Summary
In this further
Citizens Enablement, for all Europe, the Board of ‘Peoples’ Voice Media developed a complementary ‘Community Reporters’ programme, often known as ‘Reuters in the Community’. Communities and citizens could specialise in gathering, curating and mobilising stories of lived experiences using
@commreporter; a video by a community member explaining the CR process is shown bottom left.
Major Learning point for Citizen Enablement
Local small teams of citizens throughout Europe learned how to find out about issues of interest in great detail, write stories of real interest to all, then produce audio/visual reports that were sufficiently compelling that some were commissioned to produce copy by external agencies. The reporters also banded together to produce an Institute of Community Reporters to ensure the voice of these reporters were heard and they became a powerful force to be considered.
The Case
In a further Citizens Enablement, for all Europe, the Board of ‘Peoples’ Voice Media also developed a complementary ‘Community Reporters’ programme, often known as ‘Reuters in the Community’. Communities and citizens specialise in gathering, curating and mobilising stories of lived experiences using @commreporter
Community Reporting is a method that enables people to share their personal stories and lived experiences through video recordings. The Community Reporters model supports people with learning to tell their own stories, collect stories from others, edit content and upload it to the Community Reporters website.
An early meeting of Trainee Community Reporters
The first week in the development of any Community Reporters Training programme, a group of local participants citizens are normally tasked with taking creative photographs based on the topic of general interest and their personal experiences of life. Such a conversation leads on from discussing the inspiration behind any photographic compositions and, in this case discussed further below, allows the group to cover issues that were important in their personal health experiences. This included how vital friendship and support networks are during health management, how interaction and social settings enable people to feel like progress was being made and how accessing the wealth of information available can help to feel an improvement. Shown abve is the progress of an early meeting of such Reporter training.
As learning develops, already trained Community Reporters come together to support the new reporters, focusing their joint meeting on firstly learning how to produce a report using audio. They discuss what new reporters liked and didn’t like about them, and what techniques they could take from them when making an audio recording themselves. Their assignment for the next meeting is normally to develop a script for an audio community report on health data.
The Cover of the Community Reporters Information
An impressive number of people normally attended such Community Reporter training. In Salford, as a poor city, there is always a lot of talk about health. Typically reporters want to understand more about local health, before reporting on it by using activity trackers to make early record. Ten of the participants in a recent programme wanted to test out their own health tracker for a week or two. Some were most interested in counting their steps, hoping it would motivate them to walk about more and achieve more ambitious targets. Others decided to monitor their sleep to find out how much of the night they are in deep sleep. All of them returned the following week to film reports on what they think of the trackers, and to share their views on and how the health data might help them to stay healthy and well. In this way, slowly, but surely, new reporter citizens learn, through first hand practical experience, supported by someone like themselves who has received similar learning support, how to become ‘top-notch’ reporters in their own right.
Let’s give you an example of just one community reporter development in Salford. A group wanted to use their knowledge and experience of older people to make life better for them and firstly listened closely to them, and valued their views. In this project, concerning the health of older Salfordians, the Reporters specifically tried to:
- capture older people’s views and experiences of collecting and using health data.
- strive to understand if and how people collect data to look after their own health. For example measuring blood pressure, blood sugar or keeping a food diary.
- build a community network of people and organisations
Some of the Older People mentioned above–
who are themselves just other Salford Citizens
In this context, eighteen community reporters and twelve exercise class participants from Salford and Wythenshawe developed material with the older people. A compilations of the best community reports of these older people’s views on health data, as recorded on the trackers they were given, is shown briefly below, as direct quotes – this should give a flavour of their engagement:
· “The tracker motivated me to walk that extra bit.
· “I think activity trackers are a good idea, but I couldn’t afford to buy one.
· “I found out that I have a lot of deep sleep.”
· “I have mobility problems, so I didn’t make my targets.”
· “I didn’t use the app because I’m not very technically minded and I don’t have wifi at home.”
· “The Healthy Eating app helped me think twice when reaching for that extra biscuit.
· “If we would have started taking my mum’s blood sugar at home sooner, she might not have been on insulin now.
· “When I measure my blood pressure at home, it’s much lower than at the GPs.”
In this context, as in all other such training, the Community Reporter trainees begin by shooting raw material for their video on health data. Then, during training sessions, they learn how to edit that material. These citizens soon become very capable reporters. As one trainee reporter said about the scheme. It has been the first public engagement project I’ve been involved in. I am now roughly half way through, and I am happy to report it is all going very well. ‘Health data’ can seem like an abstract concept, even to a clinician. However, all the volunteers quickly picked up on our theme, and shared some really insightful personal stories. The volunteers were then sent out into the community centre to record video interviews with members of the public, using the topic of health data. The results of the older citizens brought us all out in uncontrollable giggles! But there was also some amazingly high quality video content to view. Their second session was a bit of a crash course in video editing. Our trainer patiently guided everyone through the software and demonstrated how to create a polished final film. The training was soon completed, and the newly qualified Community Reporters then interviewed local members of the senior exercise class as their next assignment.
The above, we hope, should give you a real flavour of the Citizen Enablement in the case of community reporter development and shows the caring and careful way such personalised learning is engendered to fully empower citizens and their communities.
Major Learning point for Citizen Enablement
Local small teams of citizens throughout Europe learned how to find out about issues of interest in great detail, write stories of real interest to all, then produce audio/visual reports that were sufficiently compelling that some were commissioned to produce copy by external agencies. The reporters also banded together to produce an Institute of Community Reporters to ensure the voice of these reporters were heard and they became a powerful force to be considered.
The Enabler
Gary Copitch is the main Citizen Enabler of these Community Reporters. These Reporters, from across Europe are now empowered to give voice to their needs and wants in a way that is beginning to ensure real change for them.
