Refugee Week, #ThisisMyStory, Leaving Prison and more in our Storytelling Highlights

This week has brought lots of great excuses to share powerful stories (not that we need them). We’ve been celebrating #RefugeeWeek, sharing experiences for Learning Disability Week (LDWeek2017) and we’ve loved the storytelling around Agenda’s new storytelling campaign, too. So here is this week’s Storytelling Highlights, what we’ve seen, heard or read about and wouldContinue reading "Refugee Week, #ThisisMyStory, Leaving Prison and more in our Storytelling Highlights"

This week has brought lots of great excuses to share powerful stories (not that we need them). We’ve been celebrating #RefugeeWeek, sharing experiences for Learning Disability Week (LDWeek2017) and we’ve loved the storytelling around Agenda’s new storytelling campaign, too. So here is this week’s Storytelling Highlights, what we’ve seen, heard or read about and would like to share from the worlds of charity comms and digital storytelling. Grab an ice-cream, put on a pair of headphones and enjoy.

1. Refugee Week
This week has been Refugee Week, a time to celebrate the contribution that refugees make to our communities and to grow support for those that need it. We’ve seen some brilliant stories shared and lots of interesting events going on all week, find them here. We wanted to share three powerful talks which put a spotlight on refugee experiences through storytelling. Firstly, Ahmad spoke at #SMEX17 on fleeing Syria to arrive in London and how we found support and community through the Bike Project who gave him a bike, and with it freedom. At Being the Story 2016, photographer Giles Duley shared his experience of documenting the impact of war through sharing the stories of individuals that would otherwise not have a voice. And below you can watch Hassan Akkad talk about the powerful BBC3 documentary Exodus where he filmed his life-risking journey from Syria, to Europe on his phone.

2. #ThisisMyStory
We love this new campaign from Agenda, demonstrating the impact of firsthand storytelling to create change around domestic abuse. Women have taken to twitter to share their videos, photos, and messages of their experiences of abuse, how it’s impacted on them and the change they want to see. We feel passionately about giving people a platform to share these experiences, and have had incredible women like Jo Cutts, Winnie M Li and Mandy Thomas all share with us their stories of abuse and how they have and continue to create change for other women.

 3. Leaving Prison
Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour have a new series on Leaving Prison, sharing different experiences of different individuals on their journeys from leaving the prison gates. The first few features have been interesting, showing a contrast of experiences of a first-time female offender ‘Sarah’ leaving prison to a family network, to ‘Pat’ who had been in and out of prison for years and shares the impact of this and her hopes for the future. When in prison, sounddelivery friend Barbara Burton was inspired to create her social enterprise Behind Bras to support women in prison with skills and training, read her story here.

4.  LDWeek2017
It’s Learning Disability Week and this year’s theme is employment opportunities so we thought it was a perfect chance to celebrate the work of Jodie Clark at Action on Disability. Disabled people are four times as likely to be unemployed as the non-disabled. Many are not being given the opportunity to show what they have to offer facing barriers to finding employment. Jodie knows this from personal experience, she overcame these challenges and now works to ensure young people with disabilities are given more equal employment opportunities.

5. #ImThere
Give Blood NHS have been sharing an interesting new campaign for National Blood Donor Week. #Imthere is calling for more blood donors with a focus on donors of African and Caribbean decent. The video follows a sickle-cell sufferer who goes out to talk to members of the community about why only 1% of donors in Britain are of African and Caribbean decent, and in doing so raises awareness of the need.

New on the SD Blog: Read about our new storytelling project working with homeless individuals in Woking to share their stories in their own words in their own way.

Do keep us updated with what you think I should be finding out more about.

And if you like what you read – do help us by sharing it and spreading the word

Jude and Helena the sounddelivery team

@sounddelivery

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