Co-production training for Westway Trust community development workers

Oldham Positive Action Network had been doing a great job at co-production through trial and error. They had built a group of fifteen local lived experience advisers, and had been running community conversations and testing a range of workshop formats. They just needed some help with the structure.

Ideas Alliance’s Kerry Bertram worked with them through a series of online and in-person coaching sessions. Here’s how it went.

We’ve been asking our Associates to share their best work mistakes. It’s been wonderful to see so many insightful stories coming from initial moments of “oops”!

This wonderful reflection from Amelia Wakeford is a great example of how a small, human mistake can open up something much bigger – shifting relationships and reshaping how people work together.

This piece was written by Dr Jody Aked, an associate of Ideas Alliance, drawing on her work alongside communities and local government across the UK. She reflects on the often unspoken cultural divides between community and local government that shape how collaboration does and does not happen.