November Team Update: Strengthening connections and building momentum

Over the past month we’ve been getting stuck into co-production projects, working on both co-producing ourselves and supporting co-production for others. We’ve also taken time to learn and reflect, and we’re looking forward to putting this in to practice and sharing our learning in the next few months.

What we’ve been up to

Debora, Stuart, Nicc, and Rosie attended the fifth annual Anti Racist Summit, hosted by Anti Racist Cumbria in the beautiful Lake District. The day was both inspiring and thought-provoking, featuring powerful talks from speakers who reflected on the UK’s challenging current climate and the progress being made in anti-racist work. Centered around the theme of ‘Black Joy’, the event celebrated resilience and community through live music, comedy, and embodiment boat rides. The team left feeling re-energised and deeply motivated in their commitment to anti-discrimination within co-production spaces.

Hania, Nicc, and Olu took part in the Collective’s first Anti-Racism Working Group meeting, which brought together staff, co-producers, and academics. The discussion focused on envisioning the future of the Collective and co-production more broadly exploring what we want to achieve and how we’ll get there. The group agreed on several workstreams designed to embed anti-racism throughout all aspects of our work, which we look forward to sharing more about soon.

Hania also attended the City Bridge Foundation Suicide Prevention Learning Fund Event, part of our ongoing project with the National Suicide Prevention Alliance (also known as the NSPA). The event offered a valuable opportunity to connect with other funded organisations and exchange learning and experiences.

Nicc, Chloe, Naheen, and Humma delivered the final session with the current cohort of the Mental Health Sciences PhD programme. The session, “Co-production in Action,” was a hands-on workshop supporting students as they plan their thesis projects. It provided an opportunity to answer questions, explore practical approaches to co-production, and address any final concerns before they move forward with their research. Look out for a blog coming soon about how you get involved in supporting their projects.

Coming up

Reproductive Health Research Unit

Nicc, Priya and Aleem will be giving a session on co-production and anti-discriminatory practice at the NIHR Policy Research Unit in Reproductive Health’s away day in Oxford. ,

The Health and Adult Social Care Commissioners Conference – Commissioning for the future

Hania and Isaac will be representing the team at this year’s Health and Adult Social Care Commissioner’s Conference, presenting our work on co-production and anti-racism. They’ll be delivering a keynote titled “Understanding Anti-Racism in Co-Production Space: Centring the Voices of Racialised Individuals,” and running a follow-up workshop on Day 2. The workshop will support commissioners to reflect on what they can do differently in their work.

UCL Grand Challenges

We will be supporting the latest cohort of early career researchers funded by UCL Grand Challenges Mental Health and Wellbeing to come together as a group, learn more about co-production and support each other in developing their work.

Allies Group Meeting – 19th November

Our next Allies Group meeting takes place on 19th November. We’ll be sharing key insights and notes from the discussion afterwards — stay tuned!

Co Pro Cuppas

Thanks to those of you who came to our November Co-Pro Cuppa! It was great to see many of you there. We had a wide-ranging discussion on a variety of topics including:

• The challenges of being the person responsible for co-production in an organisation that may be new to this approach
• How to share the benefits and outcomes of co-production when many of the reports on co-production projects and researchers end up privately with funders and are not made public
• What the alternatives to payment are for people who may not be able to get paid but still should be rewarded

Our next co pro cuppa is on Tuesday 2 December at 13.30 UK on the theme of  "How do we get others to understand what co-production really means?”. We would love to see you there.

Image credit: Canva Pro