finally, Community Reporting provides a process for understanding qualitative evaluation which helps tackle bias.

So, with all those opportunities and positives to using Community Reporting as a tool for learning, evaluation and impact evidencing, we wish our partners at Barnsley Musuems all the best as they embed it into their work!

We are looking for people to run local workshops to explore the ‘Future Of Lived Experience Storytelling’.

APPLY NOW

We want to commission 5 workshops that explore the topic of ‘The Future of Lived Experience Storytelling’ with different groups of people to be part of the 3^rd annual Institute of Community Reporters (ICR) Conference on the 2^ndJune 2021.

At the conference, we want to open-up a conversation about the future of lived experience storytelling and explore things such as:

• the role of lived experience in achieving social justice 
• how we and other organisations can work better with stories and the people who share them
• the types of spaces that are secure enough for authentic storytelling to take place.

Your workshop should respond to the above – or some of the above – in some way and contribute to this conversation. 

The content, location, style, who the workshop is for and pretty much the whole shape of the workshop is up to you, as long as it is in-keeping with the overall topic of the conference. 

Key Details

• Your workshop should take place between 11:30am and 3:30pm on the 2^ndJune 2021.
• Your workshop should be at least 1 hour long.
• The workshop leader needs to be available between 3:45pm and 5:00pm to join an online livestream to share with the world the key ideas/discussions that took place in the workshop.
• Your workshop should create an equitable space for people to be a part of the conference’s conversation. 
• Your workshop should ideally – and where safe – take place offline in a specific geographical location (this is not essential and back-up plans should be made in case it needs to move online).
• The fee for each workshop is £250.00 upon receipt of an invoice.
• Each workshop leader should send a little bit of feedback post-workshop to us (i.e.; who attended, what was discussed/learned, what worked well and what didn’t).

To apply to deliver a workshop, please use this online form

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1rKlApPkA0tN0L5MTdf7ah3IggPTCe4yb8o_Pi6riGgQ/edit   to tell us about the workshop you would like to run. 

The form asks for: 

• Contact details of the organiser and social media details (if any)
• A short outline of your workshop and what topics you will be exploring 
• Where it will be held
• Who the workshop is for
• How you will ensure the space is inclusive and welcoming
• A short back-up plan in case COVID-19 means the workshop has to go online
• A short statement about how your workshop embeds our core values – https://peoplesvoicemedia.co.uk/about/ 

The deadline for applications is 5pm on Monday 3rd May 2021. We will contact all applicants to let them know about our decisions by Friday 7th May 2021. For further information contact Kath at kath@peoplesvoicemedia.co.uk  #ICRCon2021

During the last couple of weeks in March, some of the PVM team took part in a training lab designed as part of Co-Engage, one of the Erasmus Plus projects we are a part of. The project aims to contribute to the development of co-creation skills, enabling citizens to become social innovators. Based on the exchange of experiences and learning through co-creation, the consortium’s method will bring in light know-how and competences, engaging citizens for innovation and creativity and, through this, creating bridges between diverse sectors and fields of activity.

Held online, the labs aimed to get us thinking about co-creation practices and how these could better engage citizens as social innovators. Hosted by German partners CRN and Future Fashion Forward, the labs took on the topic of textile waste in the fashion economy and had us work in groups on different scenarios that would encourage citizens to engage with this issue and work on finding solutions, such as a co-created social media campaign aimed at getting people to organise clothes swaps.

While it was a shame that we could not travel to Berlin for the training, as had originally been planned, it was great to see all of our partners and participants all together and working on some fascinating ideas.

CoSIE Horizon 2020

From probation services in the UK, unemployment provision in Spain, rural development initiatives in Estonia and many more, over the past three years the People’s Voice Media team have been busy working on the CoSIE H2020 project, using insight storytelling strategies combined with curation and story mobilisation processes to the voices of citizens to decision-making processes and enhance public services for the people who access them.

This piece of applied research has been exploring how public services across Europe and across different sectors can be co-created and has taken place across projects in Poland, Estonia, Spain, Hungary, The Netherlands, Italy, the UK, Sweden, Greece and Finland.

Our Role

As part of this work, we’ve been using Community Reporting and lived experience more generally to support the design, implementation and on-going evaluation of the pilots and now at the mobilisation stage of this work, we’ve packaged some of these gathered insight stories together into two playlists for you to watch, one, a playlist of thematic edits where you can see how each pilot country focused on different services and co-creation topics and a second playlist of extracts from individual stories.

These videos are from lived experience stories of citizens, professionals and wider stakeholders involved in the project’s activities.

You can find out more about the project itself here: https://cosie.turkuamk.fi/cosie/

View the THEMATIC EDIT PLAYLIST HERE

View the EXTRACTS PLAYLIST HERE

Community Conversations

Recently People’s Voice Media have been working with a team on the ‘Community Conversations’ project which was commissioned by For Housing and delivered by a consortium of independent organisations led by Ideas Alliance across Salford, Stockbridge Village and Fitton Hill. 

As part of the project, the consortium has been busy working with staff, tenants, and the wider community to better understand people’s needs around wellbeing.

A key part of this has been gathering and telling stories of lived experience within these communities to find out more about life in the area and what matters to residents.

A wide variety of topics came up through the Community Conversations project including what life is like for communities living in each area, the impact of Covid-19 and the theme of technology and communication which ran through many of the wellbeing stories that were gathered by Community Reporters.

Like communities all over the country, the residents of Fitton Hill, Salford and Stockbridge Village have been hit hard by the effects of the pandemic and the resulting lockdowns. Lockdown has been a negative and difficult experience for many people and the isolation and lack of social contact has impacted upon their wellbeing.

Through their stories, people described how digital tools were enabling them to stay connected with loved ones, make new connections with neighbours and switch to new ways of working, particularly during the COVID-19 lockdowns. However, they also told us that constantly using these tools – for work and socialising – can be draining and raised concerns over barriers to accessing technology.

The stories also reveal how people have adapted their ways of working and socialising, and continued to support one another throughout the crisis. Many of the stories tell us that they believe the pandemic has actually brought them closer to their neighbours and we’re looking forward to hearing more from the full reports soon!

In the meantime, it is possible to view some short extracts from a selection of the gathered stories through the For Housing video playlist which can be found HERE