This tool is an umbrella entailing different examples of how to develop and conduct a co-creation workshop. Co-creation is essential when working with long-term transformations that rely on participatory, multi-level, and multi-disciplinary processes.
Key elements:
- Diversity of participants: Participants come from various backgrounds, such as customers, employees, experts, and other stakeholders. This creates a broad perspective.
- Interactivity: The workshop is characterised by interactive methods, where participants actively contribute their knowledge and experiences.
- Facilitation: A facilitator leads the process, helps structure discussions, and ensures that all voices are heard.
- Creative techniques: Creative methods such as brainstorming, design thinking, and prototyping are often used to promote idea development.
- Focus on solutions: The workshop aims to generate concrete solutions or products that can be implemented in practice.
- Feedback and iteration: There is room for ongoing feedback, allowing for adjustments and improvements to ideas along the way.
- Engagement: Participants are typically very engaged, as they have the opportunity to directly influence the outcome.
Good co-creation creates results and designs that could not have been possible without each other. Furthermore, it helps build relationships for further collaboration and makes every workshop participant feel heard and seen in the design.
Purpose - Why should we use this tool?
The purpose of co-creation is to foster collaboration and create a sense of shared ownership between various actors. It also follows the design logic that the inclusion of various perspectives will lead to better and more innovative solutions.
Duration - How much time is needed?
Co-creation is a core element of a workshop that can guide participants through a 20-minute exercise or 3-day workshop. We recommend allotting time to think about how the co-creation will best succeed regarding participant composition and exercise formats. The time and resources required will vary depending on each context's specific conditions, and you might have to either shorten or expand the timespan to reach the purpose of your co-creation session.
Materials and helpful links
Both the partner consortium and the sites in the Desire project have used various co-creation workshops. A few examples of sites that have had an extra strong focus on their co-creation workshops are Riga and Gadehavegaard, which you can read more about in the links at the top of the page.
