Stories that shift power: Growing community reporting in Greater Manchester

We brought community groups, researchers and public sector partners together to explore how community reporting can flourish across Greater Manchester. In this blog, Emma shares what we heard, what could help it grow, and why telling our own stories matters for shifting power closer to communities.

Stories that shift power: Growing community reporting in Greater Manchester

We brought community groups, researchers and public sector partners together to explore how community reporting can flourish across Greater Manchester.

In this blog, Emma shares what we heard, what could help it grow, and why telling our own stories matters for shifting power closer to communities.

Author
Emma Ansell-Meehan, Strategic Lead

Published

23 October 2026

Type
10GM Blog

Theme
Live Well

Last week, a diverse group of around 40 community groups, researchers, VCSE infrastructure organisations, participation practitioners, and public sector partners came together at the Proud Trust community café to explore how we create the conditions for community reporting to flourish across Greater Manchester. Thank you to the Proud Trust for hosting, and to everyone who took part!

We focused on people furthest from power, and on how community reporting can build power, influence decisions and change systems. The morning combined discussion, creative exercises, reflection and ambition setting.

So why did we decide to come together in this way?

Traditional journalism has often been shaped by a fairly narrow set of perspectives. Traditional media outlets are often led and owned by those from white, middle-class and privately educated backgrounds. Journalism plays a vital role in informing society, but it can’t be the only way our stories are told. Often those stories are interpreted, edited and presented through someone else’s lens.

In contrast, community reporting is about resourcing people with the power and agency to tell their own stories, in their own words, from their own lived experience.

A corkboard-style graphic displays four colourful sticky notes containing reflections from a community reporting workshop. The notes read: “Stick a camera this way!!!!”, “We are able to tell and we are able to show”, “One day you will tell your story about how you overcame what you went through and it'll be someone else's survival guide”, and “Supporting people who’ve had the toughest experiences and the hardest lives to tell their story how they want it to be told.” The notes are attached with coloured tape against a cork background, highlighting key themes of storytelling, lived experience and community voice. — Sticky notes from the workshop

As defined in the Greater Manchester Participation Playbook:

“In community reporting and evaluation, community journalists highlight issues that are meaningful to people whose voices are rarely heard, in order to inform decisions or measure the impact of public programmes. This ensures that people’s stories and experiences are directly represented in decision-making spaces and that issues are communicated on an emotional level as well as through data.”
Rather than asking communities what they think and then interpreting their responses, community reporting enables communities to become the storytellers, investigators, documenters and changemakers themselves.

A person holds a copy of the “Greater Manchester Participation Playbook” against a plain wall. The teal cover features illustrations of community members gathered around an open book, speech bubbles with messages including “Together we have the solutions”, and imagery representing participation, community power and shared decision-making.

A person holds open a page of the Greater Manchester Participation Playbook featuring a section titled “Community Reporting and Evaluation”. The spread includes illustrated characters, explanatory text, photographs of community reporting activities, and examples from The Elephants Trail. The pages explain what community reporting is, how it works, and when it can be useful for gathering and sharing lived experience.

After coffee and pastries, we transformed the room into a temporary newsroom. We introduced ourselves, our organisations and, in a single word, why we cared about community reporting. We were then invited to imagine a future where community reporting was thriving across Greater Manchester, and completed a newspaper front page answering the following question:

If community reporting was working brilliantly in five years’ time, what would be different?

Some of the headlines included:

‘Bridging the chasm’ and ‘We spoke, they listened!’

A cartoon-style illustration of a newspaper with the headline “BRIDGING THE CHASM.” In one corner, a community reporter holds a microphone and camera equipment. The image uses simple black-and-white newspaper graphics with coloured elements to represent journalism, storytelling and community reporting.

A completed community reporting workshop worksheet lies on a wooden table alongside coloured pencils and other printed materials. The sheet is designed like a newspaper front page and includes handwritten notes and drawings about community power and media. The headline reads, “We spoke, they listened,” with notes including “Our media is diverse with distinct voices” and “People feel heard and seen.” A stick-figure illustration and reflections on how communities can influence change are written in blue pen. — “We spoke, they listened,” with notes including “Our media is diverse with distinct voices” and “People feel heard and seen.” Jill’s stick-figure illustration and reflections on how communities can influence change are written in blue pen.

Next, using a ‘gardening’ metaphor, we mapped the existing landscape of community reporting across Greater Manchester, and it was really clear that we’re not starting from scratch- we can already see many small gardens of community reporting blooming across Greater Manchester.

What helps it flourish

Not starting from scratch: we can already see many small gardens of community reporting blooming across Greater Manchester. The conditions that help them grow include:

Capacity building such as skills workshops, mentoring opportunities and peer-to-peer learning

Sustained investment, including resources for equipment, training and meaningful payment for people contributing their lived experience.

Courage and creating environments where people feel trusted, supported and confident enough to share their experiences and challenge existing narratives.

The time it takes for high-quality stories to be created

Distribution networks across communities and into formal decision-making systems, helping stories travel further and influence action.

Advocacy and system buy-in, as we can only create change when decision-makers engage with them.

What gets in the way

Alongside these opportunities, we identified several barriers. These included

Lack of knowledge and buy-in, as some decision-makers still do not fully understand the value of community reporting or how it differs from more traditional consultation approaches.

Short-term or competitive funding, which creates instability and makes long-term planning difficult.

Narrow system priorities and the risk of reporting becoming driven by institutional agendas rather than community priorities

Censorship and control, as sometimes we see communities being invited to share stories only when those stories align with existing narratives or organisational interests.

How can we ensure community reporting thrives?

The final creative exercise returned to our gardening theme. Each of our tables became gardening teams, designing landscapes that would allow community reporting to thrive. We created forests, rivers, butterflies, flowers, roots and pathways representing different forms of support, infrastructure and collaboration.

A large sheet of paper covered with drawings, handwritten notes and sticky notes from a participatory workshop is spread across a table. The page features a hand-drawn garden scene with flowers, butterflies, trees, raindrops and a small shed labelled “Citizen Tool Library for Community Reporting.” Sticky notes contain ideas about community power, governance, storytelling and community reporting. A person points to one of the notes while coloured pens, notebooks, craft materials and a plant pot are arranged around the artwork, showing a creative group activity focused on generating and sharing ideas.

What happens next?

Finally, we looked at some practical ideas that could be taken forward- these are going to be developed by some of the people in the room, and shared with a bigger group of people at the upcoming Greater Manchester Participation Playbook: One Year On event.

My personal takeaway is that Greater Manchester already has many of the ingredients needed to grow a thriving community reporting movement. What we need to do now is to connect people, strengthen relationships, share resources and create the conditions for community reporting to grow in every borough of Greater Manchester.

If Live Well is about shifting power closer to communities, then community reporting has an important role to play. It gives us all agency over how, why, and for what purpose our stories are told. By working together, we can grow the visibility of community reporting, ensure it is respected and valued just as much as other types of intelligence and data, and create a new, community-powered narrative about what it means to live well in Greater Manchester.

Be part of it. Come and join us at the Greater Manchester Participation Playbook: One Year On event

13:00-16:00, Wednesday 25 November 2026 at The Monastery Manchester, Gorton Lane, Manchester M12 5WF

Book your ticket

About the author

Emma Ansell-Meehan

Content last reviewed on 23 October 2026