Celebrating the launch of the Measuring Success in Co-production: Learning by Doing programme

In this blog we will be sharing an update about the Measuring Success programme and announcing the launch of the programme’s reports. The programme is supported by Co-Production Collective, Co-producers with a range of lived experience, The Evaluation Exchange (a collaboration between UCL and  Compost London), and representatives from two of our co-funders (UCL Grand Challenges and The Academy of Medical Sciences), who supplemented our Research England funding for this programme.

Sharing what we did, and what we have learned

We’ve produced several different ways to engage with the reporting of our insights from the programme.

1. Introductory video (11 minutes):  

• A introduction to give you a flavour of what the programme is about, the journey we’ve been on and to explain the outputs we have developed.

2. Measuring Success Report Summary (20 pages), Quick Read Report (2 pages) and Quick Read Report Audio Version (5 minutes) [COMING SOON]

• A short report describing key elements of the programme, significant findings and intended impacts of this work.

3. Measuring Success Extended Report (127 pages)

• An in-depth Report about the programme, how we learned from the teams, how we planned and analysed the evaluation and more detailed narratives around the conditions for co-production and evaluating in co-production. This incorporates a summary of evidence from the Measuring Success Programme Team and all eight project teams, and contains a brief summary about the projects, their journeys, evaluation and impacts.  

4. Measuring Success Reflective Learning Resource (29 pages), Brief Audio-Visual Guide to using the Resource (11 minutes), and word versions of templates (Template 1 and Template 2)

• This is the learning drawn from all the project teams, and our programme team, to provide more detail and practical ideas to reflect on how to optimise conditions for co-production. This includes the factors and actions that teams felt were important and some questions that can serve as a starting point to encourage reflective practices.
• We asked a wide range of people what a helpful output from this programme could be. We were keen to avoid duplicating existing tools, but in responding to feedback wanted to provide something inclusive, and of practical use, to help co-production journeys, regardless of stage, experience or expertise.
• The resource is intended for anyone who is interested or involved in co-production.

Please do let us know if you need any help accessing any of these, or contact coproduction@ucl.ac.uk if there is something that may help make these more accessible to you!

Reflecting on our aims for the overall programme and legacy

Reflection is one of our core values at Co-Production Collective – something we believe should be prioritised from the start and built into monitoring and evaluation throughout when co-producing!  

As this programme comes to an end, we are now almost 2 years on from embarking on the ‘Measuring Success in Co-production: Learning by Doing’ programme which funded eight co-produced projects. If you want to catch up about the individual projects and how we got to this point in the co-produced programme, we’ve published a few blogs on our webpages charting our progress, which you can read on the ‘Updates’ tab.

It’s time again to reflect. We feel that it is important not only to look at how the journey evolved but what the learnings and legacy are, and we are excited to share this with you.  

When we started out, the ‘Measuring Success’ Programme Team wanted to develop a participatory funding call that was a little different. To support a range of people to collaborate and develop co-production projects together across the themes of mental health and wellbeing and/or climate change. We wanted to support impacts for all involved throughout the funding journey.  

Although we couldn’t fund all the applications, we hope that our launch and networking events which were intended to “add value along the way, regardless of outcome” and the resources we provided with the application process, help to support future co-produced projects. All the applications helped us to evaluate our approach to the participatory funding programme.  

Our main aim for the eight funded projects was to see what we could learn about co-production and evaluation through this process. We wanted to explore how evaluation could be co-produced from the start, and how to evaluate co-production projects and processes.  

Most of all we wanted to do this through Learning by Doing. We defined this as, “creating the right conditions and learning how to put the principles of co-production into practice from the start.” From our collective experiences, this is the most effective way to develop capabilities in both co-production and evaluation. Everyone came from different starting points. This practical ‘hands-on’ learning approach in co-production and evaluation is essential as different people, teams and organisations start or develop their journeys with both.

Looking further at the process, through sharing our learning and bringing co-production and evaluation together, led us to insights about how we might optimise the conditions for co-production.

Our findings lend more support to the fact that a rigid framework (or set approach) is unlikely to be as helpful as adopting a ‘reflective and adaptive’ process to enacting the principles and goals of co-production tailored to the project, people and setting. Therefore, although we have produced a ‘resource’ this is to provide a starting point to encourage your own thinking together.

Finally, a key goal of this programme was to ‘measure success’. Our response is that all of these terms may translate to different meanings for individuals, organisations or institutions. By measuring aspects of the process, we need to remember to evaluate in a sensitive, human and hence ‘appropriate’ way that is ‘proportionate’ to the resources that we have.

How can you help – what to expect next

If you read the Reports or use the Resource, we’d like to hear your feedback so we can gather information about the impact they are having.  

We want to understand how the resource is being used. We will record how many people have downloaded the resource and what contexts it has been used in. Co-Production Collective will include this information (anonymously) in their annual impact reports, published at the start of each year.  

How you can help grow and improve co-production and work towards change…

1. Please cite the Resource or Report in your work as: Measuring Success in Co-production: Co-production Reflective Learning Resource (2025) or Measuring Success in Co-production: Co-production Report (2025).
2. If you do use this resource we can also add your work to our Co-production Resource Library. Please get in touch to ask about this by emailing: coproduction@ucl.ac.uk. 
3. Provide feedback on the resource to help us track impact and identify the gaps we need to work more on by completing this short survey.

What’s next

We appreciate there’s a lot to take in. We’d also like to work with some co-producers to take this forward and test the resource – ideally a mix of those in a position to actively use the resource and those interested in co-production. If you would like to take part, sign up for a co-creation session in summer 2025. Please email us on coproduction@ucl.ac.uk or look out for more information about this, which will follow in the next few weeks.  

Who was involved in this programme

Measuring Success Team

• Vanessa Bennett, Co-Production Collective
• Anne Crisp, The Evaluation Exchange and Compost London CIC
• Rob Ferguson, Co-Production Collective community member
• Briony Fleming, The Evaluation Exchange and Compost London CIC
• Nick Hillier, The Academy of Medical Sciences
• Niccola Hutchinson Pascal, Co-Production Collective
• Gemma Moore, The Evaluation Exchange and UCL
• Siobhan Morris, UCL Grand Challenges
• Aleem Nisar, Co-Production Collective
• Lisa Richardson, Co-Production Collective community member
• Caroline Rouse, The Evaluation Exchange and Compost London CIC
• Ruth Unstead-Joss, The Evaluation Exchange and UCL
• Other co-producer members of the Co-Production Collective community

We would like to thank all the project teams who feature in the Measuring Success programme. More information about their work is available to read at the Measuring Success webpage. Projects are described in the ‘funded projects’ tab. Additionally, short summaries of their work are provided, in their own words, at the Celebration and Learning event under the ‘events’ tab.

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