April 3, 2023
As the signs of spring are starting to emerge so too are seeds of ideas being sown in Co-Production Collective and fruits of our labour coming to surface.
As many of you may have seen we launched our first ever Impact Report on 28 March showcasing our work in 2022 and the impact it has had. You can read more about why we decided to create this in our blog post. The process of creating the Impact Report showed us how far we had come as a community and helped point us in the direction of what else we can be doing to nurture ourselves and grow. Learnings from this and from the end of year survey will be shared later in April so look out for that and how you can get involved if you’d like to.
We also held the first session about our next strategy which proceeds 'Our Direction'. At the session we reflected on whether the ambitions set out in ‘Our Direction’ were still relevant, where we should be going next and what was missing. A summary of what was discussed for you to give your input into, will published as a blog on our website in April, and dates for further sessions are coming soon, so please look out for this and sign up on our events page.
George and Vanessa showcased our Value of Co-Production Research Project at the Social Sciences Impact Conference in Oxford on 21 March. The conference aimed to ‘celebrate engaged and impactful research in the social sciences, and provide inspiration and support for researchers hoping to create change for the better through their work’
Nicc and Isaac shared findings of the Value of Co-Production Project at the closing session of Social Work Week 2023. This was very well received and resulted in lots of discussions about what co-production looks and feels like – different for each of us.
George and Briony gave the first of a series of talks called ‘Working for Wellbeing' – with a focus on the Creative Health sector for De Montfort University. We talked about co-production and projects where arts and health come together of for benefit of those involved. George shared her perspective as an organiser and Briony shared her perspective as an artist.
Chloe and Mark took part in the Sounddelivery Media community of practice event called ‘Best Practices Building Panels & Spokes person Networks’. In their session they looked at payment, contracts and the paperwork, processes and policies that should be in place and talked about our payment policy.
Nicc will be taking part in the 3rd meeting of the HIPS research project – a project with University of Manchester about integrating hospital outpatient letters into the healthcare data space. The project (which is funded by Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) aims to develop a framework and computer algorithm to safely unlock the information in outpatient department letters (which is not always recorded in people’s health records).
We will be providing a workshop at the UCL Open Science Conference on Monday 24 April. The theme for the conference is ‘Open Science and the case for Social Justice’ and Nicc and co-producers who were involved in our Co-produced book review will be giving an interactive workshop on the theme of ‘Challenges of Equity in Authorship’ which will explore how to promote fairer practices when it comes to ensuring all participants in research projects get credit to for their valuable contributions. You can attend the conference in person or online, so if you’d like to join us you can find out more in this blog if you would like to attend, please email Nicc (n.pascal@ucl.ac.uk). We’d love to have you with us to hear your thoughts on what better practice looks like in this area.
Nicc will also be speaking at an event hosted by British Sociological Association for Early Career Researchers who are who are currently co-producing research or planning to do so. The event takes place on 6 June at UCL. Find out more and book on the event website.
Thanks to those who joined us at our April Cuppa where lots of lively discussion took place, on themes of, how to use technology to help co-production, conversational analysis and power dynamics that can affect projects that seek to include people with lived experience whether in the context of co-production or otherwise. Our next two cuppa’s are on Thursday 4 May 11:00 - 12:30 and Tuesday 6 June 17:00 - 18:30. Co-Pro Cuppas are for anyone who is interested in co-production. So whether it is something that's new to you or you have been involved in co-production for a long time we'd love to see you there. You can sign up to join us via our events page on the website.
If you have anything to share with the community about projects you have worked on, or lessons you have learnt regarding co-production we would love to hear from you as we see this blog as the voice of our community so please get in touch via email on coproduction@ucl.ac.uk
To stay in touch with the latest news from us, make sure you’re signed up to our newsletter and following us on Twitter to hear it first. We hope to see you, hear from you or speak to you soon! As ever, if you have any questions or suggestions for us, please get in touch via email on coproduction@ucl.ac.uk
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