top of page

the CGW journey

Below we briefly explain the workshops we have run so far to further our thinking about developing CGW resources. This is our way of acknowledging all of the people who have contributed to the work. Everyone listed below, organisation or person, has agreed to be named on this website. Everything created during the workshops is shared under CC-BY2 license. The list will be updated as more workshops are held.

workshop:
London, England 2022-08-25

The intentions of this first introductory workshop to Ostrom’s principles in a co-design context were to (a) gather and learn from feedback from other researchers and patient representatives about the feasibility of applying the principles in the context of their work and (b) gain insights into what they thought would be important to consider if the principles were to be translated into any form of practical application or tool.


We set out the following aims for the workshop

  • Consider the usefulness of Ostrom’s 8 principles for collaborative group working to create public value

  • Through our collective expertise find ways of developing resources to enable the use of the 8 principles in practice

  • Think about how we might work on this together going forward

 

Material

Workshop pack
Post-its
Pens
A3 with principle diagram

 

Structure

This was a full-day workshop including lunch and coffee breaks throughout.

All of the workshop material was shared with the participants before the start of the workshop. The workshop started by asking the participants to list their experiences of what made a collaborative endeavour successful or when something undermined the success. Participants were asked to document their experiences individually on post-its and thereafter they were asked to place their post-its onto a specific area on a wall in the room.

Thereafter an overview of Ostrom’s and related work was presented to the participants. The participants were then asked to map the group's experiences, which now had been numbered, onto the principles diagram and to list any that were not represented on the bottom right.


The group then gathered at the wall and had a discussion about various patterns that they could see, if they felt some experiences did not fit the principles and if they thought a particular experience related to several of the principles.

 

 

Lunchbreak

After lunch, we shared our own recent experiences of working with the principles in a prospective application together with a user-led NGO.

Thereafter participants were given three scenarios, two predetermined and one where they could work up their own scenario. The room was split into two groups. Each group had to pick one of the scenarios and imagine how a tool (or tools) based on the logic of the principles - without referencing them explicitly - could aid them in addressing the challenge set out in the selected scenario. The intention of this exercise was never to have the participants create a tool that could be used but rather to have them think of possible prospective applications.


After this exercise, we gathered in the large group and reflected on how the principles would need to be adapted in order for them to be able to be used in the context of healthcare quality improvement practices.

Participants

Sarah O’Brien
Sara Donetto
Mark Pennington
Graham Martin
Claire
Stan Papoulias
David Wyatt

 

Take-aways

In the views of the participants, the principles lack sufficient emphasis on the social and individual motivational aspects for participating in a group in a shared endeavour. Failing to explicitly acknowledge the importance of balancing power dynamics was another reflection that emerged.
 

workshop:
Newcastle upon Tyne, England 2022-08-30

The intention of the second workshop was to start exploring how/what activities/tools based on the Ostrom principles could look like and start prototyping tools that design practitioners could use in contemporary design endeavours. The workshop was part of the 2022 Participatory Design Conference and was hence geared towards the design community.

 

We set out the following aims for the workshop

  • Introduce Ostrom’s 8 principles for collaborative group working to the PD community

  • Through the expertise of the community explore how the 8 principles might helpfully be incorporated into design practice

  • By means of the collective expertise and experience of the group develop a set of prototype tools based on Ostrom’s 8 principles that can be used by designers to facilitate collaborative group work.

 

Material

Workshop pack
Post-its
Pens
A3 with principle diagram

 

Structure

This was a full-day workshop including lunch and coffee breaks throughout. 

As in the first workshop, the participants were asked to list on post-its their experiences of what made a collaborative endeavour successful or when something undermined success. Thereafter, we asked them to share their experiences with the person next to them at their table before we asked them to place their post-its in a dedicated area on the wall in the room.


Whilst there, we asked them to have a look at all of the post-its before we had a large group discussion about what had been written on the post-its. At this stage, participants were free to add new/more post-its to the wall.

From this initial exercise, we moved on to present Ostrom and her work to the participants as well as the lessons we had learnt from working with a user-led NGO and the principles in a prospective way. During the presentation two of the workshop facilitators categorised the post-its and numbered these.

After the presentation, we introduced the workshop pack to the participants and asked them to familiarise themselves with the principles for a couple of minutes. Then we asked the two tables to split up and take one of the successful or undermined categories each and place them on the principle diagram by using the numbers. The task involved discussing what/which of the principles encompassed a specific category and identifying if a category was not covered by the eight principles. Each group ended the session before lunch by sharing their thoughts with the other group where aspects and experienced peculiarities of the principles were highlighted.

After lunch, the group reconvened and the participants were given a design brief for the afternoon where the main task was to explore and prototype tools/activities that held the logic of one or more of the principles and that considered the creative elements needed for these tools to be used in contemporary design practices.

 

Participants

Amanda Geppert
Luisa Hilmer
Joseph Langley
Alison Prendiville
Chris Redford
Nervo Verdezoto Dias

 

Take-aways

Some of the reflections that came out of the workshop to continue the work of translating Ostrom's principles into practice was the possibility to start working with existing tools and see how they could be adapted to incorporate one or more of the principles. Stakeholder mapping was one such tool that was mentioned and worked with during the workshop. Another reflection from the group was the potential to create shared resources and tools that could be used to guide the design process itself and continuously incorporate the principles into the ‘doing’.
 

Workshop:
Mullsjö, Sweden 2022-09-15

The intention of the third workshop was to introduce the principles to participants in a research programme named SAMSKAPA, read more about the programme here, and specifically have attendees consider the principles in relation to their ongoing work which related to the co-production of health and welfare in Sweden and the UK.

 

We set out the following aims for the workshop

  • Introduce Ostrom’s 8 principles for collaborative group working to the Samskapa Programme

  • Explore together whether the 8 principles might be helpfully applied to collaborative group working in health and social care

  • Discuss the possibility of applying the principles in projects that are part of years 4-6 of Samskapa

 

Material

Workshop pack
Post-its
Pens
A3 with principle diagram

 

Structure

This was a 3-hour workshop.

As in the first two workshops, we started by asking the participants to list on post-its their experiences of what made a specific collaborative endeavour successful or when something undermined its success. Thereafter we asked them to share their experiences with their table before we asked them to place their post-its in a dedicated area on the wall in the room. We then asked the room to split into two groups, one group that would belong to the successful side and the other to the undermined side. Participants were free to join whichever they wanted. The two groups were then tasked with grouping the post-its as they deemed fit.

From this initial exercise, we moved on to present Ostrom and her work to the participants as well as the lessons we had learnt from working with a user-led NGO and the principles in a prospective way. During the presentation, two of the workshop facilitators numbered the groups created by the attendees. After the presentation, we introduced the workshop pack to the participants and asked them to familiarise themselves with the principles for a couple of minutes. Then we asked the three tables to split up and take one of the successful or undermined categories each (two groups chose to work with the successful categorisation) and place the pre-prepared categories on the principle diagram by using the numbers. The task involved discussing what/which of the principles encompassed a specific category and identifying if a category was not covered by the eight principles. The three groups then shared their findings with the larger group.

As this was happening the workshop facilitators had placed large sheets on the walls of the room, one for each participant, with the principle diagram. 


The facilitators then asked attendees to collect their own post-its from the initial exercise and stand in front of a sheet and write down the name of their selected project at the top of the sheet. We then asked each participant to consider their project, either a specific event in the project or the project at large, and consider how the principles might help to resolve the issue and what an activity or tool related to the principle(s) could look like. After the participants had worked at their own station for a while we paired up attendees and asked them to coach each other in their respective project by considering the principles and potential tools/activites. 


Participants

The attendees were a mix of experienced researchers, PhD students/candidates (including some who identified as people with lived experience) and others experienced quality improvement practitioners.

 

Sofia Kjellström
Annika Nordin
Helena Kilander
Daniel Masterson
Marlene Ockander
Yashar Mahmud
Anne-Marie Suutari
Pontus Wallin
Elin Salmiranta
Nicoline Vackerberg
Mary Tanay
Sarah O’Brien
Jill Massey
Rob Paquin
Jonas Stage

 

Take-aways

A reflection raised during this workshop was the language of the principles and how the language limited attendees in their thinking as it raised more questions than answers when considering their practical application. Another query was the lack of practical attention that the principles paid to potential power dynamics in collaborative group working. The principles were felt to work well as an analytical tool to get insights into why a collaboration had been undermined; their prospective application was viewed as being much harder, which might be a reflection on the language of the principles and how they fitted a health and social care context.
 

bottom of page