Who: Atlantic College, an international boarding school in Wales.
The brief:Two co-design workshops with the whole team (educators and administrative staff) to agree a new housing policy for staff (some live on site in various forms of accommodation, and some don’t). There had been tensions and disagreements about the content of the draft policy, which was an update to a previous policy in need of renewal.
What I did: Two workshops online, a Miro digital whiteboard, structured discussions.
What they said:
- “This new policy draft is more than a rewrite, it looks fundamentally different.”
- “The co-production has been such an unblocker to progess. We’re going to come out of this(process of policy review) in a good place.”
- “If I compare the tenor of the first and second meeting… it defused tension. I thought the second meeting was much more focused. It was a lot lower temperature in the room.”
- “As well as a new policy, we have the unintended positive that people realised we did it for the right reasons. It increased the support and patience of the team – the co-design workshops and also we (the senior leadership team) had about 20 informal conversations in between the two meetings.”
- “It’s not just a housing policy, we have a greater piece of trust. And this trust only comes from seeing the whites of our eyes in these meetings. If we have trust we can do everything together.”
- “We’re definitely in a better position than when we started.”
Photo credit: Visit Wales