What is ‘co-creation’?
Remembering Together will provide grants to artists/creative practitioners which will enable them to co-create memorial projects with communities in every local authority in Scotland. But what does co-creation actually mean?
‘Co-creation’ can mean many things and is a very important idea being shared in lots of areas of public service. For Remembering Together, when we say ‘co-creation’ it is about bringing individuals and communities into relationship with artists and/or creative practitioners to create something together that captures and remembers their experiences of the Covid pandemic.
Artists/creative practitioners use creative tools such as drawing, making, dancing, singing, writing or more to explore with people. Using their artistic or creative medium these explorations become part of a bigger picture of something, themes start to emerge, or recurring images, or words. Maybe lots of different words or images emerge and a picture of something really diverse or contradictory starts to take shape.
These tools enable people to express themselves in different ways and the artist helps to shape these these expressions into something whole. The artist or creative practitioner keeps co-creating with the people involved at every stage meaning that whatever comes out at the end has been explored, made, authored, created by everyone involved. The important parts of co-creation are that it is creative and that it is done together with artists/creative practitioners and communities.
Why is co-creation so important for Remembering Together?
Co-creation is one of many ways that we can work that directly involves people in the decisions and processes that go into making something. Rather than the local partner leading the project deciding what a memorial needs to be for your community, co-creation enables people with direct experience of the pandemic who live in that community to shape the memorial for their area. For memorials during Covid, which affects every person and every area of our lives, co-creation feels especially important. Artists and creative practitioners can bring certain skills and tools to support co-creation, and may even invite you to participate in workshops to get things started, however for a Covid memorial, it is really important that we co-create with the people that want somewhere to express themselves with others, to find ways to tell their own story and ultimately work together to define what form a memorial should take where they are, and where it should be.
What can I expect from co-creating with an artist /creative practitioner?
Each artist that will work on the Remembering Together programme will have a different approach, depending on what artform(s) they use, where they can work within your area and the support that they have from their local area partnerships. It will also depend on the kinds of experiences that the people co-creating with the artist/creative practitioner bring, or want to share.
As a community member or individual co-creating with an artist you can expect to be supported to use artistic tools and media that the artist uses, to be listened to, to have a chance to express yourself and to be able to offer your opinion or artistic input into what a memorial in your area would look like. You can expect them to provide materials for you to use and to work with you and other people at the same time to bring your experiences together, whether these are expressed through art and are quite abstract or ambiguous, or whether they are direct and spoken experiences that you share in discussion. Most artists will use a combination of both artistic tools and chatting with you.
How will co-creation lead to a local memorial?
The first thing to say about co-creation, is that those delivering the project have to work really hard at not specifying or predicting the outcome. So if we can’t specify the outcome then how can we say that this will be a memorial project? What this means is that we can’t specify what the memorial will look like or where it will be. Some projects may lead to something physical, like a garden, or a sculpture. Some will be online or in a book. Maybe the project will be in a specific town that people pass through, or for your area, people might feel that a memorial somewhere that is quieter or less visited will be more relevant. The main point is that the only people that can determine what your memorial will be and where it will be, will be the community that is co-creating and the artist/creative practitioner that is supporting them to create it.
The artist/creative practitioner may ask you to reflect on your experiences and think about what helped you through Covid. If you have lost someone they may ask you to create something that expresses how you felt about them or where you would like to go when you think of them. We can’t imagine or predict what people’s individual experiences of the pandemic have been, so we can’t imagine or predict how they will become a memorial. But we do trust that artists, creative practitioners, artistic expression and people will figure it out, when they have the time, the space and the tools.
How will communities and people be sure that their wellbeing is considered while co-creating in such a difficult time?
The artist or creative practitioner will have a PVG check, meaning that they can work with people of all backgrounds, including children and vulnerable adults. They will also be expected to adhere to safeguarding policies that the local area partnership has in place. The artist/creative practitioner will also be supported by the local area partnership that is delivering Remembering Together. They will know a lot about the community and the way that Covid has affected the local area, and will share this knowledge with the artist/creative practitioner.
Any artist or creative practitioner you work with will have been through an application process, sharing their idea of how to co-create a memorial idea with communities and explaining how they will approach their project. The criteria for artists will have been set by the Remembering Together team and your local area partnership, meaning that the artist will already have shown that they have the right skills and understanding for what your area needs. In some areas, the community may have been invited to work together on this part of the project too, where the lead partner wants to co-produce the whole memorial process and project with communities. This is not something every partner can do and isn’t necessary for Remembering Together.
This project may also be difficult for an artist/creative practitioner as the pandemic has been very hard for all of us. For this reason, Remembering Together will have things in place that are about supporting artists/creative practitioners within the project, like check-ins with their local authority partnership and gatherings with other artists working on the programme. So you can also expect them to be benefiting from learning and support in relation to your co-created memorials too. We also have the Remembering Together Advisory Group who have a range of skills and knowledge that will help us make sure people are cared for while they co-create with us.
We will be sharing and creating resources about co-creation with our partners and artists/creative practitioners throughout the programme.