Funder: National Lottery – Emerging Futures, Disrupt Fund

Partners: Community Reporter Network, Camerados, Disability Rights UK

Sector: Research, Third Sector, Public Sector

Overview:

This programme of work started in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic when members of the Community Reporter network started to gather people’s experience of the pandemic as a means of connecting in difficult times. The focus of the work was on supporting people with the least resource and power in society to share their everyday experiences. It was important that these voices – those that are often unheard – are part of the on-going COVID-19 narrative and involved as active actors in rebuilding our future.

People’s Voice Media supported the network to do this by providing training and support sessions, gathering stories ourselves and setting-up a dedicated webspace on the Community Reporter website to act as growing depository for the stories. We also partnered with Camerados and used Emerging Futures funding (National Lottery) to train more people in Community Reporting to gather stories for this work. We used these stories to create live streams that in an engaging and entertaining way delved deeper into the topics being addressed in the stories. We also teamed-up with Disability Rights UK and with funding from Disrupt did a deep-dive into the experiences of Disabled people of the pandemic. These stories have formed part of Disability Rights UK’s core participant submission to the national COVID-19 inquiry.