Effectiveness in Action

Effectiveness in Action

This proposal brings together the arts-informed methodology of gentle disruption, with a reflexive interest in what makes community action effective, drawing on expertise from contrasting styles of community engagement in change-making, to share reflection on evidence of impact in a novel co-design process.

Participant research has begun to show how useful a process of gentle disruption can be in inspiring a group to come together and, through changes in expectation and orientation, find new endpoints outside the framing they started with. This is in keeping with a body of research demonstrating the relationship between innovation, breaking out of safe, traditional or limiting paradigms of thought and upsetting norms.

We use gentle disruption, here, as the basis for co-design, researching how we might extend this potentially broad and valuable approach from conventional artist- or designer-led practice into what the Design Council has called 'collective thinking and designing that addresses a community's issues' (www.design council.org.uk/resources-and-events/designers/design-glossary/co-design/); to inspire group-based designerly thinking; and to fuel new conceptual tools for generating creative accord in action contexts. In this way, it will advance understanding in the field of co-creation and the tools that can facilitate it.

The first phase of this proposal involves a process which brings several groups together to explore common ground in making community action effective. We will stage two events, the first around existing knowledge; the second developing these insights into collaborative innovation. Both will feature creative works by the three participating groups, which are being commissioned to elicit a theme of interest to all and to continue a weaving process that involves all partners as active co-workers in identifying and building on a joint focus. These creative works give space for reflection through collaborative activity and present each group's perspective so that others can react to it.

The second part of the proposal hints at what might come out of this process, and which aspects of the reflection that underpins the first phase might be incorporated in continuing the work together. As the point of phase one is to determine collaboratively - between university and community researchers - what the research question in the second phase will be, there is little to say about content, but phase two will contrast in form from phase one in that it will seek to answer a particular question rather than stimulate reflection per se.

This project has a strong emphasis on impact. The central issue that brings the participants together is evidencing and communicating effectiveness,. The issue of researching, refining or evidencing what makes action effective arose repeatedly in the course of discussions during the proposal development phase, with people interested in using evidence to provide 1) motivation to others to try out their own agency; 2) justification of an approach to attract funding; 3) means to learn better strategies for achieving intended ends.

The groups involved in the project will have an opportunity to reflect on, articulate and develop new understandings of their own effectiveness, as well as how to evidence it and communicate it to others. This will have direct impact on their change making practices; it will also filter out into the wider coalitions to which they all belong. Furthermore, bringing together groups with different practices means exposure to unfamiliar effective tactics and other understandings of effectiveness. This should lead to cross-fertilisation or even new hybrid approaches..

Participants have been attracted to the project by the potential to reflect on the shape and impact of change-making actions and how their creative practice informs them. This will be enhanced by the request to keep a collaborative reflective diary (in blog form) on developing their commissions and responding to others' work. This is informed by CC experience (eg the CARM blog 'How we Made it Happen': http://howwemadeithappen.posterous.com/) and others' research on inspiring reflection in designers (Dalsgaard & Halskov 2012). The blog and report of our work will be produced in accessible fashion so that community groups and those interested in design can learn from the process as a case study of co-design. The reflections will also offer learning material for the many people seeking to make change in their lives, neighbourhoods and world about them, providing thought on structures, processes, working creatively and evidencing what works.

The outputs of this research should be of interest to public service providers and local authorities, at a time when there is a strong emphasis in policy on co-production of services at local authority level and at the same time an acknowledgement that the sector lacks the know-how to do this effectively (see Boyle et al 2010). A number of the project participants have established professional links with local authorities and public sectors bodies (e.g. Social Spaces, Named Researcher and PI) which should ensure that the research can inform policy or practice at this level.

Boyle, D., Coote, A., Sherwood, C. and Slay, J. (2010) Right Here, Right Now Taking co-production into the mainstream NESTA/nef 2010: http://www.nesta.org.uk/publications/reports/assets/features/co-production_right_here_right_now