Julie Nicholson-Digital Voice for Communities

Julie Nicholson is the co-founder and managing director of Digital Voice.

In the North East, the percentage of people considered digitally excluded is the highest in the UK and this is not split equally across the population. People who are older, financially vulnerable or live with a condition that impairs their use of communication services are more likely to be digitally excluded. Julie and her team are committed to bridging this gap with a range of fun and creative digital projects for people of all ages, whilst keeping up with developments in technology.
Here are just some of the ways Julie’s organisation is leading the way in digital inclusion in the North East.
DigitalMe is an innovative programme that gives vulnerable people the opportunity to tell their stories and enact change within the services they use, whilst maintaining anonymity. The team works with vulnerable individuals to create digital artworks describing their experiences of difficult subjects, including domestic abuse, seeking asylum, young people leaving care, addiction, experience of the youth justice system.

inTouch digital skills courses cater for absolute beginners, those who are very resistant or anxious about any sort of digital technology and those with English as a second language. This year, Julie and her team have worked with all sorts of groups across the region, one group, who felt huge benefit were women from the Gateshead Muslim Centre:
"So many ladies, after this course they went to college …one or two have started a job, working from home …so they are very overwhelmed and happy.” Afroz Qureshi, Trustee and Volunteer Community Development Worker

This summer, Digital Voice in partnership with the NHS, have set up camp in doctors' surgeries in Gateshead and have been helping patients install and use the NHS app. Digital Voice's approach to digital skills is not to make assumptions about what people ‘should’ be able to do, instead to meet them where they are, in this case, in the reception of their local doctors’ surgery. More people being able to use the app is empowering for those individuals and frees up time for practice managers in already busy surgeries.

Julie’s passion and dedication runs through the organisation and she is still, eighteen years on, just as driven, just as hands on. From her little corner of Gateshead, she is quietly, but profoundly, changing people’s lives for the better.