Guiding the Way to Co-pro Week 2023
In this blog, Dave Allan from the Scottish Co-production Network looks forward to Co-production Week Scotland and shares updates on the development of a new co-pro guide.
With Co-production Week Scotland fast approaching, I thought I’d share a few thoughts on our work in developing a Guide to Co-Production, where we’re at with it and where we’re going in our co-production process (we are walking the talk with this!).
The first steps in this process really started to emerge during Co Pro Week 2022 where many of the network members highlighted the need for a useful and practical guide to co production. This would help them to develop their own practice and also begin to establish it within their own organisations. This largely reflected a growing view that we need to move from talking about co pro to actually doing it – hence the focus on showing what co pro looks like though real examples for this year’s Co Pro Week.
Also, we were hearing from network members that they thought they were doing co-production but maybe it wasn’t perfect, whilst others didn’t know if they were doing co production or not – so the idea of a ‘spotters guide’ to co production began to emerge.
Progress so far
From this starting point we have begun to develop our thinking and focused on this at the recent learning event in The Studio at the end of September where we had an intensive and very productive session with network members. This helped us to refine our thinking not only on what the Guide should contain but also on what it should like.
Some key messages have started to emerge – make it accessible and visual, keep it short (!), give some good examples – not just the perfect ones but also the ones where it’s a bit gnarly. Help us out with our practice but also help us to advocate for co pro in our own contexts and embed it within our own organisations. All of these ideas are useful and generally chime with our own thinking about the Guide.
Next steps
So, where are we going next? There’s been a lot of sifting through the piles of post-its and flipcharts that were produced at the learning event, grouping them into key themes and developing a structure for the Guide.
This is being put together at the moment and will be presented back to members at our next Learning Event during Co Pro Week 2023.
We are also continuing to look for examples which will help us to illustrate key themes within the Guide - these will form a significant part of the Learning Event as well as Co Pro Week itself.
I hope you’ll be able to join us and contribute to the continuing development of the Guide which will help to make it a practical, useful and living resource for co production practice.
