The Balance of Power in Co-Production - Engage 2024

We are in Bristol at the engaged 2024 Conference. We are representing EL A's PhD project, and we're doing it in a slightly different way. Instead of being a big poster with bullet points, we have a scale and uh, a lot of bean bags that are tagged with ideas and concepts. So it was a really interesting way of talking about research, talking about the PhD project and interacting with people who were here with their own projects and their own initiatives

Hi, my name is Emily Ahmed. I am a co production facilitator and public engagement worker, and I am doing a PhD. In exploring experiences of co in Health Research based at university, I've been collecting people's experiences and stories through interviews

So that's verbal interviews and creative methods interviews asking people about their experiences of power, power dynamics, power sharing or not sharing and what power means to people. So come today to the NCCP E engaged 224 conference and we bought a job set of weighing scales, massive wooden weighing scales and tonnes of beautifully coloured bean bags scattered all over the floor. And then these bean bags were each labelled with some of the things that I've heard from the public contributors in my interviews about what has impacted their experiences within co production in relation to power

Some of the beanbags would say things like trust, informal conversations or different ways that they might experience relationships with researchers or the project teams that they're working with but also other things. So, for example, their previous lived experiences, such as trauma or experiences of PTSD, or all the different kind of intersecting experiences that people might have, and then they bring those into that co production space. So there's absolutely tonnes of these different bean bags and conversation starters, and we've used them to speak with people here at the conference today

So we invited people to to look at the display to pick up and to feel those bean bags so tangible that weight of what that beanbag means and then to look at the label and to place it in the weighing scales and the aim is to try and get some balance. So balance is a very difficult thing to get in co production. But we've been working on it here today

What I liked about this way of working is that he was really interactive, and you have the opportunity to kind of challenge people and ask them questions, but also learn from them and kind of be surprised by their reactions or their comments. So my first question is, uh, what were your impressions of, um, our little experiment, how you felt about it? I really like conversation starters in terms of like, um, a display. And this is one thing that could you can physically engage

When it's tangible, you can see the imbalance of power. It also starts a conversation about what that means in practise, because you have all of those words there that people said it's important for them. I think it's really cool

It's a very interactive way. People are going to come over and see the facts right, so it's a good way to get everybody talking. And the fact that the scales don't seem to ever really balance is kind of poetic

I thought it was a really good way of having fun and tactile way of discussing lots of the different barriers that people face when they're taking part in patient involvement in production, like some of the problems that might come up. And I think it's a good prompt when you're considering, like which of the barriers might be like the biggest thing or maybe the heaviest. I think it's a really clever way to conceptualise and bring bring to life the the kind of the idea of the B, the imbalances that you get, and it's a nice way to to get visual and hands on with it

Um, it's very clever, very clever. Way to kind of, um, make it a bit of a metaphor and not and not do something hands on so that you can think about it in a more of a tangible way. Um, not on

Yeah, it's cool. Yeah, it's nice to throw the bean bags and get physical, and it's good. It's good to ask is if you chose one particular little bean bag and, uh, if you remember what it was and why you chose that one and I chose emotional labour because I think it can be very difficult for people to constantly share their stories, and particularly when it comes to help, which is very personal

Uh, they're asked to do quite a lot outside of something that they may already struggle with. So it's important to acknowledge that and understand that they're giving a lot of themselves to the research project. I picked up one relating to trust because I think it's really important that when you involved in these kind of construction projects that people on both sides kind of trust each other and are respectful of each other's views and understand why are able to kind of communicate why they're in closed decision making, collective decision making

That's what it was. Crazy. Yeah, it's ob

Obviously, it can get really tricky, like people in consensus getting into governance And who who's got what power which role, Basically, who's making the decision, who has the power to make his decision? I think one that stood out was the hierarchy one, I guess, because I think there's a lot of awareness of what roles people have versus what roles you have kind of in a space around the table. Um, but I think something like that that's quite playful, kind of levels levels that hierarchy out sometimes, and so if you're all doing the same activity and being quite playful or creative, it it removes some of those hierarchies. I think I chose a few, so it was quite the crowd, so I couldn't see all of them

Um, I like your sectional. I like the When you hear the word power, what does it mean to you? And do you find it's got a more positive or negative connotation for you? Probably negative, because I think of power imbalance, and I think of I mean, I'm at the intersection of quite a few. I'm a female Muslim South Asian astrophysicist

So there was a lot of there was a lot of power imbalance in my life that I had to deal with. So I think negative connotations. I think I always see it as a bit of a struggle, lost like a bit of a tug of war where people push on both sides and it always tips over to one side rather than the other

So the idea of equity, I think while it's something that we always try to achieve, is always quite hard to get, So it's always important to think of equity when we think of power. But it's also important to have an idea of where it balances I feel like there's still a long way to go for for power to be shared equally, and I think it's really important that people have kind of equal power in relationships. Um, with projects, I think you have to be really upfront from the start by what everyone is looking to get out of this project and then kind of work collaboratively to decide how you're going to do something

Make sure everyone has a voice. And if you're you know, if you're working on with the team and then making sure everyone's on the same page and, well, I've I've had to get comfortable with it. I use it a lot for work

I had problems with it, but for the longest time now I've got it there and I, I kind of see it as, um, what's the word like? It's a prerequisite. It's just a fundamental like it's just if you want to change the world, you need power. It is what it is

I think we have to get comfortable with it, especially as communities and groups of people who are underrepresented and maybe feel like we lack power. We have to get comfortable with the work in order to build the real power. Yeah, that might involve taking some that could involve taking some

But I would say we have a lot of power which we don't use because we're not engaged. We're not aware when I think of it. Actually, I have quite negative associations with it, and I see it as something that's kind of inequitable and unfairly distributed

I think that's my first kind of, um, initial thought around it. It's initially a negative thought. Then you can frame it empowering and well, it's just, Yeah, it's it's changed

You want to change the world? Yeah, yeah, one of the things that I most enjoyed today was trying to think about and trying to explore different ways that we can use creative dissemination methods to share research. So it's not just about making sure that the research methods themselves and the data collection within that is creative and accessible, but also in thinking about how we disseminate that learning and how I share the stories that people have honoured and given to me to be able to think about all these different topics, and that's really important to me because I don't want this to just end up on a dusty report somewhere and it will obviously be in a thesis and I'll share it through publications in lots of different ways. But this is just one way of testing how we can engage with people in a fun and creative way

And it was brilliant and people were really engaged. It really got people thinking and it allowed people to engage as much or as little as they wanted. Some people just wanted to have a little look

Some people wanted to just choose a bean bag and place it. Some people wanted to have a big discussion. There was one person here that was a public contributor, so they came and they labelled one of the bean bags themselves

So it was a really great, really interactive session and it's been really great being part of this. The MC CP team have been amazingly supportive. They've really facilitated us being able to be here and to be able to make this this encounter what it has been