Blog Post

Podcast episode – Laying the Foundations for Co-Creation

by CollaboratoryPodcast | 10 Sep, 2022 | Blog, Collaboratory Podcast

Laying the foundations for co-creation feature image

What are some key factors that can help to make or break a co-creative process?
How can individuals and organisations enhance what works and minimise what doesn’t in practice?
Who needs to be planning for and laying the foundations for co-creation to work in practice?

These are some of the questions that we explore in this episode of Collaboratory with four guests who work with and in organisations across a range of sectors and scales. Emma Blomkamp, Michelle Halse, Rebecca McNaught and Antti Pirinen share the learnings they’ve gathered over the years about what can help enable co-creation to happen, as well as what can create barriers to its success. We hope this episode shines a light on why co-creative activities can sometimes feel hard, and what we might put into place to make the process easier and better for everyone involved.

Listen to the full episode here, or read the full transcript here.

Interested in more?

If you’d like to explore a framework that can help to think through and plan for different aspects of a co-creative process, check out this blog post that shows how we’ve used Emma Blomkamp’s Systemic Design Wheel in practice.

Our guests for this episode

Dr Emma Blomkamp is a facilitator, researcher and strategic designer, best known for her work in co-design for behaviour and systems change. A Pākehā New Zealander living on Wurundjeri land in Melbourne, Emma is passionate about co-creating compassionate systems. She has been leading participatory design and social innovation projects with public purpose organisations since 2014. As an independent Co-Design Coach, Emma now focuses on supporting public, health and community organisations to apply creative and participatory approaches in their work.

You can find Emma online at Emma Blomkamp’s website, LinkedIn, Medium, Twitter

Michelle Halse is the Director of Living Collaborations. As a global collaboration facilitator, her purpose in life is to design, build and sustain collaborations that have the potential to transform the world we live in, with a focus in the aid and development sector. She is an internationally Accredited Partnership Broker and Associate, Trainer and Mentor with the Partnership Broker Association.

You can find Michelle online at the Living Collaborations website, LinkedIn

Rebecca McNaught is a partner at Pacific Connections (Australia), a passionate local volunteer and a PhD candidate at Griffith University. Her research focusses on investigating the practice of local level collaboration for climate and disaster resilience in the Pacific Islands and Australia.

You can find Rebecca online on LinkedIn, Twitter

Antti Pirinen is University Lecturer in Spatial and Service Design at Aalto University, Department of Architecture, in Espoo, Finland. His research interests include human-centered and collaborative design in the context of interior space, the living environment and related services, as well as emerging conceptual and strategic aspects of spatial design. He has also studied the prerequisites of design in the public sector.

You can find Antti online at Aalto People website, Research Gate