We’ve been working with the Bronte Youth and Community Centre in Liverpool delivering a series of Community Reporting workshops with young people in the local community!

The Bronte Youth and Community Centre is a Youth Organisation based in Central Liverpool. They offer a youth club 3 nights a week to children and young adults from the ages of 5 to 18 and young people with additional needs and disabilities up to the age of 25.

They are currently in the process of renovating their community hub and wanted to ensure the young people played a part in shaping their new space – which is where Community Reporting comes in.

Over the course of 6 sessions young people creatively explored their ideas for the future of their club, brainstorming ideas in the form of collages, clay sculptures, modeled buildings and recorded interviews, developing basic skills in Community Reporting along the way. The group also worked together interviewing peers, community members, staff and partners helping to paint a picture of their hopes for the future of the centre.

From Karaoke to Fashion Shows, Football to Gardening Projects – the young people came up with a whole host of ideas for the new space and their enthusiasm and excitement for the future of their community was inspirational to say the least.

These ideas will form a integral part of the plans for the future of the Bronte, informing the kinds of sessions and activities that are on offer to young people and local community, how the different areas of the building can be used and what role the young people themselves will play in the newly refurbished space.

We’ll be writing up an insight report over the next couple of months, which will summarise the findings from the recorded stories and content created by the young people. This will then be used to inform future decision making processes and shape what kind of space the centre becomes.

The ultimate aim of the project is to develop capacity within the Bronte Youth & Community Centre to use Community Reporting as a tool for engagement, insight, and evaluation and for enabling community voices – particularly those belonging to young people – to interact with the Bronte.

In 2025 we’ll also be delivering some train the trainer workshops with staff and community members to equip them with the skills to carry on the Community Reporting process for generations to come – so watch this space for more stories and updates!

If you’d like to find out more about The Bronte, Check out their website for more information and updates on the renovation work, or head over to their Facebook to see what sessions they have running for young people in and around Liverpool City Centre.

We’re super excited to announce our upcoming Community Reporter catch ups for 2025!

This year we are hosting more catch ups than usual thanks to funding from Esmee Fairbairn, meaning more opportunities for Community Reporters to come together, learn from the movement and share what you’ve been working on.

Sessions will provide an space for members of the Community Reporter network to come together with staff from the People’s Voice Media team and anyone wanting to know more about the movement. Expect a warm welcome, updates on PVM’s recent projects, time to interact and share what you’ve been working on with others and a shared sense of joy and inspiration.

There will be four online sessions taking place across the year. We’ll be kicking things off in March with the 1st session of 2025, the 2nd event will take place in June, 3rd in September and 4th and final event in December – what a great way to round off the year.

You can find out more about the plan for these sessions and register for a space by visiting out eventbrite page – we’ve also included the checkout links below for quick and easy sign up:

If you have any questions or would like more information – please get in touch with Georgia from People’s Voice Media via email: georgia@peoplesvoicemedia.co.uk

We can’t wait to see you there!

Funded by a National Lottery award from the National Lottery Community Fund.
 

This Black History Month, we are thrilled to announce that we have been awarded funding from the National Lottery Community Fund’ to run a 18 month Global Majority Community Reporter project. The project is set to start in November 2024 and builds on our existing work in this area. 

This funding will allow us to continue strengthening our Community Reporting network, with a dedicated focus on training and supporting Global Majority Community Reporters. Through our work in Community Reporting, we strive to broaden the narrative, making sure that storytelling is a powerful movement for change and becomes increasingly inclusive of underrepresented voices.

Changing the World, One Story at a Time

At People’s Voice Media, we believe that stories are a powerful tool for creating change and we are committed to amplifying the voices of those from Global Majority backgrounds in our work. They are not only reflections of our experiences but also agents of transformation. However, we recognise that this journey will look and feel different for Global Majority individuals, and therefore this project will recruit, train and mentor people from Global Majority communities to use lived experience storytelling to support racial justice.

The aims of the project are to build the capacity of people from Global Majority communities to be leaders in co-production and social change fields. Through a mixture of training, peer support and mini-social action projects we want to create a space where the experiences of global majority individuals are not only amplified but also central to the change we aim to achieve. Also establishing an England-wide Global Majority peer support network for people from Global Majority communities working in co-production and social change arenas. We know this work is essential to addressing the deep societal inequalities that persist, and storytelling can be the key to unlocking new possibilities for justice and equity.

A New Chapter for Inclusive Storytelling

Through this initiative, we want to further embed anti-racist practice across our Community Reporter network and create spaces for people with experiences of racism to talk about this safely. We hope that this will contribute to transformational change in our own work and the boarder co-production sphere, creating racial justice in these settings. 

The work will be led by Isaac Samuels – the Community Reporting lead at People’s Voice Media. It builds on their current work with the Co-Production Collective that has been researching the lived experiences of racialised communities in co-production and research and working with organisations in this arena to turn the insights from people’s stories into applied action. 

In the coming weeks, we will be sharing more about this exciting project, including how people can get involved. Stay tuned for more updates as we continue this vital work!

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 emerge from this work.

If you’d like to share a story on your experience of adult social care – get in touch with Georgia from the PVM team georgia@peoplesvoicemedia.co.uk

Dragons Voice CIC started working with People’s Voice Media (PVM) on the HOME? Project in May 2022 after discussions with Hayley (CEO of PVM). We feel privileged to be part of this project as we have worked with another organisation on a similar type of project. Initially we intended to gather stories from the BNO new arrivals from Hong Kong but this was not welcomed by that community as many feared for their safety and did not want to participate in a project that will showcase how they are living now since arriving in the UK.

We discussed this with PVM and Kath kindly agreed that we could look at alternative sectors of the Chinese community. In the end we recruited mainly from Mandarin speaker from mainland China who arrived in the UK within the last 10 years.

We found members of the PVM team to be very understanding and willing to adapt to our changing circumstances. As the director authorising the partnership agreement, I felt that PVM as an organisation stands true to its values. I have met Hayley a few times when I attended some training (early 2021) and at a conference way back in 2017. What came across was the philosophy of non-exploitation and letting people take control of their own stories.

How have the participants benefited from the project?

The participants who attended the Community Reporter training gained skills in doing short snapshot and dialogue interviews. They used a tablet to record the videos at the training sessions. The interviews were spoken in Chinese languages so they did not have to struggle with speaking in a second language. Some gathered stories after the training and uploaded them onto the Community Reporter website.

Those who attended the archive research training completed summaries of stories they found in the Manchester Evening newspaper. The focus was on finding stories on positive contributions from migrants. The skills they developed were firstly to locate the articles online and then sifting through the articles to find relevant stories. To conclude, they had to summarise and transfer core information onto the spreadsheet.

The training provided opportunities for strangers to meet up with other peers and transfer some of the learning into practice. Those who struggled with the archive research due to language were supported by those who had better English abilities. The project provided opportunities for participants to talk about and reflect on their migration journeys. Dragons Voice created 2 part-time posts for its volunteers, one to co-ordinate and the other to support in recruitment and organising activities.

Has Dragon’s Voice learned anything from taking part or from the stories?

There are many similarities in the stories, namely people migrate for better opportunities in life. There are always challenges to overcome in the initial transition, be it the weather in UK, availability of food they normally eat, language barriers or employment opportunities. The approach to interviewing in Community Reporting is very different to interviewing to mine for information, which is how we normally work when interviewing guests on our radio shows. In future we should be less focused on getting information we want and instead adopt a facilitative approach for the individuals we interview to tell their stories.

As a director I have learned to devise employment contracts for freelance workers but is not quite sure what to do when they pull out mid-way. I have had to step in and luckily as I had overall management of the project, I was able to pick it up without much trouble.

The Knowledge Exchange event puts the stories we gathered into a wider context and the roadmaps produced offers a sense of direction for future actions. It was good to meet up with other partners at the partners meetings, who worked across broader areas and are much more politically aware. Their comments provided different perspectives and food for thought.

At the conference in Liverpool, I found out about the other great projects that PVM is involved in and it opened my eyes to the broader work of community reporting.

I am painfully aware that Manchester has diverse migrant communities and it was with regret that we did not include these other groups in our project. We did offer the archive training to ALLFM presenter but there was no uptake advertising it on the volunteers steering group meetings and at ALLFM studio. We need to consider in future how to engage with other migrant groups within Manchester.

It is with much appreciation that Dragons Voice CIC was able to be a partner on this project. We hope to be able to work with People’s Voice Media again in the future.

Denise Yuen Megson

Director

Dragons Voice CIC