Unearth Hidden Assets through Community Co-design and Co-production

One of the driving forces behind the Connected Communities scheme is to help communities become stronger, more resilient and self-reliant so that they can adapt and thrive even in difficult times like the economic downturn. Recent research showed that good use of co-design and co-production in community-led developments could support community building, since the participatory approach encourages self-help and positive behaviour changes, as well as create new networks within the community and strengthen existing ones. Effective use of co-design and co-production in community-led developments could get hard to reach groups involved and come up with creative and practical solutions.

However, successful use of co-design and co-production in community-led developments is still rare. In most cases, people are not truly treated as co-decision makers or co-developers. The majority of engagements in community-led development projects are confined to consultation practices. Experts observed that engagement activities should not focus on identifying needs, problems and deficiencies, as it could make people look at their communities with negative lenses. It would be more useful to concentrate on assets that a community possesses (e.g. self-help groups) and explore how to mobilise them to create new opportunities. As a result, we are interested in the 'Asset-Based Community Development: ABCD' concept, which begins with the self-mapping exercise to uncover hidden assets.

For us, these positive principles will underpin our approach to co-design and co-production, since it concentrates on working with communities to achieve lasting changes. While the original ABCD concept aims to identify assets to create new economic opportunities, we are particularly interested in how to uncover hidden assets - the assets that are currently unrecognised by most community members (e.g. voices of marginalised members). We would like to find out why some community engagement activities include/exclude certain members of the community. What are conditions that enable/hinder community engagement? It is important to explore both practical and emotional barriers, e.g. ethnic/cultural differences that could lead to prejudices and stigmas. Although previous studies suggested that it is unrealistic to expect the same level of participation from all members of a community, there is a need to ensure that community engagement activities are designed in ways that allows active members to shine without making less-active members feel left out. We will explore how to practically make community-led developments more inclusive. We are also interested in exploring how the asset-mapping exercise might help us understand the makeup of a community. The idea is to understand the makeup of a well-functioning community and use it as an example to inspire other communities to realise their potential and help them move towards becoming well-functioning.

Our main contribution and innovative element of our proposal is making the invisible (people, assets and the makeup of a community) visible so that they can be utilised to create new opportunities for communities in an inclusive manner. Hence, the aim of the project is 'to find out how to achieve inclusive asset-based community developments through co-design and co-production.'

In Phase 1, we will try out different co-creation techniques (e.g. community film making and community-led design) to find out which co-creation activities include or exclude which groups and which activities are likely to identify which types of assets (e.g. economic, social or cultural assets). We will work with communities to learn from previous ABCD projects, reflect on our former community engagement experiences, identify potential barriers and explore how to address them. What we learn from piloting different co-creation activities will help us shape up the agendas and methodology for Phase 2, and plan inclusive co-production activities.

The impacts of our project can be broadly described as follows:

- Enhancing the economic competitiveness of the United Kingdom by helping communities realise their potential and utilise their assets to create new opportunities and lasting changes - this is the first step towards making them more resilient and self-reliant

- Increasing the effectiveness of public policy by providing insight into the current practical and psychological barriers preventing certain members of communities from being engaged with community-led development activities

- Enhancing the quality of life of unengaged/marginalised members of communities by making engagement methods and activities more inclusive - this will increase a chance of engaging with currently hard-to-reach groups

- Improving creative outputs at the community/local/regional level by making community engagement activities more inclusive, more people may get involved in community-led developments. Subsequently, all key issues would be examined from wider perspectives which could lead to a wider range of ideas and better results.

Our primary direct beneficiaries are participating communities. They will have opportunities for dialogue and reflection which will lead to insights and improvements into how their community functions and could make better use of assets. The co-production and co-design activities will also develop outputs, the representations (e.g. asset maps), which communities will be able to use as a basis for future actions, including social enterprise or funding proposals.

Other direct beneficiaries are community leaders, community-based organisations (e.g. local charities and voluntary groups) practitioners in the field of community development and local authorities leading/facilitating community-led development initiatives. This group can directly benefit from the new knowledge, new insights, new materials (e.g. case studies) and advanced methodology for community engagement. Our project will help people leading/facilitating community-led developments identify assets in communities and realise their potential through appropriate use of co-design, co-creation and co-production. As the methodology will be derived from the co-creation with participating communities, it could help improve both the process and the outcomes of community-led developments. By engaging a wider group of people, the process becomes more inclusive, improving the quality of the results.

We have identified several groups of indirect beneficiaries.

- Firstly, other communities may be inspired by the outcomes of the project and apply the methodology to realise their potential through co-design and co-production.

- Secondly, creative professionals and co-design practitioners may benefit from an improved understanding of co-design, co-creation and co-production among people in communities, new materials (e.g. case studies) and new insights reporting which co-creation activity works and what does not work with different groups in communities.

- Our project could benefit practitioners working in the field of open design, open innovation, social innovation and social enterprise, as these professionals are interested in collective creativity. Our new knowledge and methodology could help advance their practices and understanding of different levels of creative participation.

- In addition, our project enables policy makers and organisations funding community-led development projects to assess whether communities are properly engaged and given sufficient opportunities to propose ideas and turn ideas into reality. By exploring what could be done to engage hard-to-reach groups, suitable governmental interventions at local, regional and national levels can be planned more effectively.