Measuring success in co-production

Role in the Project:
I was a community partner as part of the co-production team, which involved: 
●    Attending Deepening Practice sessions, engaging in reflective discussions to enhance understanding
●    Sharing relevant insights and best practices from the community perspective during project meetings and reports.
●    Supporting with community engagement for co-production and co-evaluation
●    Centralising the inclusion of under-represented groups, especially in co-production of research

Who You Represent:
(This could include an organisation, charity, institution, or social/ personal identity/group) 
I represented Voices of Colour - a research and community action organisation dedicated to addressing systemic inequities and amplifying the voices of marginalised communities. We specialise in community-driven research programmes and co-designing initiatives with the communities we support, creating platforms for meaningful conversations and actions that drive systemic change

Skills and Experience:
●    Community Engagement: Experienced in building and maintaining relationships with diverse community groups, ensuring active participation in co-production processes.
●    Co-Evaluation: Skilled in gathering and analysing community feedback to assess project impact and drive improvements through a participatory approach.
●    Systemic Change Understanding: Deep understanding of the importance of systemic change and its long-term impact on communities. 
●    Peer Research: Experience in conducting peer research, ensuring community members are central to the research process, with their insights shaping the outcomes and actions.

What Co-Production Means to You:
Co-production is a deeply meaningful approach as it values the contributions of all participants in creating solutions. On a personal level, it’s important because it builds true partnerships, where communities and stakeholders collaborate, bringing their unique perspectives, experiences, and expertise. Professionally, I see co-production as essential for creating solutions that are relevant, sustainable, and effective. It ensures that projects are not only designed for communities, but with them, supporting individuals to take ownership and fostering shared responsibility. For this project, co-production was key because it ensured that both community and academic voices were central to shaping solutions. It helped align the project with the real needs and priorities of the people it served, while also drawing on research and evidence to inform decisions.

Contact:
hello@voicesofcolour.org 

Role in the Project:
I contributed insights from my experience as a health research and patient advocate. My contribution also included providing lived experience feedback  as a individual living with a chronic illness. I also participated in the grab review 

Who You Represent:
I am CEO and Founder of the charity FND Hope International. 

Skills and Experience:
Over the past 13 years as a patient advocate, I’ve gained valuable insights not only from my own personal illness journey but also from thousands of individuals worldwide. This experience has highlighted the importance of communication and the need to approach difficult conversations with respect, focusing on mutual understanding and finding solutions. Additionally, I’ve contributed to several research projects at various stages of co-production, including co-authoring 8 publications.

What Co-Production Means to You:
Co-Production I feel finally acknowledges the value of the unique knowledge and growth that comes from lived experience. This change in dynamic creates a framework for respectful collaboration and dialogue which allows for exploration and discovery; void of pressure to accept a single narrative.

Contact:
Bridget@fndhope.org

Role in the Project:
(Describe your role or contribution within the co-production team)
I joined the project as a community partner, bringing together lived experience and professional expertise in the mental health and education sectors. I contributed to the co-production and co-evaluation phases of the project and co-chaired the centre’s funding process to ensure the outcomes aligned with the values and priorities identified during the co-production phase. A long the way I also seemed to take the role of the project’s poet! 

Who You Represent:
Professionally, I am a Therapist, Educator, and Researcher with a special interest in eating disorders. I run ‘Kel O’Neill – Counselling and Training,’ ‘Mental Health Bites,’ and ‘The Eating Disorder Recovery Companion.’ I am also the co-founder of the ‘Lived Experiences of Eating Disorders (LEED) Research Collective’, where we centre lived experience in research.
Personally, I represent the intersection of several lived identities. I bring the perspective of someone with experience of eating disorders and mental health challenges, as well as dyslexia and chronic physical illness. I am a carer for someone with complex mental health needs, which adds further depth to my understanding of the challenges faced by both individuals and families within the mental health system. Additionally, I come from a low socioeconomic background, representing the experience of navigating research and academia from a multi-disadvantaged position.

Skills and Experience:
I have a wealth of experience in co-production, spanning almost 20 years. I’ve contributed my lived experience to a wide range of projects, including service development and evaluation, resource creation, educational materials, and media engagement. More recently, I’ve shifted to facilitating co-production from a professional standpoint, using my transferable skills to guide the process and ensure it remains collaborative and inclusive.
For this project, I was brought on board for my ability to effectively contribute to the progress of co-production. I played an active role in shaping both the process and outputs, co-chairing the funding process—the project’s main output—to ensure that lived experience perspectives were embedded in decision-making. I also contributed feedback, refined project materials, and edited documentation to improve accessibility, particularly for dyslexic and neurodivergent individuals. My experience as both a research participant and a researcher allowed me to approach the work from multiple perspectives, helping to create outputs that were clear, inclusive, and relevant to a broad audience.

What Co-Production Means to You:
Co-production, to me, is about striving for equity and collaboration in its broadest sense. While it often centres lived experience, it also includes valuing and uplifting underrepresented perspectives—whether that’s individuals from marginalised backgrounds, early-career researchers, or professionals whose voices are often overlooked. Co-production creates opportunities to challenge systemic barriers, amplify diverse insights, and foster meaningful, sustainable change. It’s about ensuring that research and services reflect the complexities and realities of the people they aim to impact, recognising that everyone involved brings valuable knowledge to the table.

Contact:
keloneill@counsellingandtraining.co.uk 

Role in the Project:
I initiated and led the grant application and led and coordinated the team based on the overall vision.  

Who You Represent:
I am the Director for the UCL Centre for Equality Research in Brain Sciences. 
Skills and Experience:
I am a neuropsychologist, a cognitive neuroscientist, a chartered counselling psychologist, an existential psychotherapist and a Professor of Psychodynamic Neuroscience. I am a mother and a carer of my parents. I am an experienced and not-to-uncomfortable organiser and leader of societies and organisations. I am also a bit higher than I should be on the hyperactivity, hyperfocus, hypermentalising and anxiety spectra.  

What Co-Production Means to You:
No society, nclusing our professional academic and scientific world, will ever be perfect or free of some hierarchy. However, I believe in maximising equal opportunity when possible and I believe inclusive and diverse science is better science, particularly in mental, physical and biological health. 
Contact:
a.fotopoulou@ ucl.ac.uk 

Role in the Project:
I was a research assistant on the team and also contributed as an expert by lived experience. My responsibilities included managing the administrative organisation of the project, collecting feedback, and analysing it using qualitative and quantitative methods. Additionally, I contributed insights from my perspective as an early-career academic, a student, and someone with lived experience of mental health challenges.

Who You Represent:
I represented the lived experience of someone who has both undergone mental health treatment and worked in mental health services. I also represented individuals from working class backgrounds, a group underrepresented in higher education. Additionally, I brought my perspective as a former student and staff member at UCL, with experience in how funding calls operate.

Skills and Experience:
I contributed lived experience of stigma and barriers related to experiencing mental health difficulties, as well as challenges in pursuing an academic career due to socioeconomic background. I also brought experience from my role as a peer support worker in an NHS eating disorders team, where I developed a new role, integrated into the team, and worked to embed co-production and co-designed research within the team’s culture. Academically, I contributed my training in research analysis methods and my prior administrative experience in project organisation. 

What Co-Production Means to You:

To me, co-production is about amplifying the voices of those whom research directly impacts, recognising their lived wisdom as essential to the progress of research. It embodies the principle of ‘nothing about us without us’ and benefits everyone involved by ensuring that important and innovative pathways for progress are explored. Co-production helps improve treatment, understanding, and quality of life while also challenging structures of power in research that risk further marginalising underrepresented identities.

Contact :
Ellie.may96@hotmail.co.uk

Role in the Project:
I contributed to the co-production of the project as a co-investigator and deputy lead of that stream, and through sharing insights as a mid-career academic. 

Who You Represent:
(This could include an organisation, charity, institution, or social/ personal identity/group) 
I am a mid-career academic researcher based in the Division of Psychiatry, Faculty of Brain Sciences at UCL.  I am also a woman from a mixed-heritage background living with a long-term health condition.

Skills and Experience:
I have a strong background in academic research where I investigate how mental, social, and lifestyle factors influence cognition and dementia risk. My experience includes conducting behavioral interventions that promote healthy aging and reduce dementia risk, and developing strategies to include historically underrepresented groups in dementia-related research. Additionally, I have leadership experience in improving research culture, which includes founding the Race Equity and Ethnic Diversity working group and chairing the EDI committee in the UCL Division of Psychiatry, co-leading the ERB’s inclusive sampling research interest group and leading the UCL Research Culture Community Steering Group.

What Co-Production Means to You:
Co-production is vital to ensure that research is inclusive, equitable, and impactful. Personally and professionally, I value co-production as a way to integrate diverse perspectives, foster meaningful collaborations, and create research practices that reflect the needs and experiences of all stakeholders. 

Contact:
n.marchant@ucl.ac.uk

Role in the project:
 As a person with FND [Functional neurological disorder] - I was able to contribute as a lived experience expert. I was able to bring insights from my own difficult health journey, of the complexities, biases, and limitations of the current medical system, particularly when trying to manage conditions that defy the current ‘dualistic’ neurological versus psychological medical model. 

Who you represent:
As the chairman of the charity FND Action and an FND campaigner, I attempt to represent the  experiences, challenges, and inequalities faced by the people in my community. I also bring several decades of my own experience as someone with Functional neurological disorder trying to negotiate the current medical system. 

Skills and experience:
I studied at the Guildhall School of Music and have many years experience of performing and teaching music professionally, as well as working as a visual artist. I try to bring creative ideas stemming from systems of knowledge that are not commonly used in academia. In my capacity as an FND campaigner I have collaborated regularly with medical professionals from a range of backgrounds, and also contributed artwork to various FND related projects. This has given me insight into the value of multidisciplinary collaboration, and the benefits of shared knowledge, particularly when approaching complex issues relating to health, psychology and neuroscience. 

What coproduction means to you:
Historically the patient voice has often been marginalised in research- this is often due to paternalistic and patriarchal attitudes within medicine and academia. Traditional power structures can sometimes devalue the knowledge and experience of an individual, based on a set of biases relating to education, class, race, gender and economic background. Coproduction and multidisciplinary collaboration allows for the patient voice to be heard and to be an active participant in research- which leads to better outcomes all round. I believe that bringing analytical methods and innovative ways of thinking from other disciplines, such as the social sciences and the arts, can help challenge and examine conservative and narrow approaches to research in traditional academia. The collaboration is mutually beneficial as it also allows for people from non-academic backgrounds, to gain important insight into the many challenges and complexities of carrying out academic research.

Contact- 
tomplender1@gmail.com