Doorstep Revolution

Here's news of a project I'm involved in (words edited from the Arts Council of Wales website):

Gentle/Radical is a Cardiff-based grassroots organisation and they have received £40k in funding from The National Lottery Community Fund to build on and amplify the creativity and contribution seen within communities and across civil society during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The funding, made possible thanks to National Lottery players, will enable Gentle/Radical to work within the neighbourhood of Riverside, listening to and sharing different experiences and stories and imagining together, what is possible for the future. The project is called Doorstep Revolution and initiates a hyper-local street-by-street outreach and doorstep engagement programme, aimed at creating a vivid COVID-portrait of one of Wales’ most diverse and rich multicultural neighbourhoods.

The project will establish an outreach and volunteer team who will conduct hundreds of dialogues - socially-distanced doorstep interviews, zoom chats, and phone chats - to gather perspectives on the Lockdown experience, its challenges, surprises, transformations, and opportunities, as well as insights into how residents have experienced life – and might wish to experience it – in the future.#

Gentle/Radical will engage a cross-section of multi-generational, multi-lingual Riverside voices, focusing intensively on residents in eight selected streets, and up to five households from others. An outreach and volunteer team will be trained to use audio recording equipment to conduct doorstep dialogues over the first three to four months. The last two months will be focused on using gathered narratives and dialogues to create 1) a multi-lingual Riverside community newspaper/publication and 2) a podcast/web repository bringing together recorded interviews, stories, and reflections around the COVID experience, as well as commentary on what the future could - and should - hold.

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