Effectiveness in Action

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Effectiveness in ActionThis proposal brings together the arts-informed methodology of gentle disruption, with a reflexive interest in what makes community action effective, drawing on expertise from contrasting styles of community engagement in change-making, to share reflection on evidence of impact in a novel co-design process. Participant research has begun to show how useful a process of gentle disruption can be in inspiring a group to come together and, through changes in expectation and orientation, find new endpoints outside the framing they started with. This is in keeping with a body of research demonstrating the relationship between innovation, breaking out of safe, traditional or limiting paradigms of thought and upsetting norms. We use gentle disruption, here, as the basis for co-design, researching how we might extend this potentially broad and valuable approach from conventional artist- or designer-led practice into what the Design Council has called 'collective thinking and designing that addresses a community's issues' (www.design council.org.uk/resources-and-events/designers/design-glossary/co-design/); to inspire group-based designerly thinking; and to fuel new conceptual tools for generating creative accord in action contexts. In this way, it will advance understanding in the field of co-creation and the tools that can facilitate it.The first phase of this proposal involves a process which brings several groups together to explore common ground in making community action effective. We will stage two events, the first around existing knowledge; the second developing these insights into collaborative innovation. Both will feature creative works by the three participating groups, which are being commissioned to elicit a theme of interest to all and to continue a weaving process that involves all partners as active co-workers in identifying and building on a joint focus. These creative works give space for reflection through collaborative activity and present each group's perspective so that others can react to it. The second part of the proposal hints at what might come out of this process, and which aspects of the reflection that underpins the first phase might be incorporated in continuing the work together. As the point of phase one is to determine collaboratively - between university and community researchers - what the research question in the second phase will be, there is little to say about content, but phase two will contrast in form from phase one in that it will seek to answer a particular question rather than stimulate reflection per se.