Equitable Futures: The 5th annual Community Reporter Network Conference
Last week in Liverpool, People’s Voice Media organized a meeting called “Equitable Futures: the 5th annual Community Reporter Network Conference”, where we, as partners, had the chance to present our Narratives of Impact project.
During the meeting, we discussed a few topics related to the Community Reporting, a method launched by People Voice’s Media that uses digital tools to support people to tell their own stories in their own ways. Some activities concerning the topics were proposed to the participants allowing them to feel involved and discuss their ideas with one another.
For instance, when discussing about creating communities of sanctuary for people who are displaced, participants had the opportunity to share their vision and ideas on what public institutions and organizations can do to make people feel involved and part of the society while adjusting to it in learning the language and the culture, and how they can be helped in doing so without losing their identity.
Moreover, we discussed the EUARENAS project concerning how cities and urban spaces can support democracy, where a series of future-thinking activities have taken place in various locations across Europe. We were asked to evaluate the pros and cons of a city of the future.
Narratives of Impact presentation
We also had the opportunity to share with the participants the results of NOI project concerning the use of different storytelling methods, which make possible the collection of interesting and creative data, and the importance of measuring the impact when sharing people’s lived experience stories. We also presented our Toolkit and video-guides designed for non-profit organization, NGOs, individuals and teams, and public service.
The activities we proposed to the participants, and taken from the Toolkit, were:
- Journey Stories: this activity can be very accessible for people to use because we all have been on journeys as part of our life stories and therefore people can easily relate to the idea of being on a journey. This activity can be used as a guide throughout a process, project, or service. At the beginning through to the end and people can review their development as they go. Or it can be used at the end of the process, project, or service to review the impact.
- My Social Pentagon: this activity can be undertaken with individuals, one-to-one, or in groups. First of all, ask the participants to draw 5 circles as in the diagram onto a sheet of paper; then explain that each circle represents a person involved in that specific area of their life, including the participant. Next, ask the participant/s to write the name of a person they know inside each circle. Then, ask the participants to draw connections between their own circle and the others using the red, green, and black pens to indicate what sort of relationship they have with them; good, bad, or indifferent. Finally, the facilitator invites the participant/s to comment on their drawing. This can lead to an interesting discussion about how they feel about themselves and their relationships.
- Data Hackaton: data storytelling hackathons are short events where people come together to create interesting stories from data collection in various formats using a variety of mediums, including: photos; GIFs; videos; drawings; presentations, etc. Taking numbers, statistics, and feedback, and transforming it into interesting visual stories can be used as an impact measurement tool, as it gives context and scope for the impact data, and these can be used from several sources, for example end of project evaluations and annual report evaluation. Interpreting the information and taking it from written data (stats and info) and creating something more appealing in a visual way can help people to engage with the data in a different way, making it more accessible and meaningful than numbers on a page, and helps to convey the impact of the project, service, or organisation in a more understandable way.
The meeting has been a great opportunity to meet our partners and work together one last time, as we look forward to future partnerships. We also want to thank People Voice’s Media for their commitment to bring positive social change.