Different voices. Different methods. Same message.
Across Lincolnshire, people are sharing their experiences in many different ways.
Sometimes this happens through formal research. Sometimes through community conversations. Sometimes through lived-experience stories. And sometimes, as seen at the recent LIRCH Hippinghold Conference, it happens through creativity, art, humour, metaphor and imagination.
At the conference, people were invited to create zines as a way of expressing what mattered to them, what concerned them, and where they felt more support was needed. The results were thoughtful, personal, honest and often deeply powerful.
At the same time, the People’s Stories work, led through It’s All About People, has been gathering and analysing lived-experience stories from across health, care and community settings.
On the surface, these two pieces of work use very different methods.
One uses creativity and visual expression.
One uses qualitative story gathering and thematic analysis.
But when we look more closely, the messages are strikingly familiar.
Click on the thumbnails to view the ‘zines’ in more detail.
People are telling us that they want to be listened to. They want to be understood as whole people, not reduced to a condition, referral or service interaction. They want support earlier, before crisis point. They want systems that are easier to navigate, relationships that feel compassionate and services that work with them rather than around them.
The methods may be different, but the message is the same.
Lincolnshire is not short of voice. The opportunity now is to listen across the evidence and act on what keeps coming through.
Whole lives, not single issues
One of the strongest messages across both pieces of work is that people’s lives cannot be separated into neat service categories.
The creative zines captured this beautifully. One piece referenced “life, the universe, everything” — a reminder that people are never just one thing. They are not simply a diagnosis, a care plan, a referral, a risk, a postcode or a set of needs.
The People’s Stories work reflects the same theme through its focus on whole-person, holistic care. Stories repeatedly show that people’s health and wellbeing are shaped by their emotional, social, physical and environmental circumstances.
Housing, family, trauma, confidence, transport, relationships, money, identity and place all matter.
If we are serious about improving health and care, we have to design support around people’s real lives, not just around services.
The question for the system is:
Why are we still reducing people to a single issue, when the answer needs to be whole-person support?
Listening, compassion and trust
Another shared theme is the importance of being heard.
The zines repeatedly pointed to voice, visibility, wisdom and the need to be seen without judgement. Through images, words and symbols, people expressed the importance of feeling recognised and respected.
This closely mirrors the People’s Stories findings around relationships, compassion and being listened to. People remember howthey were treated. They remember whether someone took time, showed curiosity, explained things clearly or made them feel dismissed.
Listening is not a soft extra. It shapes trust, confidence and whether people feel able to seek help again.
A compassionate conversation can make someone feel safe. A poor interaction can leave someone feeling anxious, frustrated, invisible or unwilling to ask for support in the future.
The question for the system is:
How do we make listening a core part of quality, rather than an optional extra?
Belonging, connection and community
Some of the simplest creative messages were also some of the most powerful.
One zine used the words “tea, time, chat, strength”. It captured something many people across communities already know: support often begins with connection.
A conversation. A warm space. A peer group. A familiar face. A place where people feel they belong.
The People’s Stories work also highlights community, connection, peer support, carers, family support and the role of voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise organisations.
These things are not peripheral to health and wellbeing. They are part of prevention, resilience and recovery.
Community spaces and informal relationships can reduce isolation, build confidence and help people find support before they reach crisis point.
The question for the system is:
How do we invest in the places and relationships that help people before crisis?
Navigation, access and the road to nowhere
One of the most striking zine images showed a road leading nowhere.
As a metaphor, it speaks directly to what many people experience when systems are difficult to navigate. Unclear pathways. Repeated conversations. Delays. Confusing information. Services that do not seem joined up.
The People’s Stories work reflects this through themes around co-ordination, navigation, communication, diagnostics, pathways and access to timely care.
People should not need insider knowledge, confidence, persistence or the ability to fight their way through a system in order to get support.
When routes are unclear, those with the most capacity, confidence or resources may find a workaround. Others may be left waiting, repeating their story or giving up.
The question for the system is:
Where are we expecting people to navigate complexity that the system could remove?
Place, inequality and everyday barriers
Lincolnshire’s geography matters.
Rurality, coastal communities, transport, housing, digital access, local infrastructure and service availability all shape whether support feels accessible, timely and fair.
The creative work included visible “blockers” — obstacles that people experience in different ways. In real life, those blockers might be a lack of transport, unsuitable housing, financial pressure, poor digital access, distance from services or not knowing where to go.
The People’s Stories work also identifies housing, environment, wider determinants of health, capacity, resources and workforce pressures as important themes.
If we want to reduce inequalities, we need to understand how people actually live across Lincolnshire — not design services around an idealised version of access.
The question for the system is:
Are we designing services around real Lincolnshire lives, or around assumptions about how easy it is to access support?
Hope, creativity and change
The creative zines did not only express concern or frustration. They also showed humour, imagination, resilience and hope.
One phrase, “even when it looks broken”, holds both difficulty and possibility. It recognises that people are often dealing with systems or situations that feel fractured, while also imagining repair, change and something better.
The People’s Stories work reflects this through themes around prevention, proactive support, self-care, empowerment and social value.
People are not passive recipients of services. They have insight, agency, ideas and creativity. They understand what helps and what gets in the way. They can identify practical changes that would make a meaningful difference.
The question for the system is:
What would change if creativity and lived experience were treated as evidence for transformation?
Repeated insight is not duplication. It is evidence.
When different people, in different places, using different methods, keep telling us the same things, we should pay attention.
The shared messages are clear:
People want to be seen as whole people.
They want to be listened to earlier.
They want systems that are easier to navigate.
They want community to be valued as part of health and wellbeing.
They want support that feels relational, not transactional.
They want insight to lead to action.
If the same themes keep appearing, the question is no longer simply, “What are people telling us?”
The question becomes:
What are we prepared to do differently?
Where LVET can add value?
For LVET, this matters because our role is to connect, communicate, advocate and help ensure that insight from communities and the voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise sector is not lost.
We can help bring together learning from different places, projects and methods. We can help amplify what people are saying. We can help show the value of qualitative data, lived experience and community-led evidence.
Most importantly, we can help challenge the idea that each piece of insight sits separately.
The creative zines, the People’s Stories work and wider community conversations are all part of a bigger picture.
They show us that Lincolnshire is full of voice, creativity, lived experience, ideas and community strength.
The opportunity now is to connect what people are telling us — and use it to shape what happens next.
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