We’re very excited about our project. Most of the strategic partners have extensive experience of working with their stakeholder communities to enable their voice to be heard, but our project takes this to the next level.Our aims are:• to develop core curricula of informal, non-formal and formal learning and development - including validation of prior learning, to support the acquisition of competences from a lifelong learning perspective- in curating, cataloguing and production of meaningful digital data which can be accessed in diverse ways by different social groups to meet local needs and priorities, provide skills and education in a range of languages to provide work opportunities and mobility in the field of community and customer insight, which isa fundamental need for entrepreneurs and growing community organisations.• to design ways of recognising achievements in non-formal learning in digital community reporting, and the collection and curation of digital stories, which are congruent with the requirements of EQF, coherent across different territories and sectors, and which encourage transparency and recognition of skills and achievements within the European area and which can be disseminated through EPALE• to develop pathways for improving digital skills in communities, routes to obtaining new qualifications, up-skilling, and re-skilling for employment• to promote empowerment and active citizenship, especially for young people and other groups at risk of social exclusion, by providing them with the tools, competences and structure to enable their voice to be heard by influencers and policy-makers• through best practice, performance and efficiency in education and training, ensure that the project can establish a sustainable investment for future development and growth Our bid’s key objectives are to develop: a. inter-national strategic partnerships across Europe to sustain and maintain strong in-country networks for grass roots communities and individuals to find and use their "voice“ through the fast growing digital community reporting networksb. a sustainable, pan-European community of curators working together to catalogue and mobilise data in a meaningful way to pinpoint local, regional, national and international trends, needs and issuesc. connections with key decision and policy makers in-country and internationally to ensure that the community voices are heard and responded to by actions and policies which have positive social impactWith more than 1300 in six countries, we will work with all partners and their stakeholders to develop the Curator curriculum, so that the voice of this collective community can be converted into meaningful data for decision-makers. We will use a combination of desk and survey reach, workshops, seminars, action learning sets and electronic media to develop these communities into a universal voice which can influence, drive and guide social change. The tangible outputs will be the Curator Curriculum and associated learning materials, and the research database to support practice and provide information as the movement develops, but equally as important will be the support our project will give to engendering sustainable models for the future.We will use a traditional five-step project management methodology to ensure that our project delivers to time, cost and quality, and all our partners will operate inside this framework. Our log-term aim is that the Curation of digital stories as meaningful data becomes an inherent part of future social gain planning.
People's stories about their experiences provide useful insights into what is happening in their lives and communities. These stories are a valuable source of qualitative data that can be used to inform the findings of research projects, provide intricate understandings of issues pertinent to communities, be catalysts of change in service design, advise local and national agendas and policies, and much more. The Our Voices project found innovative ways of curating people’s stories so that the ideas, messages and knowledge within them can be better shared with the people, groups and organisations in a position to use them to create positive change in communities across Europe. A transnational partnership of organisations from the UK, Germany, Sweden, Spain, Italy and Poland worked together to better understand story curation through researching existing approaches to analysing stories and how the findings from this analysis is presented. With this knowledge, the partners designed a pan-European approach to curation that enables communities to use stories of their lived experience to pinpoint local, regional, national and international trends, needs and issues. The partners involved in the project are: • People’s Voice Media (PVM), United Kingdom: A charity committed to supporting people to bottom-up social change processes. • Comparative Research Network (CRN), Germany: An organization that pecialised in training activities within the fields of intercultural competences, intergenerational learning, mobilities and migration. • COSV, Italy: An NGO active in the field of the International Cooperation to Development. • CRSMP, Poland: This association engages locally and regionally, primarily on rural development and rural development community. • Foundation Intras (Intras), Spain: A non-profit organization dedicated to high quality research and intervention in the psycho-educational field. • Changemaker AB, Sweden: A change agency who are an experienced actor concerning cooperation and education with Swedish Folk High Schools and Higher Vocational Training programmes. As part of the project we have produced the following intellectual outputs: • a Digital Curation training programme/curriculum • a Digital Curation toolkit/learner book • An online Digital Curation resource bank Using these outputs on a 5-Day training programme in Berlin, we trained 15 Digital Curators across the participating countries. These Digital Curators have used the skills they developed on this training and the resources produced as part of the intellectual outputs to deliver curation activities in the settings in which they work. Through this work the emergence of a pan-European digital curation network has begun, which is supporting communities, particularly those that are marginalised or excluded, to use their voice to create social change. Learning from the project has been shared widely as part of successful multiplier events in the UK and Germany.