Putting the pieces together

I tend to take things I do lightly.

That's fine, until the day comes when you need to make a list and then I'm scrabbling to remember what I've done that is relevant.

It's like that with things I write. I make a list. Then I remember I wrote a chapter in a book published by RHP. Oh, and I know I've done articles for magazines. But can I remember which magazines, let alone which issues?

And it's like that with coproduction. It's time for me to make a list of what I've done, and I'm not sure where to start!

I have good reasons for resisting making lists. I hate people showing off what they've done, or treating themselves as more important because they can put more on their cv.

I have bad reasons for resisting making lists. I tend to dismiss anything I can do as being worthless. I fear being judged. I am too chaotic to be systematic about anything - and research relies heavily on being systematic.

Now I have a good reason to make a coproduction list. I'm going to the first meeting of people in South Wales who are interested in research and coproduction. To get and give the most, I need to marshal in my own brain what I've done, what I know, what I think, where I see research and coproduction in the future.

Blogging is one of my ways of thinking out loud and capturing that thinking. So here goes with an attempt to develop a timeline for my relationship with coproduction:

• went to a North Wales Working With Not To meet-up about coproduction and listened to Edgar Cahn
• went to hear Eddie Bartnik at a South Wales Coproduction Wales meet-up
• resisted when people started to call what Barod does 'coproduction' because I disliked the term
• worked out why I disliked how 'coproduction' was being used as a term, and found a way to explain what I want 'coproduction' to mean.
• worked with Constance of Wales Council for Voluntary Action on re-explaining 'coproduction' in terms that made sense to members of the public (Being At the Centre booklet)
• got involved with the ESRC research seminar series about academics, people with learning difficulties and practitioners researching together - and realised that it helped move things forward to combine thinking about inclusive/participatory research with coproduction thinking.
• Barod conceptualised what we mean by 'coproduction' in a slide show and workshop (thanks to Good Practice Exchange for giving us the chance to develop those, and Mel Nind for inviting us to adapt the slides for use in a research context at NRMF 2015)
• had a few exchanges with Professor Tony Bouvaird about coproduction
• kept developing ideas of ways to work together as equals within Barod, and between Barod and other organisations
• Barod explicitly 'did coproduction' with Jim Wright and Torfaen People First. We worked together from November 2016 to March 2017. I'm thinking through sociological stuff from my PhD, to see if I can explain why what we did felt like 'real coproduction'. We are also jointly writing up tips on 'doing coproduction'
• went to the launch for Coproduction Network Wales, and began to think it may be time to dip my toes into the formal side of developing coproduction as a public services practice in Wales.
• met Dr Gideon Calder to talk coproduction and ethics - and now have an invitation to the South Wales meet-up for people sharing an interest in coproduction and research.

Masked by that list is four years of thinking, reflecting, theorising and doing, which in itself draws on 20 years of thinking, reflecting, theorising and doing variations on 'working together' and 'consulting'.

I think it's possible to sum up the key things Barod and I have learned:

• you can't coproduce unless you can communicate freely
• you can't coproduce unless your shared vision is stronger than your desire for the familiar and personal comfort zone
• you can spot coproduction because anyone in the group can initiate anything (budget decisions, ideas, strategies, projects, parameters for working together, who should be involved), and everyone knows what the budget is
• coproduction isn't the only way to work together. Consultation and representation on boards are still important and valid.  What's vital is that we don't label something as 'coproduction' just because it sounds good or involves some form of working together.

And that's why the list is helpful. By putting together the list, it's helped me put the pieces together of what we have learned. And I reckon those four key points were worth the effort of making a list.

The joys of ethics

My "elephant" is a thing called a 'coffee shop conversation'. It's a great public consultation method being developed by Barod. The only problem is that none of us in Barod are quite sure what it is, how to describe it or why it seems to work so well.

I'm planning to climb all over the elephant to get the best idea I can of what it is. But even that isn't going to really work. I need a few more elephant climbers to give their perspective and description of the elephant. That led me to a wierd and wonderful research approach called "collaborative analytic autoethnography". ie, a bunch of us all get introduced to the elephant, look at the elephant individually, then compare notes and see what happens.

I wrote a lovely information pack for "potential research participants" (aka "the rest of the bunch of us").

Challenge 1: our relationship will be both researcher/research participant and coresearchers. The relationship will fluctuate during the time we are working together. That's fun to explain to the ethics committee, but fortunately we have found a way to explain it that is clear and transparent and deals with some of the ethics process issues (like how can you assure anonimity to your research participant when you are going to invite them to coauthor a paper?)

Challenge 2: I have to include lots of information for my potential research participants. So I wrote my lovely information pack, including everything I thought I needed to tell people and everything the university thought I needed to tell people [not always the same]. It went through a few academic checks, and found a wording that should have been fine for the ethics committee. Then I took it to show a potential research participant...

Guess what? The things I wanted to tell people weren't the same as the things people wanted to know.

That shouldn't have surprised me. We in Barod specialise in helping people communicate information to each other, particularly when it's the Establishment wanting to communicate with Jo Bloggs.

But somehow, I'd switched on my "researcher head" and forgotten all that. I just read the ethics handbook, looked at my protocol and plugged away to do what was needed according to the handbook.

So, this afternoon's task is to completely redraft my information pack so I tell people what they want to know before commiting - without leaving out the things I have to tell them even if they think they don't want to know them.