Co-creation: Brave new world or emperor’s new clothes?
Co-creation: Brave new world or emperor’s new clothes?
By
Claire Wood
SUMMARY
This concise article explores the topic of co-creation - working together with an audience to create new work - and provides some helpful do’s and don’ts. How can we make co-creation work well, and is it an opportunity to engage less frequent arts attenders?
Co-creation works particularly well when trying to get audience groups involved in discussions about topics they’re reluctant to think about. For example, a communications campaign I was involved in that concerned young
people’s understanding and awareness of mental ill health issues worked particularly well by taking a co-creation approach. As this is a topic young people found it hard to talk about, the creative focus of the workshop we led
with schoolchildren provided a wonderful outlet for them to express their own feelings and concerns and generated some great material to trigger the formal creative process later on.
