It’s #CoProWeek… again
Are celebrations like National Co-production Week just artificial or are there other ways to increase awareness about co-production?
Image description: Three women sit on a sofa and jointly work on a laptop on a coffee table in front of them. Their hands point to different parts of the laptop and screen.
Once again it is National Co-production Week, a chance to celebrate and bring awareness to co-production as an ethos, co-produced projects and educate others on what co-production is. As someone with multiple conditions and identities that mean the year is scattered with awareness, celebration, pride and history months National Co-production Week is just another week in that schedule.
To me these weeks have often lacked a sense of authenticity, they aren’t there for those of us who live or do these things every other day, week or month of the year. We aren’t the target audience of these efforts, once that is understood it is easier to see these celebrations for what they are - marketing weeks. Assigning a specific time or setting a stage for a conversation to occur makes ideas easier to market to a wider audience, media is more likely to pay attention and the public are more able to give attention to set topics in a set time frame. However this way of celebration reduces often complex experiences to simplified and introductory work, every event and resource created is top-level rather than being afforded the depth needed to get into the nitty-gritty - of which co-production has a lot of.
Instead of a true celebration, we’re pushed to have the same debates and conversations over and over, ‘what is co-production’, ‘how much should public contributors be paid’, ‘how do we recognise the value of people’s contribution’. While these are worthwhile conversations to have they will simply continue to be conversations if there is no action behind them, there is far more worth in tackling an issue rather than agreeing that an issue exists. For those faced with the very real issues of fair and timely remuneration of public contributors or just how to co-produce with others, there is less value in engaging in a conversation that by this stage has existed for decades than there is in creating and implementing solutions.
What do I want to see instead?
Instead of just coordinated events that focus on a week in July, we need to work together, those in positions of power (whether real or perceived) need to use their platform to elevate those who are typically disempowered and disserved by power structures. There needs to be year-round planning and potentially a culmination event in July, often it feels as if co-production week celebrations are last minute.
Events and activities need to be planned much further in advance so that public contributors are not tokenistic in their presence at an event that they haven’t had a say in designing. We can do this by working with people, organisations bringing in the expertise from communities to design and deliver the events that are of the most worth and usefulness.
Celebrate co-production achievements outside of National Co-production Week,. By hinging so much value on a week we pressure ourselves to fit into a system that may not be of most benefit.
Developing of resources. As much as co-production is a values-based approach rather than a manualised methodology it can be really intimidating to know where or how to start. This is something that would benefit long time co-producers and those interested in using co-production as a way of working with others.
