Since 2022 we have been surveying you, our community members, every two years to get your feedback on how we are doing and to understand how we can support you better. We conducted our last community survey just before the launch of our new website at the end of 2024 and asked:
- How well you thought we were living up to our values of being transparent, kind, inclusive, embracing of change and reflective, and what you thought we could do to further improve this.
- What else we could be doing to achieve our aims of championing co-production for lasting change.
- What we else you thought we could do to support the personal development of our co-producers.
- How we could enhance our Co-Pro Cuppas.
Since then, we have been busy putting your recommendations in place. We are sharing what we have been up to in this blog, along with what else we learnt from the 2024 Community survey.
61 people took part in the survey, compared to 109 in 2022. When asked what being part of Co-Production Collective meant to you 35 people (61%) gave comments that related to being part of a community of like-minded people.
“Joining a community of like-minded people to build a community of practice, develop and champion inclusive and equitable practices and advocate for ways of working together that value everyone.” - A member of our community who has been involved for 1-3 years
You can out find out more about who took part in the survey on this summary page available as a Word document or PDF
Working with us
When asked you about your experiences with us. We found that:
23% of people had received training from us about co-production
- of these 78% said it was ‘good’ or ‘very good’.
36% of people had been a co-producer on external projects
- of these 86% said their experience was ‘good’ or ‘very good’.
54% of people had contributed to co-creation workshops and events.
- of these, 81% said their experience was ‘good’ or ‘very good’.
18% of people had worked in partnership with the Collective.
- of these, 67% of people said their experience was ‘good’ or ‘very good’.
Your feedback on Co-Pro Cuppas
39 (64%) people who responded to our survey had attended a Co-Pro Cuppa. Of those who had not been to a Co-Pro Cuppa, 9 (41%) said it was because the timings don’t work for them.
We asked how you would rate a co-pro cuppa. The average rating for Co-Pro Cuppas out of 5 stars was 4.43.
The key themes that came through about what people liked about Co-Pro Cuppas were:
- Networking with and hearing from a range of like-minded people
- Learning from each other, exchanging ideas and hearing different points of view
- Variety and informality
We’ll follow up in more detail about your thoughts on our Co-Pro Cuppas in a blog next month.
Living up to our values
As part of the survey, we asked if you thought we were living up to our values. Below you can find the percentage of people who thought we were living up to a particular value ‘most of the time’ or ‘always’:
- Kind: 72%
- Reflective :70%
- Transparent: 70%
- Inclusive: 69%
- Embracing of change: 66%
You suggested increased transparency about our governance, policies and how we recruit co-producers for our projects would help us to better live up to our values. We have looked to address this via the ‘About us’ and ‘Get involved’ sections of our new website.
Inclusion and accessibility
People also suggested we can develop a stronger, shared understanding of inclusion and accessibility. They recommended that we should focus on how to apply this to a range of situations, including finding ways to make online events more disability-inclusive. We have started work in this area via our new ‘community commitments’ that were developed as part of our anti-racism in co-production project . We have been sharing these at Co-Pro Cuppas and other meetings to get your feedback , and they will go on our website soon.
We are committed to ensuring what we do is as accessible as possible. Our new website contains our Accessibility Statement that sets out our approach to this. If you have additional requirements not covered by this statement or have any feedback about it, please contact us on coproduction@ucl.ac.uk so that we can discuss this further with you.
There was also a suggestion that our values need to better reflect social justice (which means justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society). In 2026 as part of the midpoint review of ‘Our Direction 2023-2028’ (our vision for the future and our approach to achieving it), we will be reviewing our values again as a community to ensure they are fit for purpose.
What else people think we should be doing to champion co-production for lasting change
Feedback was given about how we could better market ourselves via events, partnerships and the website. We are using these suggestions to help plan our marketing activity going forward and will continue to work with our Communications sub-group to support this.
There was also feedback about how we could better support people to be more involved in what we do. This is being addressed by the Community Member Journey project we began in 2025 that we are planning to co-produce outputs from in 2026.
Supporting the personal development of our co-producers.
There were a number of suggestions people came up with including whether we could find ways to support people to build skills in the areas of facilitation, peer research, evaluation, inclusive communication and co-production. This feedback is being fed into our Community Member Journey project and our plans for our 2026 Co-Pro Cuppas and we’ll keep you posted.
Other feedback received about people’s experience of their involvement Co-Production Collective and how this is being addressed
Being clearer about expectations from co-producers
We’ve launched a community member welcome pack that people receive when they sign up to join our community. This will be enhanced by our new community commitments and guidance on information hygiene and there is more to come.
The perception that we are a very London-based organisation
We want to make it clearer how we support co-production projects across the UK, so in our 2025 Impact Report we’re exploring ways the highlight the number of projects we were involved in outside of London. We’re also looking at ways to make it clearer on our website that we are a national organisation.
Making payments simpler
We launched a new version of our payment policy in July 2025. We have simplified the forms of payment we can offer to try and make things clearer for everyone.
What’s next
We will continue to use the feedback you gave us from the 2024 Community Survey to develop what we offer to our community members and inform our approach to marketing ourselves and championing co-production for lasting change. There will be opportunities to get involved to support us to do this in 2026. Please keep an eye on our ‘Current Opportunities’ page and newsletter if you would like to be part of this. And if you have any further feedback you would like to give us in the meantime, please email coproduction@ucl.ac.uk
Meeting notes
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