Co-creation and how to go about it

One of the more recent terms to surface in the social sector is ‘co-creation’, sometimes used interchangeably with ‘co-production’. Organisations like Nesta use the terms to describe the process of designing products or services with the people who are going to use them. Only occasionally are the term and techniques used for communications.

What is co-creation?

Co-creation basically means collaborative creation. At Poached Creative and we define co-creation as designing creative assets alongside the people we are trying to reach.

This could be:

·      young people producing anti-crime campaigns for their peers

·      people with learning disabilities building an accessible website

·      homeless and unemployed people creating a blog about their experiences.

More than a focus group

Traditional focus groups get people together, test some ideas and usually leave it up to the creatives to accept or ignore the feedback. In co-creation the ideas and content are generated, tested and approved by the group. They retain collective oversight of the product or service through the development process.

Top creatives will be involved with the process so they can hear from the audience first-hand  and bring in the professional view..

In addition to creating something that they care about, participants will also gain or practice skills in communication, team work and pitching/presentation.

The process

1. Meet with audience members. Often this will be a mixed group of different audience members, including staff and stakeholders. The workshop looks for consensus on the following questions:

·      What do we know about the issue and audience?

·      Why does it matter to us and what matters most?

2. Find the message, media and channel. Planning is the key to any successful communications project and this stage provides the foundation for PR and distribution plans. The group explores the following questions:

·      Where will our audience be, how do we reach them?

·      What’s it about? How would you say it to a friend?

·      What does success look like? How will we know when it’s good?

3. Get creative. Often this stage will take place with creative professionals – eg. writers, designers, filmmakers or photographers in the room. It will:

·      Look at what’s already out there, research content

·      Design/write/film/create social media

4. Critical feedback. This is the point where the creative is tested  with different audience members. Participants will ask the following questions:

·      Does this work? What do other people think? Are we missing something?

·      Feedback and input from stakeholders/experts

·      Amend and seek sign off

5. Launch and promote. This stage is all about getting the product out to the right people through the right channels and enlisting the help and contacts of everyone in the group.

6. Evaluate and feed back. Involving the group in evaluating the success, based on criteria agreed in stage 2, is crucial for the learning process and also to improve future products.

Co-creation techniques

Co-creation from Poached Creative starts with an audience group and a brief or theme. We facilitate groups using a range of techniques to engage them in the creative process over anything from two to twelve sessions.

Some of these techniques include:

·      open discussion, brainstorming and mood boarding

·      creating audience personas

·      future basing

·      SWOT and PEST analysis

·      distribution and PR planning

·      action planning, assigning roles and tasks

·      presentation/pitching and critical review

·      documenting progress and building networks through social media

“Co-creation isn’t about happy-clapper brainstorms and blank sheets of paper, it’s about well-channelled creative energy and structured tasks that meet a business challenge.”
Sense Worldwide (2009) The Spirit of Co-Creation: Risk-Managed Creativity for Business

For more information visit:

Poached Creative's co-creation page
www.staying-safe.com

http://www.nesta.org.uk

http://www.innovationlabs.org.uk

http://www.forbes.com/sites/infosys/2011/12/20/co-creation-innovation-bte

http://www.thespiritofcocreation.com/about/

Does small social enterprise have a chance in the Work Programme?

The Government launched its much-talked-about Work Programme today - "probably the biggest payment-by-results scheme in the world" according to Employment Minister Chris Grayling - and one that aims to help 2.4 million unemployed people back into work over the next five years.

The big idea is for what's been described as a giant dating agency, where people who are out of work will be matched to suitable employers. The focus, we're told, is on specialist provision and sustainable employment.

The money has already been allocated to the tier 1 and 2 contractors who hold the risk if they are unable to match the required number of candidates to jobs to make ends meet. See today's Telegraph article and Thursday's Guardian piece, which does a good job of explaining payment by results.

And this is where it gets interesting. It is up to these big players to decide how best to achieve the results that will win the more lucrative payments, such as more than £13,000 for getting an ex-incapacity benefit claimant back to work.

Some of them will, no doubt, try to build success with these clients in-house or with a small range of preferred providers who they've worked with before. How much of it filters down to the small specialists, like Poached Creative, will remain to be seen.

Where are the jobs?

Results would be all very well if there were jobs enough for everyone. But the two main areas where Poached Creative works - Hackney and Haringey - have been name checked by the Work Foundation in the top 10 areas of the UK where it is likely to be difficult for the Work Programme to be delivered profitably.

Hackney has the second-highest ratio of out of work residents to job vacancies in the UK, an unemployment rate of 19.6 per cent and one of the highest rates in the country of entrenched long-term unemployment. According to analysis published on Touchstone Blog it is also one of the areas that has been hardest hit in the recent round of government spending cuts. Even if the Work Programme manages to reach and help these people, it could be that the jobs simply aren't there.

Taking a chance?

The creative sector is one of Hackney's growth areas and, as a specialist service helping long-term unemployed people to get jobs in media and the creative industries, organisations like Poached ought to be the perfect candidates for Work Programme subcontracts.

But Rob Greenland at The Social Business is sceptical.

"There is potential for difficulty when a big company (the Prime Provider) is tasked with collaborating with lots of smaller providers. Government would have us believe that they’ll all play happy families, nurturing the young’uns and small’uns so that together they can share the proceeds and make the contract a success. I’m afraid I just don’t believe that it will turn out like that in a lot of cases."

It's worth reading his full blog.

I'll be happy to be proved wrong, but my fear is that we're too small, too untried and, frankly, too innovative to prove an attractive partner for providers trying to make ends meet in a difficult economy.

Find out about Poached Creative's training and work experience and read the concerns about how the Work Programme might affect people claiming benefits from In My Shoes.