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Speak up Preston

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"This project is aiming to empower communities with the skills to enable them to voice opinion about issues that they feel need to be profiled and raise awareness of in order to bring about positive change.” (Project partner)

“It has helped to create a conversation in the areas, getting people saying what they want to see; the community journalist stories are making links with people and what is happening in the area.” (A community journalist)

Speak up Preston recruited and trained local people from each of three adjacent neighbourhoods in East Preston as community journalists. They reported on stories and issues that were important to the community through local radio, internet TV, video, photography, social networking and blogging. Identifying what was of importance to local people and reporting this objectively proved to be challenging. The project aimed to not only report on the issues and concerns of local people, but also to connect people from different backgrounds so that they were able to have a collective voice and be better able to influence change within their neighbourhoods.

The four project partners each brought particular expertise to Speak up Preston. Prescap provided its experience in running a community radio station (Preston FM), Bespoke the use of digital media including mobile phones and work with citizen journalists, Preston CVS provided expertise in video and internet TV, and Blog Preston its experience of running a hyper-local news site.

The three neighbourhoods, Deepdale, Ribbleton and St. Michaels, were identified as amongst the most socially deprived communities in the country. These areas were also chosen because they were Neighbourhood Management Partnerships and the project partners had good relations with the council staff working to engage local people within these. Due to funding cuts, the Neighbourhood Management partnerships had to close just as the project began. Speak up Preston offered an alternative and creative means of engaging people in the three neighbourhoods’.

Some headline messages from the project

All the Neighbourhood Challenge projects offered rich opportunities for learning. We have picked out just a few specific insights from this project below:

  • Community journalism provides a way of identifying issues and concerns that are important to local people and can provide them with a voice, but this doesn’t mean that they will always be listened to
  • Digital media and social platforms enables the production of hyper-local news that can engage people and get them working together to improve their communities
  • Recruiting local people as community journalists proved to be more difficult than anticipated
  • The Challenge Prize experienced difficulties and the award winners had not received their prizes by the end of the project

About the approach

Speak Up Preston used Community journalism and digital media to 1) give local people a voice and 2) connect people together around shared interests, concerns or goals.

1.Giving local people a voice

“The project is not just about giving people a voice…its about connecting the voices to people in power”Project partner

“Yes it has enabled the community to have a voice, but I’m not a hundred percent sure how much change that is bringing about.…can’t say whether it is having a wider influence, but through the web people are getting to understand what East Preston cares about.”Project lead

The project’s approach wasn’t simply about reporting what was happening in the community, it was also about identifying the issues and concerns that local people shared and trying to go beyond just gathering the views of the most vocal, or of established community leaders. Importantly, people were not only asked about problems, they were also asked about the strengths of their neighbourhoods and what they themselves might contribute to improving their area. Recruiting and training local people as community journalistsalso meant that decisions about what were the most important issues or events to report got decided locally and not by the external media, which was often seen as giving the area a ‘bad press’.

Through a variety of digital and social media, Speak up Preston enabled the reporting of a wide range of stories from across the three neighbourhoods. Short videos on the website highlighted issues of concern for local people ranging from rubbish collection and parking to street safety, drug misuse and prostitution. It also provided a means for advertising what was happening in each of the neighbourhoods including community activities and the promotion of the Challenge Prize. In addition, the project encouraged local people to attend an eventin each neighbourhood where they were shown a short video about their area made by the community journalists. They were the given the opportunity to talk about issues and possible actions that could improve the neighbourhood.

There was some evidence that notice was taken of what was being reported, including the Council responding to a story about rubbish by getting it cleared. Some of the stories from Speak up Preston were picked up and reported by the national media. The project also became the primary point for the Council’s consultation with the community on the development of the Inner East Preston plan. However, the project remained cautious about over stating the level of influence or extent to which local peoples views were being listened to by those in power; in part this was due to questioning whether local politicians were simply responding to one-off events, rather than reflecting a more fundamental shift in how they engaged with the community.

2.Connecting people

“The project has been the catalyst for getting people working together; there are a lot of people who see now that they have a mutual interest and common goals to improve their community and are likely to carry on working together”(Project partner)

“I’ve been here 38 years and there was a time you could have left your front door open, but then the area went through a very bad patch….its begun to change again and people are talking together and its getting back to how it use to be”(Representative of local community organisation.)

“The biggest achievement has been people coming together, forging links”(Community journalist)

Community journalism was not the only way that Speak up Preston helped to build local connections. The project helped the development of a new community organisation, the Friends of St Mathews and Fishwick, which increasingly became a significant influence in the neighbourhood. The reporting of initiatives led by local people helped to create a momentum which got more people interested and involved. This was also true of the Challenge Prize, which it was felt, increased the ambition that local groups had for their neighbourhoods.

As well as training community journalists, Speak up Preston delivered training and provided support to some groups including a community association and a youth group. This was focused on helping these groups develop proposals for the Challenge Prize and assisting them in planning how to improve their neighbourhood, for example they talked about how to establish a local health centre. The approach built links between local people and groups within each area and gave them a better knowledge and understanding of what was happening in their neighbourhood and in the surrounding area. It also helped to connect the three areas together and extend their influence beyond Preston, for example by collaborating with young people in Manchester on the development of ayouth newspaper.

What's been challenging?

"People haven’t been so keen on doing journalism themselves, but keen to talk about things. There is an issue about how people view journalists and they don’t feel they have the skills to do it themselves”(Community journalist)

The project didn’t recruit the number of community journalists it had hoped to recruit, and some people dropped out. As well as people’s possible negative views about journalism and the press, there were a number of factors that contributed to this. One of these was how much time was needed to get to know three different neighbourhoods and to develop relationships and trust in each. It was also not easy to explain to people in a short period of time exactly what the project was about and why they might want to get involved. The momentum the project had built up at the start of the project stalled to an extent in the autumn and winter when people were less willing to come out and get involved in the project.

In hindsight it was felt that it may have been better to have focused on possibly just one neighbourhood, or to have employed a local person in each area who would have provided the necessary local knowledge and contacts, as well as having a physical base in each area. The project tried to address these difficulties by using community buildings in each neighbourhood for training. It also had the same project worker working with local people in the three areas over the duration of the project.

While the community journalists gained in confidence and skills, some needed more support than others. This was in part linked to the sensitivity of some of the issues that surfaced through their work that had the potential of putting people at risk, including accounts of prostitution, the exploitation of vulnerable people and drug dealing. There were also two murders in one of the neighbourhoods that shocked people and made them nervous about talking about things and also imp

The Challenge Prize was something the partners had no experience of and finalising the process took longer than was envisaged. Preston FM informed its audience that the decisions about the prize winners would be made prior to Christmas, when this didn’t happen it was felt to have damaged the credibility of the project. Towards the end of the project the lead partner, Prescap, went into liquidation. All finance was frozen and this resulted in the Challenge Prize winners not receiving their awards by the time the project had come to an end.

What's changed?

"It’s not just one thing; lots of pockets of engagement and people gaining skills and taking part in the project.”(Project partner )

“There is a greater awareness and connection to the local area by the people who live in the area. People are more likely to see themselves as part of the neighbourhood, not just living in Preston.”(Project partner)

“I was surprised at how much energy there was out there and that people did have a desire to do something”(Project lead)

Local people have been able to voice their issues and concerns

  • The Speak up Preston community journalists have reported on more than a hundred different stories on its website.
  • The council has taken account of some of the stories and responded positively to these.
  • The community has been able to influence the Inner East Preston plan through the project’s place on the Action Group.

Individuals and groups are more connected and involved

  • Individuals have got involved in neighbourhood groups and projects including community associations, volunteering to help run a local gym, tree planting, a community allotment and a community food project .

There has been an increase in skills and confidence

  • Twenty-five community journalists have been trained and have gained skills and confidence through this training.
  • Community groups have benefited from training and support to enable them to develop Challenge Prize proposals and to attract other sources of funding that will benefit their neighbourhoods.

What next?

The loss of its core funding resulted in Prescap going into liquidation, now the intention is for much of its work to continue through Preston FM. The current community journalists will be supported by Preston FM, which will provide a platform for them to broadcast their stories. It is hoped that the Speak up Preston website will also continue and that the other partners will carry on supporting the project. The School of Journalism at the University of Central Lancaster is going to continue the training of community journalists from the area one day a week.

A social enterprise in Preston has offered support to those Challenge Prize winners that have the potential to become social enterprises including providing training and resources.

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