Speak up Preston

Read the Speak up Preston blog

About the approach

Speak up Preston aims to create a surge of community journalism, enabling anyone to use technology and report and question what is happening around them. The group will recruit and train community journalists in each neighbourhood, who will use digital media and technology to get 'under the skin' of their local community.

They will broadcast and publish news reports and collate them into an online community news portal. Responding to the emerging themes, the community journalists will run events involving decision makers and local residents. The project aims not simply to provide a platform for these communities, but to connect 'collective voices for positive change'. They envisage coffee mornings and pub nights, organised by community journalists, giving opportunities for storytelling and providing expertise and peer support to help others join the team.

The best ideas to come out of the events organised by community journalists will be supported through a challenge prize. Based on previous experiences of engaging with the three communities, the partners know that there is an appetite to reach new people using media and journalism. The residents are also passionate about the place they live in and want to help to make it better.

This video was produced by Media Trust's newsnet which is helping develop and support community journalism through a forum and other online resources. You can sign up to newsnet here.

About the organisations

The Lead: Prescap

Born out of the community in 1985, Prescap uses a range of art forms in a dynamic way to support regeneration, social cohesion and community development. Working with a wide range of partners, Prescap designs bespoke, creative projects to help build skills and confidence and combat isolation. In 2005 Prescap founded Preston FM, a community radio station. Broadcasting 80 hours of original home-grown radio each week, Preston FM gives a voice to the community.

Local partners: Bespoke Project, CSV Preston, Blog Preston

Bespoke is a research project based in the School of Journalism, Media and Communication within the University of Central Lancashire. Over the past 15 months, Bespoke has been working on two estates in Preston using community journalism as a tool for involving local people in the production of a monthly paperbased news publication and a website. As well as providing expertise in neighbourhood-level community journalism, the University will provide access to technical equipment and will bring an academic input to the evaluation of Speak up Preston.

Blog Preston is a volunteer-led social enterprise which provides a hyper-local news site offering community news, views and information for the City of Preston. It offers local people a chance to have their say on issues in the city, write content for the site and report on things which are slightly off the 'mainstream news radar'. With their expertise in Web 2.0 and their award winning hyper-local journalism, Blog Preston can offer on-line journalism training as well as access to their existing Blog Preston platform as an outlet for work that is created.

CSV Preston operates a work-based learning/volunteering media project in the centre of Preston, aimed primarily at young people. CSV itself is a national volunteering and training charity. Their vision is of a society where everyone can participate fully to create healthy, enterprising, inclusive communities.

About the neighbourhood

Speak up Preston will be delivered in three adjacent neighbourhoods in East Preston which have fewer community activists and community organisations than other City neighbourhoods.

Deepdale has a young population relative to the Preston average and over 50 per cent of residents are from black and minority ethnic backgrounds. Cross-cultural community activity is limited and a particular current issue concerns the rising prominence of the English Defence League. Ribbleton has a much larger white population and high levels of worklessness. Community infrastructure is underdeveloped and there are few organised opportunities for community involvement and volunteering.

St Matthews has a relatively young population and a large black and minority ethnic population. Recent work undertaken within this neighbourhood has revealed that St Matthews residents often feel 'overlooked' and would be keen to engage in more community activities, should opportunities arise.

Neighbourhood Management Partnerships operate in all three areas and the project partners have good relationships with the staff operating these schemes. The neighbourhood management schemes came to an end in April 2011, leaving a gap that Speak up Preston will help to address.