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

The Co-Production Collective wanted to explore people’s lived experiences of co-production within health and social care research. Working with People’s Voice Media, they used Community Reporting – a pan-European storytelling movement that supports people to use digital technologies to tell their own stories – to capture a series of dialogue interviews with people who identified as ‘co-producers’. These co-producers come from different sectors, work on different projects, and participate in different ways in co-production.

The key findings that emerged from this piece of work are:

• Co-production should be approached as a practice governed by a set of values, rather than an exact science or process.
• Co-production can bring real value to research projects and be key to ensuring that services are more effective and better meet the needs of the people who access them.
• Co-production can be challenging but with support and encouragement, embracing continual and shared learning and by creating spaces for co-producers to connect, barriers can be overcome.

Some of our projects, particularly our European ones, are catching back up after being delayed for so long due to the pandemic. One of these is Co-Engage, an Erasmus+ project designed to contribute to the development of co-creation skills enabling citizens to become social innovators. Part of the project is a series of labs, the first of which takes place at the end of March in a digital form.

We’re looking for a volunteer to attend from the comfort of their own home, with the chance to network with organisations from across Europe as well as learning a thing or two about co-creation practices. A member of the PVM team will also be in attendance. Details of the lab are below:

Topic: Co-discovery.

Overall Goal: Experimenting and testing old practices and new models, focussing on generating participation of citizens as co-implementers and activating people.

Lab Umbrella Topic: Fashion Consumption and Textile Waste problem in cities.

Organisers and facilitators: Future Fashion Forward and Comparative Research Network.

Day 1 – Monday 22nd March 2021 / 9am to 12pm GMT

Day 2 – Tuesday 23rd March 2021 / 1pm to 4pm GMT

Day 3 – Wednesday 24th March 2021 / Self-learning day

Day 4 – Monday 29th March 2021 / 9am to 11.30am GMT & 1pm to 3.30pm GMT

Day 5 – Tuesday 30th March 2021 / 1pm to 4pm GMT

Each of the days presents opportunity for learning, co-creating and networking with a blend of presentations and group work on a variety of challenges, with a fuller agenda being available nearer the time.

A small accessibility bursary is available for each of the days to help meet access costs.

If you are interested in volunteering to take part and have availability on the specified dates, email Sarah at PVM by Thursday 11th March.

All too often, women’s voices can go unheard. At People’ Voice Media, we have been working with a women’s group who form part of Inspiring Change Manchester and for the past few months, since the autumn we have been helping the group to use storytelling and Community Reporting practices to dig a bit deeper, find out more and explore the question; ‘What Matters to Women?’

The insight stories that were gathered by the group touched upon many different aspects of life as a woman and following the Community Reporter training, we worked together to explore the key themes and topics through sense-making sessions and in order to discover what were the aspects that mattered the most to those taking part. 

As part of a celebratory event at Christmas, we helped the group to put together an edited video which captures some of these women’s thoughts and experiences and with International Women’s Day coming up on 8th March, we don’t think there’s been a better time to share it wider. 

We encourage everyone to join in the conversation by considering the question; ‘What Matters to Women?’

You can watch the video HERE

We are currently working with Barnsley Museums to explore how Community Reporting and lived experience storytelling can support their evaluation activities, and contribute to an their on-going learning and development. As part of this project, a small team from across Barnsley Museums are being trained as Community Reporters and Trainers, and are experimenting with ways that this method can be used to assess the impact of and gather insights into their work. This training is covering a wide range of areas such as storytelling techniques and responsible storytelling practices, media recording skills, story analysis methods, how to package findings as different types of media products, facilitation approaches and how to run knowledge exchange sessions.

We are delivering the training as an applied project in which the Barnsley Museums team are undertaking a bit of insight and development work that they are using to test out their new skills. Over the last few months, part of the team have been busy gathering and analysing stories about staff wellbeing during the pandemic and the rest of the team have been exploring the learning so far from an anti-racism book club they have set-up. The team are currently learning media-making skills such as video editing and graphic design, so that they can package learning from stories different audiences.

Over the next few weeks, the project will be looking at how the insights from the stories can be used to inform practice at Barnsley Museums and beyond, and how Community Reporting can be embedded into the wider evaluation practices of the organisation. More news coming soon!