Overview:
- A three-year-project from 2021-2024 looking at how we develop, explore and exchange knowledge of co-production across England.
- We’re looking to partner with at least 12 organisations across the West Midlands from autumn 2022 to summer 2023.
- If you are working with local residents, community organisation, or offering professional support/services – we can help you listen to the voices of your community and embed collaboration and co-production at the heart of your organisation.
- You’ll need to be open to challenge, fun and mess – and willing to put the work in – but we can promise an eye-opening and transformative journey that we’ll all take together.
- Participation in the project is free, but there is a commitment of time (outlined below) to ensure that you get the best out of the project.
- Read on to find out more and how you can get involved!
- Please complete this short expression of interest by Friday 29th August.
- (If you prefer to submit your responses as a video or audio then please email them to cat@ideas-alliance.org.uk)
Introduction:
This is a three-year project with Ideas Alliance CIC and People’s Voice Media to explore how we can develop co-production in ways that benefit local people, professionals, and organisations across England. We’ll do this together by engaging in co-production workshops, Community Reporting, annual community learning festivals and a peer support network that connects people and creates a partnership of practice.
The project is shaped by what Ideas Alliance have been hearing from the people we have worked with over the last few years – including residents, local organisations, local authorities, and community professionals.
People have told us they want support and time to hear about co-production and to learn how to make it real on the ground. They want to do more to listen to people’s stories and to celebrate what they do locally.
One of our aims is to move co-production from a buzz word into an embedded practice within grassroots organisations across England to ensure that people have a better life.
We want a future where policy, research and service design are informed by the views of local people (lived experience) and where collaboration is the heart of what we do, not the exception.
We want to start the conversation from a ‘blank sheet’ and facilitate a knowledge exchange which ensures local people:
- become active in their community,
- are involved in decision making,
- can shift power in their community, creating equitable partnerships between residents, services and local authorities.
This way of working is messy, fun, challenging, but can really make a difference to those who are willing to give the time and energy to it. We are not defining what the ‘outcomes’ are!
We’re inviting groups and organisations to come alongside us, mix with others who have different ideas and experiences and work out with us how we can achieve the aim of developing co-production in ways that benefit local people, professionals, and organisations.
How we plan to deliver the project:
Co-production workshops
We will listen to and work with local community partners across the West Midlands to embed co-production approaches within their work with local people.
This work will directly support and upskill professional staff from local organisations to:
- think differently
- improve their knowledge
- provide them with practical skills they need to embed strengths-based approaches and co-production
- support their work in partnerships with residents, volunteers and citizens.
Community Reporting and storytelling
Community Reporting is a storytelling movement that was started in 2007 by People’s Voice Media. It uses digital tools such as portable and pocket technologies to support people to tell their own stories in their own ways. These stories are then uploaded via an online network of Community Reporters. These activities will engender cross-community learning and provide the mechanisms and tools for local changemakers to share their knowledge with one another, sparking cross-sector and geographical innovation with grassroots social change.
We will support local partners to demonstrate the value of their work through Community Reporting and empower local people to make a sustainable difference to their lives and communities.
We will hold conversations with local people and train them and the organisations we are working with to become Community Reporters to better understand people’s lives in relation to their local community and the existing services delivered by our local partners, through communities of practice. We will build on what is already working on the ground, whilst supporting our partners to improve services based on the insights and lived experiences of local people.
Community learning festivals and peer support
We will celebrate and share our experiences in a co-produced community learning festival in summer 2023 bringing grassroots changemakers together, forging new partnerships, sharing practice and learning from social change activities.
What will the commitment be:
The programme in the West Midlands will run from September 2022 to August 2023. There will be a minimum of six full days attendance expected, with lots of optional extra workshops and sessions available to sign up for so you can tailor your participation to suit your requirements. These will be held online and/or in venues across the West Midlands throughout the year.
We are planning launch events in autumn 2022.
PLEASE HOLD THESE DATES if you are interested in being involved
Lunchtime Zoom Session, 7th September 2022
Meet the team and hear stories from the last year
All Day In Person Launch Event, 5th October 2022
In person launch event bringing together all participants and introducing you to the programme. Venue TBC shortly.
How to get involved:
We are recruiting 12 organisations based in the West Midlands to work directly with over 10 months. It you are interested in applying please make sure your group or organisation can commit to being involved for the duration of the programme.
Please complete this short application by Friday 29th August to be involved.
If you prefer to submit your responses as a video or audio recording then please email them to cat@ideas-alliance.org.uk
If you are unsure, and want to know more:
Please email the Project Lead Cat Duncan-Rees – cat@ideas-alliance.org.uk
When will we contact you about next steps:
We will let the 12 organisations know by mid-September.
If your group or organisation is not one of the 12 then there will be other opportunities to follow the work and get involved. Please let us know if you would NOT like to be kept informed.
We look forward to hearing from you,
The Not Another Co-Production Team
Cat Duncan-Rees, Ideas Alliance/ Curators of Change
Isaac Samuels, Ideas Alliance/ Curators of Change
Hayley Trowbridge, People’s Voice Media