‘Working With Not To’, along with many other organisations including All in this Together are working to grow co-production in Wales.
We have supported All in this Together’s work from the start, as we believe that they are playing a valuable and much-needed role and have developed a great network of people. The more people across Wales who have the will to make it work, and the provide the opportunity for it to work, the better. Our work is mainly taking place in North Wales, when the opportunities arise we aim to collaborate again – as Pam, Fran and Ruth did at the great ‘Communities Can 2012‘ conference.
We are all supporting people to learn about, start and ‘do’ co-production; working across Wales from grassroots to government level, building connections and sharing learning and knowledge and stories. Together we we are trying to include as many people as possible in the Wales Co-Production conversation, to listen to people’s voices and act, and to join together so we have a more powerful voice to influence.
How can you influence decision-makers/funders?
On a strategic level, we all understand that influencing the people who make the decisions about how things are run and who manage the budgets, can support co-production growing in Wales. So one of our aims is to bring them into our conversations, and sharing our work, data and views. So these devision-makers and influencers can ‘listen’ to theses voices by reading the reports, analysing evidence and data and watching the videos, and truly understand how they can support us. We can also contribute to campaigns, surveys, sign letters and collect and share best practice and stories.
What can you do personally?
On a personal level we can each do specific actions, starting with our communities, where we work, our region, nationally, and UK-wide. Working out where we can impact and who should be/would like to be part of the co-prodcution conversation. We individually also become part of the bigger conversation, and contribute in a strategic way, to combine with other voices to make the voice louder.
- Locally: Find a local co-production group/project and support them, or start a project.
- Regionally: Join the ‘Working With Not To’ North Wales Co-Production Community or a group local to your region.
- Nationally: Join the ‘All in this Together’ Network
- UK-Wide: Join the UK Co-Production Practioners Network and within this the Wales Co-Production Network
This will help to build a group of people who can help influence policy and decision-makers, everywhere in Wales. Who can share what their group/area needs and how important co-production is. We are all working together towards a common aim of believing that co-production can be used to make the lives of people in Wales better. Thank you.