This week, members of the PVM team have been in Palermo, along with partners from the CONTINUE Project, to deliver training on Knowledge Exchange activities and share updates on work package progress. A representative from Gorse Hill Studios – our local partner based in Stretford, Greater Manchester – also joined us, for a week of shared learning and development.

We kicked off the week by exchanging key learnings from stakeholder interviews which partners had conducted with people in their local communities. The interviews were with a range of different people including teachers, youth workers and representatives from local government and explore their thoughts on how the COVID-19 Pandemic has impacted the lives of young people. Each partner presented the key learnings from each of the interviews, then we moved on to discussing how we could share this information with other people working in the field.

As part of the training, the group exchanged ideas for activities that could be used in the knowledge exchange event to facilitate discussion – ideas ranged from the Fishbowl technique to Focus Groups, creating safe spaces and World Café. We were then provided with a template session plan which each of us will adjust to suit the needs of the groups we’ll be working with.

Partners are now fully equipped to organise and deliver their knowledge exchange events. This stage of the project will be wrapped up by the end of September. Each partner will then write up a set of local policy briefings (using the learnings from the KE events) which will be shared in the hopes of influencing change.

A further Pan-European Knowledge Exchange event is set to take place by late November, combining the learnings from the local sessions and building further understandings – this will feed into a final Pan-European Policy briefing which is set to be released in the New Year.

The TNP took place the day after the training sessions and enabled partners to update on the progress of the project and discuss future plans.

Stay up to date with project happenings on the PVM blog and be sure to follow us on social media for more frequent updates. 

We are working on a new and exciting 2 year project called Home? – a project made possible by the Heritage Fund, that focuses on the recent lived experiences of migrants in Northern England. Through Community Reporter stories and Archive Research, we will be exploring what it is and has been like to migrate to Northern England over the past 10 years.

On this project, we will be gathering 100 stories to document authentic lived experiences, looking at how people have settled in (or not) to their new homes, how migrant communities have contributed to the places they now live and much more. Through the stories and archive research we want to give a platform to the diversity of voices that make-up communities across Northern England and explore our very recent heritage – making sure it is preserved for future generations. We will also be embedding a social justice and anti-racist agenda into this work.

These stories will then be showcased in the public arena at a variety of venues such as Museums, Libraries, Schools, Colleges, Universities and we will be creating an animation to bring the key messages from the stories together, as well as a toolkit that will offer guidance in exploring migration in community and informal learning settings. 

To achieve all of this we are not working alone and have partnered up with some great folk to help us bring this vision to life. Specifically, in Northern England we are working with: 

• Refugee Women Connect, Liverpool 
• Global Link Development Education Centre, Lancaster
• Leeds Asylum Seekers’ Support Network, Leeds 
• Methodist Asylum Project (“MAP”,) Middlesbrough
• Dragons Voice, Greater Manchester

These local partners will help connect the project and us into communities and engage different people in the heritage activities.

And on a national level we are working with NACCOM – a national network of over 140 frontline organisations and charities across the UK, working together to end destitution amongst people seeking asylum, refugees and other migrants who aren’t able to access to public funds because of their immigration status. NACCOM will be helping us to create the toolkit and tie in the issues and debates from the stories and research into national level conversations.

Stay tuned for more updates!

Last week PVM joined UNICORN Project partners in Berlin to take part in a 4 four day training event.

The training, delivered by Vensenya, focused on four key aspects of communications and marketing – Audience Design, Storytelling, Distribution and Audience Building – and how these can be applied to NGO sector organisations.

The training was an opportunity to see how marketing methods and communications strategies traditionally used in the business sector can be applied to smaller, grassroot level, non-profit organisations. Partners were able to reflect on their organisation’s purpose, audience and aims, then think about how these strategically link to approaches to marketing and communications. The training was a success and provided lots of inspiration as to how PVM could improve in terms of the content we share and how we engage with our audience.

The next training will take part in Liverpool in July – stay tuned for more updates!

Since May 2021, People’s Voice Media have been partnering with Ideas Alliance on Not Another Co-Production Project.

The aim of the project is to move co-production from a buzz word into an embedded practice within grassroots organisations across England. We want to facilitate a knowledge exchange which ensures local people become active citizens, are involved in decision making and can shift power in their community, creating equitable partnerships between residents, services and local authorities. We want a future where policy, research and service design are informed by the lived experiences of local people and where collaboration is the norm not the exception.

As part of a 3-year project, Ideas Alliance will work with People’s Voice Media to deliver a co-production development project. This project will benefit local people, professionals and organisations across England, through engaging them in co-production workshops, Community Reporting, annual community learning festivals and a peer support network that connects people and creates a partnership of practice.

The first year of the project has been based in Greater Manchester and has seen a series of workshop delivered on co-production, community reporting and storytelling.

Most recently planning has begun for the first of three community learning festivals, which is set to take place in Manchester this summer. Last week members of Ideas Alliance came together with project contributors from across Greater Manchester at the Science and Industry Museum to discuss what should be included in the festival. The day will be a chance for people to learn more about co-production, challenge their understanding of what it is and most importantly celebrate how it can be used as a tool to create positive change within a range of different settings.

Stay tuned for future updates on the project and keep a look out on socials for invites to the festival!

Last week members of the PVM team ventured out to Valladolid to take part in a series of training workshops as part of the Narrative of Impact Project.

We were joined by project partners from across Europe and together we tested a series of storytelling activities, each of which had been adapted in order to be used as a way of measuring impact. These activities, alongside a series of video guides, will combine to form a toolkit – which will provide instructions on how to implement storytelling as a tool for measuring impact.

A huge thank you goes out to INTRAS Foundation (Spain) for hosting the training and the rest of the partners for your efforts in presenting and testing the activities: Comparative Research Network (Germany), Coordinamento delle Organizzazioni per il Servizio Volontario (Italy) and SNDE (Poland).

Stay tuned for more updates!