Launch Day for Peterborough's Poverty Truth Commission...

Here is the latest of our Peterborough Poverty Truth Commission (PTC) blogs, written by PCVS PTC Facilitator, James Farson. In this blog, James reflects on the official launch of the PTC in Peterborough which took place on 23 November 2023 at the Kingsgate Centre... 

If you read our last blog post (if not, click here to read it), you’ll know that our rehearsal launch at St. Marks Church went really well and was an incredibly positive experience for everybody involved.

All we had to do was do it again.

On the morning of the 23rd I think we were all feeling a bit nervous. I got the bus to Kingsgate with one of our empowerers and we did our best to calm each other down. We met Cheryl and a couple of other empowerers there and started getting set up.

There was a moment in all this that I realised that the day was going to be great.

Our tech, Chris, had set up the stage with lecterns and microphones and we were getting used to the space, having people try out standing on the stage and talking into the mic. Beckii, one of our empowerers, got on the stage just to see how she’d feel about it. She spoke into the mic a bit while I peppered her with questions about who her favourite Bayern Munich player is, and then she decided to try reading one of her poems aloud. Someone else had read it out for her at St. Marks.

Beckii sounded really confident from the off, and as she read out line after line people realised what was happening, and all the conversations in the room trailed off. She finished her poem in a room full of rapt silence that burst into applause.

It was then I knew that everything would be fine.

Not long after, the room started filling up as people started to arrive. It was a great crowd, a real mix of people from statutory organisations, third sector organisations, and other charities and groups in Peterborough, all committed to learning more about people’s lived experience of the struggle against poverty in Peterborough.

Between Cheryl, Jonathan (our chairman), and myself, we introduced the Poverty Truth project, talked about why PCVS was committed to it as a way of working that is core to our strategy, and showed some statistics about poverty in Peterborough and the UK more generally.

Then we had the really important bit; the stories from the empowerers. We had a check-in from our group where they all stood up and said what poverty was to them, and then, one by one, they shared their stories. We had films, poems, statements, and stories, a proper mix. Roy, Sadie, Sandra, Beckii, Omar, and Sara, and all empowerers who took part in this event, were so brave for sharing their experiences, and everyone in the room listened with an open heart and a generous spirit. It was really special.

We invited Jonathan, our chairman, and Bella Saltmarsh, the Mayoress, to respond to these stories. Jonathan quickly picked up on something that we’ve all noticed as this project has grown; that it’s often the people who have the least who give the most. This is so true. Our group of empowerers are made up of exceptionally caring people who are more concerned with giving back to community than helping themselves. Bella then congratulated them all on their courage in telling their stories and agreed with Jonathan, singling out someone she has known for years who is part of our group, and has always been a pillar of her community.

We wanted to include some civic perspective from someone who has been part of our process already, so we asked Danielle Black, the local Integrated Neighbourhood Programme Manager, to talk about her PTC experience so far (you might know her name from our Birmingham trip if you’ve been keeping up with this blog). Danielle congratulated the empowerers for their bravery and talked about how totally committed she was to this way of working, to make people’s lived experiences and needs a core part of the way services are developed.

We thanked everyone for coming and for listening with such good energy, and then we played the song “I Wish” that Roger from St. Marks so kindly wrote for our commission while some of our empowerers handed out packets of wildflower seeds as a metaphor for the work we intend to do and how it could grow.

We’ve already got relationships forming. There were civic and business commissioners who recognised our empowerers from our previous meet up at the Willow Café, and they were quick with congratulations and a friendly chat once the presentation was done. The sharing didn’t stop because the event had ended; we are well placed for the next year of our project.

There are too many people to thank everybody individually, but I just wanted to thank Chris Pallister who made all the tech stuff easy, Kip Loades and Julian Peters for their excellent films and continued support. Thanks too to Kingsgate Church for the venue and the excellent food, everyone at the Poverty Truth Network and particularly Clare Roberts for all her support, everyone at PCVS who dug in and made the event a fantastic success. Finally of course the empowerers, who make this work possible with their determination to change things for the better in Peterborough.

If you would like to know more about PTC in Peterborough, click here to be directed to PCVS' Poverty Truth Commission page on this website.