Michelle Budd and Mirela Neto from campaign creation agency Magpie shared insights into the value of community and lived experiences when researching and telling stories.
Budd, Community Collaboration Manager, and Neto, Senior Research Manager, create visual campaigns with lived experiences at their core at Leeds-based Magpie. They joined students at Leeds Trinity University’s Journalism and Media Week 2026 to discuss best practice when approaching and collaborating with marginalised communities.
Lived experiences are people’s first-hand knowledge of a situation they have been through. Neto said: “they play a vital role in modern journalism today because they bridge the gap between statistics and the human reality.”
For the pair of researchers, meeting people where they are at and supporting communities in their own storytelling creates relevant campaigns, able to reach the heart of marginalised communities.
“It’s all about building that level of trust with people, making sure voices are heard and that they are represented truthfully and authentically,” Budd said. She acknowledged that “spending time to get to know people, not pushing for an answer that you need and not having any preconceived ideas” is vital when approaching contributors.
The people-powered agency treats community members as knowledge holders in their qualitative research, which utilises non-numerical data, such as interviews and vox pops. “People’s stories are valuable forms of knowledge in their own right,” said Neto.
Magpie sits in a unique position, being able to collaborate across different sectors of society, engaging with communities via charities, faith settings and community hubs. Social change campaigns are then co-produced with recruited community members to produce digital video and audio campaigns using their lived experience, offering tangible outcomes and countering misinformation.
A campaign that particularly resonated with Budd was ‘Walk It, Ride It’, aimed at increasing usage of active transport in South Asian women. Speaking about her experience, she said: “it opened up a whole new perspective on what those kinds of barriers could be. I loved hearing their stories and seeing their confidence build.”
The impact of lived experiences in storytelling goes further than the communities that are consulted. “I grow as a researcher every time I’m working with a different community,” said Neto. “When we’re able to connect, it makes you feel more part of the world.”
Her closing advice to anyone who is a storyteller, from a journalist to a filmmaker, when interviewing community members was: “make sure that you realise that this is a person, rather than thinking about what you’re going to get out of them.”
You can find out more about Magpie’s work on their website and by following them on Facebook.