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What is holding back the development of co-production in the mainstream?

This Co-production Network has been growing so fast that you might feel it is unstoppable, and it probably is. But there are bound to be frustrations and three of these particularly stand out for me.

The first is the way that co-production tends to get categorised as part of the ‘empowerment’ agenda, rather than – as it should be, I believe – a critique of it.

As I have written…

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I’ve been thinking about co-production, spurred on as always by the brilliant Co-production Network.  And I’ve been wondering why I feel so uncomfortable about the language of ‘empowerment’.

I have come to two conclusions.  The first is philosophical.  The ‘empowerment’ language began to seep into public discourse during the Blair years, where the government of the day had a very hazy idea of the philosophy of power.

The truth is that it is not in our gift to give people…

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One of the difficulties for pioneer co-producers is that they often seem to fly in the face of the way public services have been developing over the past generation.



They rely on face to face influence when the trend has been virtual.  They appeal to general skills when the trend has been increasingly specialist.  They believe in ordinary skills, amateur in the best sense, when the trend has been increasingly over-professionalised.



Most important perhaps, co-production relies… Continue