Back in July, PVM hosted our 5th annual Community Reporter Network Conference at 54 St James Street in Liverpool.

The day included a series of workshops which explored community reporting and lived experience storytelling, with a focus on creating equitable futures.

We were joined by members of the community reporter network, project partners, and people from across the UK and Europe. It was great seeing so many faces, some familiar and some brand new to the movement.

The day kicked off with two workshops, one focusing on sharing the findings of the HOME? Project and the other providing an introduction to Community Reporting (the storytelling technique we use here at PVM).

After a short morning break we got stuck into exploring the finding of the EUARENAS Project , sharing the recently published city of the future map. The map lays out a vision of a future city where participatory democracy has been able to thrive – you can view the map and find out more by following the hyperlink above.

Disability Rights UK showcased the findings from a storytelling project looking at the impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Deaf and Disabled People. They invited people in the space to think about our own role in restorative practice as society recovers from the pandemic. It was an important and thought provoking session and a huge thank you goes out to the staff and storytellers for their time, energy and commitment to the project.

After lunch we delved into the future of data collection and impact measurement – exploring how people’s voices can play an integral role in measuring change in communities. PVM and NOI Project project partners shared techniques from their recently published toolkit (the culmination of the 3 year project) demonstrating how storytelling can be used as a tool for measuring change.

Our friends at Groundswell captivated the room with an interactive workshop exploring the complexities of advocating for your rights while experiencing homelessness. Through providing real world scenarios, they created an environment in which you could place yourself in the position of someone experiencing homelessness trying to access support for your health. An eye opening session which highlighted the challenges and systems people are forced to navigate when placed in a vulnerable positions.

We’re now in the process of gathering feedback on the conference. The team are currently conducting reflective interviews with the people who attended. These experiences will feed into creating next years conference, along with the thoughts and suggestions collected during the ‘Future of Community Reporting’ workshop which ended the days activities.

We can’t wait to hear about how people found the day and feel excited about getting started with the planning of next year’s conference.

Keep your eyes peeled on our social media pages and the blog, as we’ll be announcing updates on the next CR catch up which is taking place later this year.

Until then, that’s a wrap from us!

The  report to the COVID Inquiry has now been completed. It has been sent to the COVID Inquiry team and you can access the report here. Below you have a summary of some of the key points and links to the conversations that PVM had with people, to give you a preview of what the report includes. 

Links to extracts from 6 of the 22 participants

Keymn explains why having an understanding of the value of lived and living experience is training that healthcare professionals must have.

Miro explains why society has to re-think and understand disability differently.

Amanda tells us why COVID information was not fully accessible for Deaf people and what could have been done differently. 

Andy explains to Isaac the reasons for involving people with lived and living experiences.

Hameed discusses both the positive and negative aspects of the pandemic.

Baroness Brinton talks about health and social care problems that were highlighted during the pandemic.

Links to full conversations with all participants

The PVM process starts with individuals narrating their experiences, facts and feelings. We did this by talking to 22 people as part of the joint work with DRUK, so that the lived experiences of Deaf and Disabled people could be input to the COVID Inquiry.

There was one point in the process, where the information given by individuals seemed overwhelming. This was partly because everything felt important and relevant, but also because the task of determining key themes seemed a difficult or limiting process.  For example, when it felt as though every point people made was important, it then seemed like we might be trivialising the topic if we tried to distil it to a few main aspects.

However, the PVM process means that meaning emerges, although this doesn’t happen by magic.  We listen and highlight what we think is important. We might colour code, group together or count how often topics are talked about. We also consider how frequently a contributor might return to talk about a lived experience, as an indication of how strongly they feel about the issue.

For the COVID Inquiry work, we began with some open questions to allow people to give their lived and living experiences in a broad way and in their own words. As the work progressed, and by the time we had recorded 10 narratives, we were able to include some more focussed questions, e.g. Other people have said _____, did you find this was the same for you or what was your experience of this? There was definitely the need to balance the open questions against more focussed ones, because we did not want to lead the participants down a specific route, but we were aware that being able to give the COVID Inquiry team specific details would be important.

In the report we’ve included direct quotations from many of the people who shared their lived experiences. Where necessary, we’ve also offered explanations, based on the conversations and online sense making workshops we held. This is because we wanted to clarify for the Inquiry why particular aspects were different or difficult for Deaf and Disabled people. The key points from the report are:

·  There was confusing and frightening information from national government and local authorities to Deaf and Disabled people.

·  COVID both highlighted and exacerbated existing systemic problems and Inequalities (including racism, ageism and ableism) within statutory services

·  Even though there is legislation, little understanding exists about Deaf and Disabled people’s needs.The report is comprehensive and has had an emotional impact on some readers. We hope it will give people’s voices meaning so that the COVID Inquiry can make recommendations that will support Deaf and Disabled people, together with their carers. As Keymn Whervin stated in the foreword to the report: “The Inquiry must ensure that people affected by COVID have their voices heard, particularly in respect of how we co-produce health and social care”.

Isaac Samuels

A few weeks ago, in July I met with our EU partners from the Narratives of Impact project for our last Transnational Partnership Meeting in the fair city of Liverpool. For me this was a fitting place for us to meet for the last time as it is a place that is close to my heart as are the brilliant EU partners.

There were many potential hazards on the path of this project what with Covid and with project managers leaving, (with only one original project manager, Marco from COSV, who is still with us). It is a testament to the partners excellent communication, enthusiasm, and commitment to this project that we achieved the goals without any disruption, despite the hazards.

We have been working on this project since September 2020 with the aim to produce a toolkit (resource pack) with video guides created for NGO’s, charities, and voluntary organisations to use storytelling to measure impact. It is designed to help organisations, teams, and individuals to use storytelling to find out what is working and what needs to be improved.

You can access the toolkit here (pdf download available in English, Italian, German, Polish and Spanish) and find out more about the project if by visiting the website.

Each partner has worked hard over the past three years to co-create this as well as carrying out their role in each organisation. Some of which are grass roots organisations providing important services for people. I feel privileged to have had the chance to share practice, knowledge, and skills with our partners across the channel. I do hope that our paths will cross again and say à bientôt, not au revoir.

Kath Peters, Narratives of Impact project manager, PVM.

As, we have previously shared with you, Disability Rights UK (DRUK) & People’s Voice Media have been working in partnership to record people’s lived experience narratives and insights about the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns. We are now ready to share the results of this work with you.

The Stories

During the project, we had the privilege to hear from people about their first-hand experiences of the pandemic. Many of these stories are difficult to hear but it is important that we listen and learn from them. We’ve create a playlist of key extracts from the some of the stories shared, that includes:

• Keymn explaining why having an understanding of the value of lived and living experience is training that healthcare professionals must have.
• Miro exploring why society has to re-think and understand disability differently.
• Amanda telling us why COVID information was not fully accessible for Deaf people and what could have been done differently.
• Andy explaining to Isaac the reasons for involving people with lived and living experiences.
• Hameed discussing both the positive and negative aspects of the pandemic.
• Baroness Brinton talking about health and social care problems that were highlighted during the pandemic.

You can listen to this playlist here.

And to listen to all of the experiences gathered relating to the pandemic, head to this page on the Community Reporter website: https://communityreporter.net/covid-conversations

The PVM process starts with individuals narrating their experiences, facts and feelings. We did this by talking to 22 people as part of the joint work with DRUK, so that the lived experiences of Deaf and Disabled people could be input to the COVID Inquiry.

The storytelling process

Isaac – the person who led this work, describes how in one part of the process, the information given by individuals seemed overwhelming and it was difficult to decide what are the key points we should communicate to the inquiry. This was because everything felt important and relevant and because the task of determining key themes seemed a limiting process.  It felt as though every point people made was important and felt like we might be trivialising the topic if we tried to distil it to a few simple ‘key points’ or ‘recommendations’.

However, the Community Reporting curation process (part of which was done with the storytellers themselves) means that meaning emerges from the stories and we are able to work with the detail and the nuance of people’s individual experiences. This doesn’t happen by magic. We listen and highlight what we think is important. We might colour code, group ideas together or count how often topics are talked about. We also consider how frequently a contributor might return to talk about a lived experience, as an indication of how strongly they feel about the issue. This is a multifaceted approached that allows us to work with both the individual stories (and highlight individual people’s voices) but also stories as a set of data.

For the COVID Inquiry work, we used dialogue interview and open questions to allow people to give their lived and living experiences using in their own words. As the work progressed, and by the time we had recorded 10 narratives, we started to ask people’s perspectives on topics that emerged in the other stories. There was definitely the need to balance the open questions against more focussed ones, because we did not want to lead the participants down a specific route, but we were aware that being able to give the COVID Inquiry team specific details would be important.

The findings

In the report we’ve included direct quotations from many of the people who shared their lived experiences. Where necessary, we’ve also offered explanations, based on the conversations and online sense making workshops we held. This is because we wanted to be clear about why particular aspects were different or difficult for Deaf and Disabled people. The key points from the report are:

• There was confusing and frightening information from national government and local authorities to Deaf and Disabled people.
• COVID both highlighted and exacerbated existing systemic problems and Inequalities (including racism, ageism and ableism) within statutory services
• Even though there is legislation, little understanding exists about Deaf and Disabled people’s needs.

The report is comprehensive and has had an emotional impact on some readers. We hope it will give people’s voices meaning so that the COVID Inquiry can make recommendations that will support Deaf and Disabled people, together with their carers. As Keymn Whervin stated in the foreword to the report: “The Inquiry must ensure that people affected by COVID have their voices heard, particularly in respect of how we co-produce health and social care”.

Democracy across Europe has experienced immense challenge, change and uncertainty in recent years (Canal 2014; European Commission & Merkel; 2019) – from the rise of populism to decreasing levels of public trust in governance institutions and processes, to the war in Ukraine. Set against the backdrop of these issues, EUARENAS has been investigating how cities and urban spaces can strengthen legitimacy, identification and engagement within the democratic public sphere. Foresight is one of the research strands present in EUARENAS. This report and visualisation are the final outputs from this foresight work and synthesises the varied research activities’ core findings.

From the work, an understanding of the current state of play of local democracy has been used to create (largely preferred) future visions for local democracies in Europe. Some common elements of these future visions are:

• Sustainable, long-term thinking
• Valuing difference and diversity
• Embracing the natural environment
• Being pro-actively inclusive and dismantling oppressive structures
• Rehumanising our cities – value-based working that centralises humanity, empathy, trust and transparency

The report proposes the following recommendations for Cities wanting to strive towards more equitable local democracies:

1. Address structural barriers to participation
2. Build relationships of trust
3. Invest in formal and civic education
4. Make decisions for the long-term

A more equitable, inclusive local democracy landscape is not too far in the distance for us to conceive it being possible. In fact, the future is now – the seeds to create it are already being planted, they just need nurturing by:

• Scaling and mainstreaming existing pilot or niche practices that are working locally – whether that beparticipatory budgeting, citizen assemblies or other smaller-scale projects – so that these become thenew ‘status quo’
• Adopting test and learn approaches to promote experimentation and on-going learning – this will enableongoing innovation and be responsive to society’s needs
• Finding ways to celebrate and connect-up the small changes that are taking place – this will help people see that progress is being made, even when it feels like things are changing too slow

To download the full report, click here.

We’ve also worked with Artist Lizzy Doe to create a visualisation of the EUARENAS City of the Future. Click here for the web version. Click here for the print-ready version. Click here for the audio description.