A network for co-production practitioners

interesting talk on well-being

How can we create a better, happier and more sustainable future for everyone?

Nic Marks, is a nef colleague and one of the UK's leading experts on happiness and well-being. In his forthcoming public lecture he'll be looking at practical solutions to the big questions- from measuring wellbeing to the politics of happiness to actions we can take in our own lives and communities. There's more about the talk and a chance to sign up here

Why is well-being relevant to co-production? A few years ago colleagues in nefs centre for well-being synthesised over 400 academically rigorous well-being studies to generate the '5 ways to well-being'. These are roughly equivalent to your 5 fruit a veg a day, essentially the 5 things we all need to do regularly in order to maintain our wellbeing. And to paraphrase those five things are..............

Connect: connect with the people around you. Your family, friends, colleagues and neighbours.

Be Active: exercising makes you feel good. Find a physical activity that you enjoy.

Take Notice: be aware of the world around you and what you are feeling. Reflecting on your experiences will help you appreciate what matters to you.

Keep Learning: learning new things - or rediscovering an old one - will make you more confident as well as being fun.

Give: do something nice for someone. Seeing yourself, and your happiness as linked to the wider community can be incredibly rewarding and creates connections with the people around you.

So far, so common sense, right? But now think about some of the co-production activities that you are familiar with through this lens of well-being. In my experience the majority of good co-production work incorporates opportunities for members to do all these things. Better well-being may not be the 'purpose' of the activity, they are not necessarily consciously or explicitly aiming to 'do' the 5-ways but they are nevertheless often present in successful activities. For example in a generic timebanking example,

Connect: a key focus of membership is to provide the informal introductions that enable people to grow or maintain their social connections

Be Active: being part of timebanking often means you get out and about regularly, sometimes there is even an explicit focus on 'exercise' groups

Take Notice: being supported to consider your personal resources - skills, time, experiences - and how you might further develop these or share them with others is a key aspect of getting involved in timebanking

Keep Learning: learning new things through skills swaps with other members, or rediscovering existing skills and sharing them are commonplace

Give: the action of giving time is critical to earning credits, which can then be used to recieve skills or support from others.

I'm interested to explore if one of the reasons why co-production is so much more effective is because it enables those involved (paid professionals and people using services) to grow or maintain their well-being. That would mean that co-production activity might be in effect a means to better well-being, which is good for the people involved and good for the services around them.

There's much more on nef's work on well-being here. I'm hoping that we'll be able to further explore these links in the New Year. If you're already tracking or measuring well-being in relation to your co-production work please do get in touch. Any other thoughts or comments also welcomed.

Happy New Year to you all and here's hoping that together we find ways to make 2012 the year that co-production goes mainstream.

interesting talk on well-being

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