Unearth Hidden Assets through Community Co-design and Co-production

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One of the driving forces behind the Connected Communities scheme is to help communities become stronger, more resilient and self-reliant so that they can adapt and thrive even in difficult times like the economic downturn. Recent research showed that good use of co-design and co-production in community-led developments could support community building, since the participatory approach encourages self-help and positive behaviour changes, as well as create new networks within the community and strengthen existing ones. Effective use of co-design and co-production in community-led developments could get hard to reach groups involved and come up with creative and practical solutions. However, successful use of co-design and co-production in community-led developments is still rare. In most cases, people are not truly treated as co-decision makers or co-developers. The majority of engagements in community-led development projects are confined to consultation practices. Experts observed that engagement activities should not focus on identifying needs, problems and deficiencies, as it could make people look at their communities with negative lenses. It would be more useful to concentrate on assets that a community possesses (e.g. self-help groups) and explore how to mobilise them to create new opportunities. As a result, we are interested in the 'Asset-Based Community Development: ABCD' concept, which begins with the self-mapping exercise to uncover hidden assets. For us, these positive principles will underpin our approach to co-design and co-production, since it concentrates on working with communities to achieve lasting changes. While the original ABCD concept aims to identify assets to create new economic opportunities, we are particularly interested in how to uncover hidden assets - the assets that are currently unrecognised by most community members (e.g. voices of marginalised members). We would like to find out why some community engagement activities include/exclude certain members of the community. What are conditions that enable/hinder community engagement? It is important to explore both practical and emotional barriers, e.g. ethnic/cultural differences that could lead to prejudices and stigmas. Although previous studies suggested that it is unrealistic to expect the same level of participation from all members of a community, there is a need to ensure that community engagement activities are designed in ways that allows active members to shine without making less-active members feel left out. We will explore how to practically make community-led developments more inclusive. We are also interested in exploring how the asset-mapping exercise might help us understand the makeup of a community. The idea is to understand the makeup of a well-functioning community and use it as an example to inspire other communities to realise their potential and help them move towards becoming well-functioning. Our main contribution and innovative element of our proposal is making the invisible (people, assets and the makeup of a community) visible so that they can be utilised to create new opportunities for communities in an inclusive manner. Hence, the aim of the project is 'to find out how to achieve inclusive asset-based community developments through co-design and co-production.' In Phase 1, we will try out different co-creation techniques (e.g. community film making and community-led design) to find out which co-creation activities include or exclude which groups and which activities are likely to identify which types of assets (e.g. economic, social or cultural assets). We will work with communities to learn from previous ABCD projects, reflect on our former community engagement experiences, identify potential barriers and explore how to address them. What we learn from piloting different co-creation activities will help us shape up the agendas and methodology for Phase 2, and plan inclusive co-production activities.