Involve

Everything starts with people....

... but sometimes people need a little help to get started.

We can help you work alongside the people that your work affects and those who affect your work. Some call them stakeholders. We think it crucial to all purposeful work to involve people as equals as far as possible, doing as much as we can to recognise and deal with power imbalances.

We can work a wide range of participatory approaches and will tailor these to suit the situation. We can host or facilitate for you but we'd prefer to work alongside your staff to embed skills for the future. We're here to help make your initiatives come alive.

Example projects:

External facilitation for The Big Lottery Fund Scotland, working with a panel of 16 people drawn from the third sector in Scotland throughout 2015, to shape the new programmes launched in November 2015.
Design and co-delivery of training on commissioning practice for a group of older people advising a multi-million pound project. With Hall Aitken.
Co-training and facilitation on various Hidden Insights (R) projects with Hidden Insights Europe Ltd, see http://www.hiddeninsights.co.uk. Hidden Insights (R) trains groups of people in a system to facilitate an approach based on positive deviance (Sternin). This enables communities to find and adopt more successful behaviours in the face of a shared problem.
Facilitation of the first phase of development of Social Innovation Northern Ireland, kick started by The Building Change Trust. Working with The Melting Pot, see http://www.themeltingpotedinburgh.org.uk.
Co-design and co-delivery of Good Ideas Camp, a weekend for social innovators to test and develop their ideas at the start of the Good Ideas Academy. For the Melting Pot.
Co-design and co-hosting of an inquiry "how can Social Innovation be put to work for the people of Scotland". Lead on Harvesting (i.e. capture and synthesis post event). With the Melting Pot and thanks to Scottish Government funding.
Co-design and testing of an approach to locality focused (i.e. integrated) commissioning based on seven principles and the Design Council's Double diamond. This was initially tested on an ageing well review, which included many workshops with staff and events with citizens and public and community/voluntary/social enterprise sectors.
Co-design and co-facilitation of a learning exchange for social enterprise intemediaries from 11 countries participating in the British Council Business and Investment Readiness Programme.
Development of action research based skills with The Big Lottery Fund Scotland staff team to support internal change.
Co-design and co-facilitation of a gathering of 250 people interested in U-Lab with the Scottish Government and other external stakeholders (on a voluntary basis).
Strategy development with the Association of East Lothian Day Centres.