A year of CoDesignCo

Emma Blomkamp interviewed by Callan Rowe

So, a year into CoDesignCo, what are you feeling after having done this for a year?

I am stoked that there are people renewing their membership. I think it's the biggest test for CoDesignCo. There was a lot of interest at the beginning, but there was a lot of faith put in us by people signing up.  The prices went up, and people now know what they're getting. So the fact that there are people who are renewing has been really delightful, and more people signing up too.

And what kind of feedback have you got from the community?

I'm hearing from people that they really enjoy connecting with other practitioners. There are a lot of people who seem to feel a bit alone in the work. They either work on their own, like me, or they might be the only designer in their team or organisation, or they feel like they're the only person who truly understands what Co-Design is. A lot of people are [keen to] connect with others,  both in a kind of moral support sense, but also in sharing strategies, tips, tools and techniques.

Yeah, I definitely noticed in some of the meetings when you get put up into a little group, the sense of relief when someone realises they're talking to other people of their tribe who get what they're talking about.

Yeah, someone who recently renewed was saying “You know, when I come along to [a CoDesignCo event], I just feel like people get it. I don't have to explain myself in ways that I do in my usual work context.” 

The other thing I'm hearing at the moment – and this is not just through CoDesignCo; I'm noticing it with my training programmes as well – is, people are stretched and stressed and exhausted.  So there's a challenge. There are some people who are really keen to engage, but they find it really difficult to find the time.  

And what have you taken away from a year of doing this? Either for your practice or personally.

A few things. 

It's even harder work than I thought.  The back-end tech platforms/ admin side of it is a lot more complicated than I expected... I've had to change a few things every few months. But I think that's normal, when you're doing something new. It's basically a startup, and I'm figuring it out as I go.  

I love the connecting and convening role.  I love being able to help people make connections with others who may share interests or challenges. I really like being able to hold space for people to reflect and share and connect.  I enjoy that. 

I'm trying to decentre myself. I want it to be a community, not a cult. One of the things we’ve done is established this fantastic group of volunteers in just the last two months. Our team of pollinators have already been really awesome, helping me not feel so alone in some of this work, and providing actual support as well as ideas. It's so important for the community that there are other people who are clearly leaders and active and instigating things. Not just me. 

But talking about just you for a minute,  what's your co-design origin story? 

It was very serendipitous. I had just finished my PhD, which, contrary to popular belief, is not in co-design. I had actually been studying arts and cultural policy in local government and particularly focusing on issues around outcome evaluation and well-being measures.  I was all set to be a cultural policy academic, but basically needed to find a job in Auckland while I waited for my partner to finish his PhD before we could go off and be international postdocs together somewhere. 

A friend sent me an ad for a job that was in a social innovation agency. I googled social innovation. I googled co-design, so I had some things to say in the interview. I'd heard of design thinking, but I wasn't at all from a design background. I had done a lot of research on participatory arts, and I'd been designing education programmes. I also had done a lot of English language teaching, which I think is where I got my facilitation skills from. 

So I had this mixed bag of skills and experience, but nothing directly in design and definitely not co-design.  I started out as the first ongoing full-time employee in a really small social innovation agency in Auckland and learned on the job about co-design for social innovation and got to work with some really amazing people. 

And when did you know that it was going to be what you shaped your career around?

I can't remember a particular moment. But I remember knowing I couldn't go back to academic cultural policy. 

We worked really closely with communities, and I really loved that work. It was awesome being able to see the difference we were making and the relationships we built and the way we invited people to take part in the process. Even more so than what we were actually producing, because we weren't going to see the impact of some of the programmes and services we designed for a really long time. And some of them never got implemented because of policy or funding changes.  

I went on the UnSchool fellowship in Mexico City in 2015. I'd been in the job for two or three years then, and I'd had that feeling of, I wonder if what we're doing in New Zealand is okay. Like, are we just making this up? I went on this week-long fellowship with this bunch of people from around the world, and realised that, actually, what we were doing was up there with everyone else in terms of practice.  

However, I still had this kind of academic inkling. A frustration, thinking, “Where's the rigour? Where's the evidence?” I wanted to see more of that and get into that more myself. I got to a point where I needed a new challenge. It still definitely had to be co-design,  and a job opened up in Melbourne at the Policy Lab, which was new at Melbourne University. I got to basically create my own research agenda on co-design for public policy. That was me getting to bring together the different academic and professional things I've done, and I guess start to establish a name for myself, too. 

Do you think that your understanding of co-design has changed at all over the last year since you started this community?

I've been surprised, especially in the last year, by some of the organisations where people are showing an interest in co-design. Taking responsibility to do co-design. In just the last month I have concluded that it is mainstreaming. I'm surprised, because for the last few years, I've been afraid that we were just in a certain part of the hype cycle.

Yeah,  I definitely have that same feeling. I love the name of the stages, from the peak of inflated expectations to the trough of disillusionment. It feels like we are in the trough sometimes.

I’ve been there and I know there are lots of people there. I know there are places where people can't even use the term co-design because it's been dirtied, unfortunately, But I think we’ve come through that trough, especially here in Victoria, especially with mental health reforms. It's broader than that too. It's showing up a lot in new contexts. Not always with a nuanced understanding of it. But it's really becoming a thing that people working on public services are expected to do.

And I think you see that in the makeup of the CoDesignCo Community as well. It's not all designers or people who have the word design in their job title. It’s a bunch of people working at a bunch of different places with varying levels of experience. 

One of the questions that came up from the community was the idea of learning from or celebrating failure. What is a failure you’ve learned from in the last year?

It's a good question. I assumed there were lots of people who wanted to sign up to get access to resources and maybe me writing a few things and sharing them by newsletter, and that was going to be quite a low effort for me, because it's something that I kind of do anyway and would like to spend more time on. 

I think what I got wrong was the kind of effort and time that the community takes.  It's been much more about people wanting events,  whether it's training or reflective practice or just networking and community connections. I put a lot of pressure on myself to try to do events well, because we also need to model inclusive facilitation practice,  which for me means a lot of preparation and consideration.  

What's on the cards for the next year?

Getting the pollinator group established and having a few people take on key roles is happening. I am so grateful for people who have been willing to step up and take time and share their skills and energy with the community. Partly, what will happen depends on that group. I'm trying to see what emerges based on what people are keen to do and lead. So it's not just me initiating things, is one thing. 

Another thing that's emerging is a very, very strong thematic focus over the next six months on reflective practice. This has started already in things like the learning circle on reflective practice. They are experimenting, and we're hoping to share some things that come out of that with the rest of the community. I'm hoping there's a bit of open sourcing of the model and people can then self-organise. Or maybe I will help support people to set up peer coaching groups. I think smaller circles and reflective practice is where it's at. 

I've been holding more informal catch-up sessions. At our last one, three different people brought a challenge or issue and had 10 minutes each to get a bit of feedback and questions from the group, and that was really neat.

The learning club that's coming up is kind of about the book, but really trying to use that as a launch pad for talking and reflecting on practice.  And KA [McKercher] and I are planning, with some others, a series of events and engagements around the kind of development and support that practitioners need. Not training, but coaching, mentoring and supervision. 

This idea of supervisors and mentors is something that's come up a bit lately. I think it's really interesting. What’s been your experience with mentors? 

It's one of the things I've struggled with due to the lack of it in this field. I was very fortunate in my brief academic career that I had some really amazing mentors. In particular when I was doing my PhD, I had a couple of friends who were just a few steps ahead, further on in their PhDs, and they really mentored me. They were like, “This is how you do a conference” and then with one, “Let's put on a conference together”.  

Later, Simon [Harger-Forde] and Penny [Hagen], who I worked with at Innovate Change did mentor me in terms of practice. One of the things I've noticed when people come to me for mentoring is that they don't have anyone they're working with like that, who's a bit more experienced at actually leading co-design or similar things. Who's actually available to them, to be supportive, able to offer critical feedback and advice when needed?  It seems to be quite a gap for quite a few people.

Yeah, absolutely. 

I definitely found as a result that I've had to pay for it, and I’ve asked people to pay me for it. It's not been, unfortunately, freely available.

I remember there was somebody in the field who I admired, and I actually approached them [to be my coach]. It’s so helpful to have somebody who can hold that space for you to talk and reflect back on tricky stuff that you're working through. Also someone who knows enough about your practice to be able to give some useful feedback and be a good reality check. Just recently, I signed up for supervision for that reason, and I'm really appreciating it, too.

So to cap it all off. Thinking back on the year, if you had to sum it up in a word what would it be?

Flight. I've got a bit of a bird theme going! This is the year CoDesign Co took flight. 

I'm thinking about flight paths and that idea when you're travelling somewhere, you can't assume you can direct yourself all the way there. You have to keep adjusting your direction… Small tweaks along the way make sure that you're broadly heading in the right direction.