Every year PVM have 2 meet ups with the Community Reporters. This is a chance for PVM to update the Community Reporters with news, opportunities, and developments and to find out what they have been up to and to get feedback from them. 

In September we had our second meeting of the year. The meet up took place online and we update the attendees of the work we have been doing developing our anti-racist commitments and the actions that we are taking to ensure that they are part of PVM’s everyday work, so they won’t be just words without substance.

Actions that we have taken so far –

• using anti-racism as examples in our Responsible Practice training
• increased the diversity of our board members
• increased the visual representation on our website and in the visual content that we gather, use and share.

As well as updating the Community Reporters it’s also a chance to gain feedback. This was positive and powerful with people saying how important it is to have a place of support and solidarity for people to come together to discuss, offload, and support each other. This brought about the idea of creating a regular support group. It was just the beginning of an idea, but we shall be exploring it further.

We also talked about the feedback, reflections and actions from the ICR conference that took place in the spring and discussed how we can take these ideas forward to shape next years conference.

The next online meet up for the ICR will be Thursday 24th of March 2022 from 12:00 – 1:00pm

Sign up through Eventbrite here.

Kath Peters – PVM Project Manager

PVM have been working alongside Camden Disability Action training participants in Community Reporting. Collecting lived experiences of employment and the workplace with people who have Disabilities and/or long-term health conditions. 

This source of lived experience is the starting point of a co-production process with Camden council and to kick this off PVM and Camden Disability Action facilitated an online ‘Conversation of Change’ workshop.

During this workshop a short film was shown of the stories that were gathered during the Community Reporting process. These powerful stories of lived experience became the starting point for Camden residents and service providers to get together and plant the seeds of change in their local area. 

The workshop allowed everyone to reflect on the stories they had heard, relating them to their own life experiences and this was the focus of discussion in small groups.

Helping everyone to ‘shoot for the moon’ the workshop opened up the idea of the ‘dreamer state’. Posing the question ‘If you could have a dream service what would it look like?’ This approach inspired people to think a little bit out of the box. By the end of the workshop people had come up with initial ideas that of services that had imagination and gave hope.  

Camden Disability Action, the local Disabled resident’s and the council will now be collaborating and co-creating a local service together ensuring that the services are led by people who are Disabled or have long term health conditions and using these initial ideas as the foundation.

Kath Peters – PVM Project Manager

PVM have been working alongside Camden Disability Action training participants in Community Reporting. Collecting lived experiences of employment and the workplace with people who have Disabilities and/or long-term health conditions. 

This wealth of lived experience will be the starting point of a co-production process with Camden council. 

To kick start this off PVM and Camden Disability Action is facilitating a ‘Conversation of Change’ workshop on Sept 9^th from 1pm – 4pm where Camden residents and service providers will get together to make positive changes for the future. 

This workshop will explore the lived experience stories relating to employment of Disabled residents and people with long-term health conditions in Camden. Using the themes and topics from these stories, together we will come-up with initial ideas for a new employment service for Disabled people and those with long term health conditions.

Specifically, in this participatory workshop we will:

• Listen to Disabled peoples and people with long term health conditions experiences of employment and employment support
• Reflect on these stories and explore our own experiences
• Identify ideas about how employment provision and support into employment can be practically improved for Disabled people and people with long term health conditions in Camden.

British Sign Language interpretation and live (auto-generated) captioning will be used throughout the event.

This will be an online event held on Zoom. The links and details about how to join will be sent upon registration. Registration will be open until 5pm on the 7^th September.

If you are interested in attending, please register here.

If you would like further information about the event or assistance with registering contact Tom on 07908746927 or tom@camdendisabilityaction.org.uk

And that’s it… another annual Institute of Community Reporters (ICR) conference has come and gone, and what a blast we had. A BIG thank you to everyone who made it possible – those working behind the scenes running the tech, people who led workshops, folk who braved the livestream and to everyone who got involved in the workshops and online discussions. Without YOU it simply would not have happened.

As part of the day, there were some livestreams. The morning livestream got things off to a great start with from Maff from Camerados, who brought us the sunshine from his lovely garden as well as meaningful insights from his own stories of lived experience. As well as Maff other guest speakers discussed the impact and power that lived experience storytelling has had on them. The morning discussion set the tone for the rest of the day. If you missed it, you can watch it here: 

The team at People’s Voice Media then led a workshop called people were able to have conversations about what good lived experience storytelling practice looks like. People came up with some practical and insightful ideas that we aim to put together as a manifesto, (of sorts), that we can bring into practice here at People’s Voice Media and influence others to adopt as well. So, watch this space as this is developed further!

There were also 6 satellite workshops running through the day that other people involved in storytelling delivered. They were all online except one which was facilitated in a wonderful outside space. These workshops explored different areas of lived experience storytelling. From, ‘Stories of the Storytellers’ that looked at the theme of ownership of storytelling, to, ‘An Invitation to a Brave Space’ which focused on how to make spaces safe for authentic storytelling to take place, these were just some of the themes.

People’s Voice Media were also back on the workshop front with a second event that was about exploring what a Day of Action might look like around lived experience… and was it a good idea in the first place. Various ideas about what this might look like were discussed. Some people explored doing ‘story jams’ which hopefully could be happen around a real campfire, or if not a virtual one. Short films with stories were mentioned and stories in different languages.

Other ideas that emerged around a Day of Action were:

• A campaign about the value of stories as a legitimate form of data and a valuable tool for learning and development
• A day in which we speak truth to power! Love this!
• Positive stories of change – when people power works well 
• A campaign that flips the idea of ‘hard to reach’ on its head and tries to engage professionals who are ‘hard to reach’ or not currently involved in discussions around lived experience and co-production 

All of these are seeds of ideas that could be developed, and we will be getting in touch with workshop attendees to see if people want to take this forward, or any of this discussion forward in anyway. 

The afternoon livestream brought all the workshop leaders – the People’s Voice Media crew and the satellite workshop leaders – together, to reflect on their sessions. You can watch it here:

I think it’s fair to say that the conference generated healthy discussions, ideas and reflections that will steer us in the right direction for future practice. Bringing people together and listening to insightful reflections of practice and who wholly support the way forward was inspiring and re-energising. There was a sense of hope that the Future of Lived Experience is in safe hands. Thanks a million for joining us, and keep in touch!

Kath Peters, PVM.