Capturing the Process of Co-Production for a Town Planning Project

I was commissioned by the Co-Production Collective https://www.coproductioncollective.co.uk based at UCL (University College London) to help gather views and discussion as part of a regeneration project in Croydon. This was over 4 separate meetings, the last one was held at their newly opened 'Urban Room' in the Whitgift Centre. 

The project will continue over the next few weeks https://www.croydonurbanroom.com so please drop in if you're a Croydon resident and want your views heard!

Illustration work, amplifying the voice of the child in Merton, southwest London

Some recent local authority work, for children's services in Merton. I really like the way children's voices are being listened to more, and citizenship is being developed at an early age these days.

Children's parliaments, young people doing peer to peer surveys for the council, children's mental health ambassadors in schools. I'm hoping all this involvement can help build a more engaged and better educated, and hopefully kinder generation of young people.
 

 I also want to bang my drum for using illustration in this way. To invest in the communication of messages is a way of honouring testimony and amplifying people's voices. It's especially impactful when expressing the voices of those who have previously been sidelined and overlooked. 

Illustration may often look 'pretty' or may be considered a 'nice to have', but it's worth investing in the people who surround you, be that a child, your staff, or someone you're trying to reach at a conference.

Ok, time to get off my illustration soapbox :)

Co-Production in East London

A piece of work done in collaboration with local residents to redevelop a Hackney community centre, also involving architects, co-production facilitators and town planners. To plan the image I used the building as a focal image, that I drew in advance, and used the four differently coloured themes in quadrants around it.

This job needed help from the facilitators to make it work, so I had note takers from the 4 groups who helped harvest information and feed it to me, so that I could stay by the paper and keep drawing, because people were scattered around the building.

I'd recommend this way of working if you have lots of breakout groups but still want an overall sense of the feedback in the room. Or alternatively you could have a more sophisticated setup that the folks at a company called 'Realise' have, involving software similar to Mentimetre, but with a lot more questions lined up. I was working with them last week and that worked really well!

http://www.realisegroup.com/

Live Scribing in South London

I'm working on a co-production project in South London, these are the outputs from 2 of 4 workshops, so we're halfway through. The group of local volunteers are sifting through ideas and debating what to pitch for a pot of money to improve East Croydon. Sorely needed, I really hope they win with their pitch.

I'm really interested in this form of ideation, it's a very active and egalitarian way of involving citizens, full of debate. They weigh up facts, bring local knowledge and a certain amount of gut feeling, a bit like jury service, but for town planning!