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Case study: learning session on power and co-production

Who: Platfform (the mental health and social change people), as part of the New System Alliance programme of strengths-based learning.

The brief:A one-hour learning session / workshop on: “How do we embed understandings of power in our co-production?”, online, with UK-wide participants. (Followed by a reflection / Q&A session after a break.)

What I did:

  • Part 1 – Power: drawing on the definitions from brap‘s Power, Anti-Racism and Civil Society training; and tools I learnt about in discussion with other practitioners (like Leah Lockhart), and from adjacent sectors (like social research).
  • Part 2 – Co-production: a whistlestop tour and reminder of the foundational concepts, drawing on the models and visuals I developed for the Co-production Network for Wales.
  • Part 3 – In practice: translating the values and ways of working into suggestions for practical actions, and examples of how the approaches manifest concretely, with a focus on power and inclusion.

Each section was a brief presentation of ideas and concepts, followed by a short discussion picking up contributions in the Zoom chat and a few by voice (thereby balancing hearing different voices in the time available.) There was great interaction in chat (way more than I could keep track of in the moment) and good retention throughout the session.

At the end I shared a slide of resources: co-production networks in all 4 UK nations, the Relationships Project, the Field Guide to Power Literacy, and This Is Water (the commencement address by David Foster Wallace that invites us to examine the contexts we work in with compassion and alert awareness).

What they said:

“Thank you for the seismic shift in my thinking!” ~ participant

“It was a thought-provoking discussion that left a lot to reflect on.” ~ participant


Presentation slide covering Values in action; on the left, co-production values, and on the right, what they look like in action. Value all participants, and build on their strengths. - Enable everyone to participate fully (equity); people must feel safe, valued, heard, understood. Develop networks across silos. - Work across boundaries and hierarchies. Pay attention to those outside of traditional systems. Do what matters for the people involved. - Listen to understand people’s context and experience first, before bringing your agenda. Build relationships of trust and share power. - Share ideas, make decisions together, test things, give (and take) honest constructive feedback. People can be change makers, and organisations become enablers. - Use positional power to remove barriers, and change the rules and permissions.