After a successful first year in Greater Manchester where we supported people, communities and organisations to develop their co-production practice, the Not Another Co-Production project is back. This year we will be working across the West Midlands with our colleagues at Ideas Alliance to embed co-production into how services and institutions work – bringing the voices of local people closer to decision-makers.

The programme for year 2 was launched in The Crescent Theatre, Birmingham earlier this month, with around 30 or so people joining us to find out more about what the project has to offer. The day saw the project’s team deliver a set of taster activities, including:

• Exploring feelings about positive and negative experiences of services
• What we’d do if we want to actively SABOTAGE co-production
• Listening to lived experience stories of co-production and exploring what we can learn from them

One of the attendees, Sophie, shared her visual notes on the day with us – have a look below.

Speaking about the day, she said: “It was great to be able to talk to people from all sorts of organisations, some similar to mine and some entirely different. The diversity of voices and opinions really gave the event a sense of energy, I felt a lot of potential in the room.”

We are looking forward to rolling with the rest of the programme which will include the delivery of Community Reporting training and some bespoke sessions on working with lived experience stories as part of co-production processes. More on those in the coming months!