Co-Engage (an Erasmus+ project) was a cross sectoral project addressing the intersection of the key competence of Lifelong Learning through its methodology and partnership. By exploring the diversity of approaches of co-creation such as entrepreneurship-building, active citizenship, environmental quality, social inclusion, digital literacy, local policies, formal and non-formal education etc.

One of our key deliverables for the project was an e-book of co-creation best practices from across Europe but, at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, we decided as a consortium to produce two e-books, with one focussing on co-creation practices that emerged from lockdowns across the continent.

The e-book’s are now available to download using the below links.

Citizens as Co-Designer: Practices on how to engage citizens in community building

COVID Responses: Citizens as actors in a global crisis

At the end of August the Co-Engage project will come to an end and last week saw out its final meeting, hosted by our Polish partners in Warsaw. It was a somewhat sad end to the project for PVM as we were unable to travel for one last in-person meet-up and, instead, had to settle for dialling in on Zoom.

As we move towards the final reporting stage, we also look forward to the publication of the project’s e-book, which we will link to on this blog as soon as it’s available.

People’s Voice Media has been supporting MESS to produce their videos by coaching them in video production, editing and distribution techniques. One of the MESS members is a Community Reporter and wanted to use her storytelling skills to share her own story and other MESS members’ stories about why they were involved in environment work.

Marple, Mellor & amp; Marple Bridge Energy Saving Strategy (MESS) is a community project in Greater Manchester, UK. It began 10 years ago with the aims: to promote carbon reduction, raise awareness of climate change issues and find local solutions to some of the resulting problems.

MESS, like the rest of the world, is concerned about the impact of Climate change on our planet and is trying hard to raise these issues with world leaders and those in positions of power.

There is a big Climate Change Summit taking place in Glasgow, Scotland this autumn called COP26. (Conference of Parties). This is to bring world leaders and interested parties together to discuss how to address the environmental issues that are devastating our planet.

MESS has made a series of videos to go to our government to inform them what we, at a local level, are doing what we can and are asking COP26 to listen and act now, to save our planet from destruction.

If you would like to see the videos and the work of MESS please see their website here.

You may also think about writing to your own MP with your concerns or perhaps consider joining an environmental group or start your own – If we all do a bit, it will add up to a lot!

The final Co-Engage lab took place in Toulouse at the end of July. Unfortunately, due to coronavirus travel restrictions, Sarah and Georgia from PVM had to attend online, but that didn’t stop it being an enjoyable few days.

The lab focused on the topic of condominiums, with participants working with case studies and co-design practices to solve problems for fictional residents and owners. Hosted in an actual condominium complex by our French partners, we had the opportunity to see an example of such a residential development, as well as meet stakeholders.

As online participants, it was great that our hosts had thought about a way to include us more fully in proceedings as well, giving us specific tasks and a proper roll in the lab, enabling us to have a great time and produce something of value.

With Co-Engage coming to an end later this month, we’ll be able to share the project’s e-book and results with you soon.

Last month we worked with the Women’s Voice Movement and Inspiring Change Manchester to look at the different types of strengths that women have as part of a Conversation of Change event.

Over the last year, we’ve been working with women to gather stories about their experiences of the pandemic, some of which you can listen to in this short film. From these stories, we could hear how women were talking in different ways about how they have got through lockdowns, how they have supported others, how they have supported themselves and other related topics. This led us to think about how can we highlight the different strengths and capacities that women have and how can we ask services to think differently about how they work with women?

With this in mind, we invited women from across Manchester and people working in services that support women to an online discussion about the strength of women. From this discussion, we identified that the women in the stories we listened to:

• have lots of ability and skills but find it hard sometimes to identify them or speak about them publicly
• are good at adapting and finding ways to get through tough times
• really resilient and can change direction when needed
• value having spaces to stop, think and reflect
• are great at supporting one another
• value connections – including with individuals, services and their faith – when facing difficult times

From this, we began to explore what services and we could start to do different to work with women’s strengths in more meaningful ways. Ideas such as reframing questions that services ask women about their lives from ones that always focus on negatives, to ones that identify strengths and creating flexible spaces were women can talk, share experiences and reflect with others about how to address challenges they are facing were discussed.

The group of women behind the workshop are now in the process of making plans to continue this conversation and take some of these ideas forward into action.