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... is a new programme from Culture Works

We aim to build a vibrant network connecting social entrepreneurs and artists skilled in the qualities needed to develop and sustain cross sector collaboration. Our aspiration is that organisations will as a result, be more robust, able to deploy the expertise residing within the network to support innovation in product and service design, and better able to survive and thrive in challenging times. We believe that through exploring the processes needed to support co-creation, we can unlock opportunities for growth to create futures we truly desire.

Between June and November Culture Works co-Directors Jane Shaw and Judy Seymour, working in collaboration with the Interaction Institute for Social Change, SROI experts Lodestar and colleagues within the arts, creative industries and social enterprise communities are facilitating an intensive programme to enable thirty participants to Collaborate to Innovate. You can download the programme details here and....

PUBLIC EVENTS DURING THE AUTUMN - download the programme to reserve your place here

October 21st - Gameful Ideas - led by Phil Veal, Silbo - what can the games industry teach us about how to engage with customers and service users?

October 27th - Making the Invisible Visible - led by Bridget Shea and Tess Hudson, Pen and Tonic. How can we use story telling techniques with our customers and users so they can describe what changes as a result of our work?

November (tbc) - Design Thinking - led by Northumbria University School of Design - how can design thinking add value to service and product design?

The story so far...

Being able to bring together the funding and the people to make this happen gives us a great opportunity to create a platform for learning that we'd like to share with a wider group.

June 14th

Using the research, Jane and I put together this questionnaire to help everyone to reflect on their collaborative skills. You might enjoy trying it out (and if you do, we'd really appreciate your feed-back).

Here's a snapshot of how the group assessed their skills...

June 22nd

Today we looked at our experiences of collaborating with others to generate ideas and solutions. Lots of expertise within the group as well as a way in to thinking about how and where innovation is most likely to occur. Lots of good practice was shared as were experiences of being excluded (and how that made us feel, and how it impacted on the quality of both processes and outcomes). 'Right here, right now: taking co-production into the mainstream' here is a good background to co-production as a basis for current Public Service Reform policy - and an indication of how engaging users in the development of services will inform future commissioning strategy.

July 4th, 5th and 6th

Led by Louise O'Meara and Stevie Johnston from IISC. Three full days of practical work - the collaborative leader ( this sparked some interesting debate), who needs to be involved in decision making, why and how to get engagement, facilitating agreements (do you always have to have consensus?), speaking your vision in a ways that involve others, designing pathways to action, coaching conversations and celebrating achievement.

"The workshops on facilitating meetings and securing agreement were great. I feel like I have the tools and framework. With each workshop my confidence and ability improves towards getting the most out of every meeting". (Alex Finnegan, PuppetShip)

July 15th

Led by Jane and Dave Howerth and with guests Bethan Laker and Josie Brooks from A Set of Drawers. Bethan and Josie spent the day doodling the ideas being discussed and we wound up by looking at their drawings (a whole wall of them) and seeing how thinking had shifted over the course of the day. Brilliant work by all, but especially Josie and Bethan who had to assimilate ideas, turn them into metaphors and produce drawings. Set us thinking about how doodling can be used in myriad situations to illustrate change. VERY EXCITED!

July 26th

Everyone so keen to meet each other and get talking, Jane and I wondered at one stage if we should come home and leave them to it! We didn't and the feedback was good...."learning from each other was very valuable...really enjoyed the activities..innovative ways to be innovative!"

September 9th

Led by Karl Leathen (Lodestar). We were joined by some of the folk from Middlesbrough for this introductory session on SROI in which we covered the basic principles and did some practical work applying SROI theory to bid writing scenarios. Six people wanting to follow this up on an individual basis with Karl (hooray for the mentoring budget) and one of our Middlesbrough colleagues proposes we run an additional session in Middlesbrough which they will help organise. Collaboration seems to be working nicely.

"thanks for a great day. It was very informative and threw up lots of new ideas to consider...it was also really good to meet all the other people and hear how they're getting on, quite inspiring..."

September 27th and 28th

Another practical two days with Louise and Stevie, this time applying a collaborative planning framework to scenarios from people's current work. Separating the 'planning for collaboration' (very roughly, who needs to be involved and at which stage of the programme, how do we get them on board and why would they want to join us?) from planning the project (the activities we will do) was a case of the proverbial light bulb for lots of us. Here's a handy thing

"...really enjoyed being challenged and stretched. Motivated to expand my knowedge and skills. Enjoyed this very much, thank you!"