Here is the information sent to the Southampton Coproduction Corner December 2024 mailing. If you would like to receive updates straight to your inbox, please contact coproduction@southamptonvs.org.uk and ask to be added to the mailing list. For more info about the project generally see www.southamptonvs.org.uk/coproduction
NEXT COPRODUCTION CORNER EVENTS
January cuppa – We are planning an informal meet up on Wed 29th Jan 11am-1pm. Likely venue is Plant Pot café at Highfield Campus to support this student social enterprise, and we will confirm details in the new year. This will be a chance to sit and chat over a cuppa with no agenda.
Friday, 7 February, 10am-12 noon is Southampton Voluntary Services’ Friday Forum with a Coproduction theme, including hearing about work happening with Hampshire and Isle of Wight Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust’s Research and Improvement Academy, which has been undertaking some interesting work around coproduction, including with its Side-by-Side network. We’ll send out booking and joining details in the New Year, or keep an eye on Friday Forum page updates.
TOPICS FOR THE FUTURE
Please complete our survey by the end of Wed 8 Jan 2024, to help us identify the topics that matter to you: https://forms.office.com/e/9jcnLkuH7x
In addition to what people say in this survey, we will continue to respond to the recommendations included in our work in 2024 – see our report Making Coproduction Meaningful for web Nov2024 – including exploring the issues of ethics and keeping people safe associated with coproduction work.
OUR LAST EVENT: FOOD IN THE CITY
Thank you to everyone who was part of our Food in the City event on 4 Dec 2024. As a result of the World Café discussion, we came up with several priority areas of action, with the top three being:
(1) Lobbying for better regulation around unhealthy food;
(2) Peer-to-peer learning and education around healthy/sustainable foods, to support positive food cultures and cooking skills; and
(3) A planning system that limits permissions for unhealthy food outlets and provides better physical access to healthy and sustainable food options in neighbourhoods, including places to grow food.
Read our event blog here: If you would like to stay in touch and be part of this Southampton Food work, please contact Becky Wilkinson: Becky.Wilkinson@southampton.gov.uk
A NETWORK OF HOSTS
As recommended in our work earlier in 2024, people wanted more support for coproduction and the skills to host conversations. 14 people kindly stepped forward to be involved hosting the Food in the City World Café event. During our planning, we talked about strategies for making hosted conversations go well, encouraging active listening and capturing everyone’s input, reflecting the coproduced principles that we developed about making a Welcome, Safe and Brave space (kindly made into a graphic by Lachlan Gilchrist, attached). It was really lovely to be part of large team of supportive people, who care about making sure people’s voices are heard. Thank you to everyone involved. If you’d like to join a future session on hosting skills, please get in contact.
TEENAGE GIRLS IN PARKS
Our pilot that explored the issues around teenage girls and their enjoyment of parks, led to a series of recommendations set out here: Report on teenage girls in parks Sept 2024 summary and full report Your comments and thoughts on next steps are welcome.
CONSULTATION RESPONSES
Please complete Southampton City Council’s survey Your voice matters – have your say on the city and help shape the future of Southampton by 5 January which will feed into the City Plan. Southampton Voluntary Services is working towards collating all the community workshop responses in one place on its website, so it makes it easier to refer to community perspectives in future work.
Thank you to everyone who is involved in all of the above, and also to those who are listening and helping to take the various agreed recommendations forward.
Rebecca, Coproduction Corner team