Co-designing terms of engagement

As a UK-based cultural organisation working with people from cities across the world, who are making change in contexts very different from our own, it was vital we developed a process of co-design to empower and include the perspectives of the cohort.

As a response, we ran a session during our first residential lab in Bristol through which the Creative Producers could design their own terms of engagement, allowing them to define their interaction over the course of the lab.

Holding these values at the core of our facilitation had important results: it created a safe and supportive environment which helped the participants acclimatise to their surroundings; they felt able to share openly about successes and failures; they grew to champion one another; they developed a genuine interest in the cultural landscapes of their colleagues’ cities.

What we couldn’t know at this stage was the huge influence these co-designed values would have over our leadership approach for the wider programme. While this activity felt reasonably common place to us, feedback from the Creative Producers emphasised that it felt radical to others. The values and our programming became symbiotic; we tested, shaped and adapted our ideas in conversation with the participants and our design became stronger and more relevant as a result. In return, the Creative Producers became invested and galvanised, collectively committed to realising the aims of the programme. A dynamic co-designed methodology evolved, one that has fundamentally shaped our organisational approach to facilitation moving forwards.