Co-creative communities

Traversing a vast terrain including local and regional democracy, ageing, care, reproduction, sexuality, disabilities, and migration, we co-create the spaces and tools communities need to re-frame narratives, claim and defend rights, and forge powerful solidarities.

 

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Participatory Artsbased Methods For Civic Engagement In Migrant Support Organizations

Contact: Umut Erel
Partners: Utopia Arts, The Magpie Project, Creating Ground, The Regional Refugee Forum Northeast, Praxis Community Projects

How can migrant support organizations use participatory and artsbased methods to support migrants' civic engagement? The project collaborated with migrant support organizations to train migrants in using these methods for participation, producing a toolkit and a short film.

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Physical activity for health and wellbeing in the caring role

Contact: Nichola Kenzter
Partners: Carers, The Carers Trust

OpenLearn course co-produced with carers and endorsed by the Carers Trust. 

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Co-producing The Day Doc

Contact: Ned Redmore
Partners: Autistic people with profound learning disabilities, day-service staff, family members and social care professionals

This project was to co-produce a tool to support autistic people with profound learning disabilities to have a bigger say in the day-services they are part of. 

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The Body Politic

Contact: Peter Keogh
Partner: Alliance for Choice

The Body Politic is an intersectional feminist learning space that attempts to capture the rich tapestry of experiences, perspectives, skills and knowledges developed through feminist activism around abortion in Ireland. Our aim is to share these precious knowledges across time and space so that they can be applied to wider struggles

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Citizens’ Voices, People’s News

Contact: Philip Seargeant
Partners: Institute of Welsh Affairs

Wales’ media faces a crisis: funding cuts, the closure of news services, and threats to public service broadcasting are signs of a democracy with a diminishing public square. To generate solutions, IWA and the OU in Wales commissioned a Citizens’ Panel of fifteen people to discuss these issues and come up with recommendations for solutions. 

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Experience for Justice

Contact: Rod Earle
Partner: Academics with personal experience of criminal justice interventions

Experience for Justice is a group of academics who have personal experience of criminal justice interventions. We support each other in developing ideas and actions to change the criminal justice system for the better by recognising the value of our various experiences 

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Covid Chronicles

Contact: Marie Gillespie
Partners: Researchers and people with direct experience of forced migration

This is a participatory project co-created by a group of researchers with direct experience of forced migration and/or have worked and lived with refugees, asylum seekers and undocumented people. In chronicling experiences COVID-19, we aimed at challenging the UK’s “hostile environment” for migrants by building solidarities, promoting a better understanding of the problems being faced, campaigning for the recognition of rights and social justice, and facilitating self-representation, civic engagement and community participation.

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Degrees of Freedom: Prison Education at The Open University

Contact: Rod Earl
Partners: Prisoners and ex-prisoners

Co-authored by OU academics and prisoners and ex-prisoners, this is the first authoritative volume to look back on the last 50 years of The Open University providing higher education to those in prison, this unique book gives voice to ex-prisoners whose lives have been transformed by the education they received. Offering vivid personal testimonies, reflective vignettes and academic analysis of prison life and education in prison.

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Wales REACH

Contact: Richard Marsden 
Partner: five communities across Wales

Wales REACH engages disadvantaged or peripheralised people with the heritage that 
matters to them. The project uses creative techniques to enable participants to learn about, and reflect on their cultural and 
natural heritage and produce creative materials to showcase their heritage. 

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ALPHABETICA: Activating learning paths: holistic arts-based education and training for inclusion and cultural awareness

Contact: Sarah Crafter
Partners: For details on partners, see the project consortium page

ALPHABETICA seeks to provide effective solutions that allow children and young people from disadvantaged communities access to arts and arts-based education through co-creative participatory research actions.