People’s Voice Media and the Community Reporter Network are committed to ensuring that lived experience stories are valued and have influence. Each year we produce an impact and learning report that helps us to see the difference our work is meeting and sets out our direction of travel for the coming year.

This year’s reports shows that we are:

• Creating brave spaces that are actively anti-racist and are spaces that people can learn about, and share, lived experience
• Influencing individuals and organisations with our anti-racist, inclusive vision
• Demonstrating the importance of lived experience in a variety of sectors
• Supporting organisations to use Community Reporting in their work and change the way they do things
• Helping people to develop new skills
• Providing platforms to people whose voices are often unheard or ignored 
• Playing our role in influencing policy and practice

This Black History Month, we’re excited to announce that People’s Voice Media has received funding from the National Lottery Community Fund to launch an 18-month Global Majority Community Reporter project starting in November 2024.

Building on our existing work, this project will train, mentor, and support Global Majority Community Reporters, ensuring that lived experience storytelling plays a central role in racial justice and social change. By strengthening our network, we aim to make storytelling an inclusive and transformative movement.

The project will:

• Equip Global Majority individuals with skills in co-production and social change leadership.
• Foster a peer support network across England for those working in these spaces.
• Embed anti-racist practice within the Community Reporter network, creating safe spaces for people to share their experiences.

Led by Isaac Samuels, this initiative builds on previous work with the Co-Production Collective, turning lived experiences into real-world action. We’ll be sharing more soon on how to get involved— stay tuned as we work to ensure Global Majority voices are at the heart of co-production and storytelling for change!

Late last year the Adult Social Care All Party Political Group came together to take part in some Community Reporter Training.

Over the course of the online sessions, people developed a core understanding of Community Reporting techniques including the basics of snapshot stories and dialogue interviews, responsible storytelling considerations and usage of the Community Reporter website.

The focus of the training was to support the group to gather stories of peoples lived experiences of adult social care. These stories will shine a light on voices from within the community of people receiving support from adult social care, that have otherwise gone unheard, in an attempt to create positive change within the sector. Through sharing personal experiences of what works and what doesn’t with people in positions of power, we hope to influence a progressive shift in service provision. Since then PVM have delivered follow up workshops to train more Community Reporters and help the group with action planning for the future.

Thank you to everyone who came along to the sessions and shared their experiences, we’re excited to see you continue to use Community Reporting in the future and look forward to hearing even more stories that emerge from this work.

Back in July, partners from the NACP project came together in Stratford, London to host the final learning festival event to take place as part of the 3 year project.

Community members, volunteers, local groups, organisers and people from across the UK came together to celebrate 3 years of the project and discuss all things Co-Production.

We kicked off the day with a group meal, sharing delicious Indian street food from Ghara – something we felt was important to do given the theme of the day was sharing our cook book which included ‘recipes’ for Co-Production.

During the first part of the event, people were invited to share their own recipes (or methods) for Co-Production, after which the project team began to present ideas and examples of projects rooted in Co-Production.

Towards the late afternoon our marketplace was opened up. Pop up activities took place throughout the venue, from collaborative collage, to community reporting, an interactive recipe wall and even a human library, people got stuck into some Co-Production themed activities.

Camerados came along and generously hosted our very own Public Living Room, which was complimented perfectly by our resident DJ and biscuit dunking competition.

Another significant part of the day was the launch our Co-Production Cook Book. This cookbook includes recipes from some of the fantastic people who adventured with us over the last three years, from Greater Manchester, the West Midlands and North East London.

We invite you to use these recipes freely in your communities and see where they take you! Please be sure to credit the authors when you do, in the spirit of Co-Production. Follow the link above to access the full cook book.

A huge thank you goes out to the project team, Ideas Alliance, Camerados, and everybody who came along to the event – your contributions and support made it a truly amazing day.

We’re now in the process of reflecting on the project, if you’ve been involved and would like to share your experiences with us – get in touch with Georgia to find out how georgia@peoplesvoicemedia.co.uk

Members of the Camerados movement have been busy mapping out the ripples of impact their public living rooms have had on local communities.

Over the past 2 years, people have come together online to learn about Ripple Effect Mapping and share the waves of impact that have been brought about by public living rooms from Boston USA to Lochgilphead Scotland.

Public living rooms are a concept created by the Camerados movement to encourage the creation of agenda free community spaces.

Public living rooms have sofas and cuppas, maybe some tunes, maybe some board games. They are warm welcoming places with people who listen, who treat everyone the same, who don’t judge or try to fix each other.

Each public living room is different. They are not manned by staff, they are set up and organised by camerados for their communities and are open to all. And all of them use the six simple camerado ideas to underpin how they run.

Some are pop ups for short periods, some are at regular times each week and others are open daily, and you’ll find them all over the place. They’re in Sierra Leone, in the USA, in New Zealand, and all over the UK; in shopping centres, town halls, old shops, hospitals, cafes. And one day we want there to be one in every neighbourhood.

You can find out more about these over on their website and see if there’s one in your area!

Each session introduced Camerados to the concept of Ripple Effect Mapping – a visual way of marking down levels of impact in relation to community projects using simple craft materials and group discussion. The unique approach to impact measurement allows people to identify actions and changes that have occurred, capturing the often unnoticed ripples of impact that might not necessarily be noticed using more traditional approaches. Take a look at an example map above to see what kind of content is created during the REM process.

The coloured stickers you see on the paper, along with the different styles of lines all mark different aspects of change that have occurred as a result of the creation of a Public Living Room.

As part of the project we’ve spoken to over 30 Public Living Rooms from across the UK (even stretching as far the Boston in the USA!) and have heard how they have positively impacted the people who have accessed them. Whether they are providing a warm space to gather during colder months, to fostering connections between people who otherwise wouldn’t meet, the process has uncovered that even something as simple as a brew can lead to huge ripples of impact on an individual, community and societal level.

To find out more about the project and Ripple Effect Mapping methodology head over to our earlier blog post here or reach out to us on enquiries@peoplesvoicemedia.co.uk