As part of James Powell developments for PUMR, he is working on a project with Peoples Voice Media called the European Institute of Community Reporters. This has been established so that just over 2,000 community reporters have been coached, and now coach themselves, to spread their own ‘Voices’ via social media on issues important to them, often through the use of short stories.

The approach of story-telling used by the reporters is summarised in the attached document and we feature an example of James’ own story about it below.. The Community Reporters social networks, which are becoming important ways of communicating by citizens and communities, at a local level, can be accessed by Goggling ‘Institute of Community Reporters, communityreporters.net or by emailing [email protected].

Please also see the related article by Budd Hall and Rajesh Tandon No more enclosures: knowledge democracy and social transformation.

James Powell’s ‘My Story’

I have personally grown into working for change at the local level - to do something within my own control. What I have felt, for far too long is that I have been working at the wrong scale, and that rich problems and issues exist within my grasp and control which are sufficient stimulation for my own constructive change purposes. In particular, I now try to develop meaningful discussions between those known to me - in business, industry, the civil and voluntary services and the community at large - who are often apparently in conflict with each other but who could work together to redesign the world into something useful and sustainable to them.

Rather than allow professionals to use their expertise alone to solve problems on our behalves, I try to set up trans-disciplinary teams, including problem owners, to work together to use conflict as a spur to create a new harmony through a re-alignment of values and desired outcomes.

I now realise there a simple media tools available to help all express what they each aspire towards enabling them, for the first time, to communicate their needs and wants meaningfully to each other. My research has shown this enables the design of new systems for constructive change through collective action leading to mutually respecting benefits. I am also personally using social networking tools to drive for the sort of local change I believe is necessary. For, a comprehensive view of other approaches I am adopting and developing for universities to play a fuller role, go to http://pumr.pascalobervatory.org.

Let me present just one example of what I am doing, with my colleagues Gary Copitch, by way of illustration. I am deeply engage in developing with many others in helping local citizens and communities ‘have a voice for themselves’ about problems and issues that are important to them. People’s Voice Media ([email protected] or Google the phrase People’s Voice Media for more information) is a social enterprise I work with which is striving to develop 10,000 community reporters, across Europe, with the skills to enable them to express their views about topics important to themselves and then to share their views with others to strengthen their collective understanding and thus the potential for collective future constructive action. Go to the site mentioned above to see this approach, with a presentation presented by the reporters themselves

To date, we have coached over 2,000 such reporters to learn how to become better and better at this new form of locally responsive journalism, giving them a real ‘voice’ for themselves. And, increasingly the coaching of these reporters is done by the Community Reporters themselves. They have now become so professional that they have come together in their own European Institute for Community Reporters. This Institute is helping them spread knowledge of their activities and capabilities in extremely professional, and highly relevant, ways. Their new ability, to express these views powerfully and compellingly, enables them to share their views with each other using their own complementary and purposeful social networks.

The resulting conversations are getting deeper and more meaningful as the reporters gain confidence and skills and especially learn differently what they are saying to each other. During a week-long engagement with existing Community Reporters, those with a desire to develop their own ‘voice’ quickly learn to do it for themselves. They soon acquire the new skills for personal constructive change and how to make a real difference for themselves having a huge impact.

Universities could reach out to these reporters, citizens and communities beyond their traditional remits as the blog by Budd Hall and Rajesh Tandon recently suggested enabling true ‘knowledge democracy’ & social transformation - https://www.opendemocracy.net/transformation/budd-hall-rajesh-tandon/no-...

I also work as a Leonardo Ambassador to harness this potential further and have worked with both Wikipedia and TED to help open up these voices to our forward looking change managers. Thus would be a larger audience for themselves, but also give corporate managers quite a different perspective than they would otherwise normally have. In turn, Leonardo will be developing its own new tool to give substance to its principles.