Talking about co-production
In this blog, SCN’s Sheena Fletcher explores the challenges of identifying co-production and how we can capture examples that show it in action.
We have been working hard to develop our Co-pro Resource Hub and one of the major, and slightly surprising, challenges has been actually identifying and finding examples of co-production in practice.
It is hard pin to write down exactly what makes co-pro what it is – and we spend a lot of our time asking ‘What is co-production?’, as even those of us working in the field find it challenging to arrive at an agreed definition.
As a somewhat nebulous concept, the issue is also muddied further by the use of varying terms such as co-creation, co-design, co-research – all which have discrete meanings, but are often used interchangeably with ‘co-production’.
To help us spot co-pro in the wild, and as part of the development of a new ‘Guide for Co-production’, we’ve been looking at existing guidance and policy documents to see what kinds of words are used to describe related, relevant and wider concepts which are adjacent to co-pro, such as example community engagement and participatory budgeting. This can then help us draw together some criteria for identifying co-pro and collecting examples.
This word cloud shows a range of common concepts which are hopefully helpful as a starter for ten in defining co-production in practice.
The documents used as inspiration are: the New Economic Foundation's Co-production Self-assessment Framework, the Scottish National Standards for Community Engagement, the Scottish Government's Participation Framework and the PB Charter for Scotland.
There is a tricky balance in defining co-production. It’s important to recognise it as a distinct concept, so that we can avoid scenarios where community engagement or simple consultation activities are badged as co-production in a tickbox way. However, any definition needs to be open and wide enough to recognise when people are doing things in a co-productive way, even if they don’t quite meet all the criteria yet.
This leads us back to the Resource Hub - the more examples we have, the more people can see in a practical way how co-productive approaches can be used and how, while it really isn’t one size fits all, there are certain elements which make it co-pro.
We’re now asking you to help us spot co-pro in the wild and share your examples with fellow network members. If you are working on a project with a co-productive approach, or have spotted some good co-pro work being done, please do get in touch with us and let us know.
You don’t need to have written a formal ‘case study’ – we just want to hear about what you’re doing and work together to showcase your awesome work!
You can email any examples to me or get in touch with any questions and I’ll be happy to chat.
