This is an ongoing 3-year project, with Ideas Alliance 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.
Year 1 culminated in a festival in Manchester and we’re currently working with organisations in the West Midlands for Year 2, and Year 3 will see us in London.
Here are some articles inspired by the project and the organisations we’ve worked with:
Stay Curious: Visually Recording Events
Courage in Co-Production: A Day Festival
Co-Production: What is it, exactly?
Rebuilding Community Connections with Not Another Co-Production Project
