Co-Production Principles

How we build learning experiences with our community.

Purpose

ReGrowth exists to create learning that is rooted in lived experience, collective care, and social change.

Co-production means that people with direct, lived experience of the topics we teach (particularly those affected by fat oppression and intersecting injustice) shape, design, deliver, and evaluate our work alongside us.

We reject exploitative or tokenistic consultation. Co-production at ReGrowth is about shared power, shared credit, and shared learning.

Core Principles

Click any principle to read in detail.

We recognise lived experience as specialist knowledge.
  • Those with lived experience will be involved from the earliest stages of project design through to evaluation.
  • We commit to ensuring their insights shape content, methods, and priorities — not merely confirm pre-made decisions.

Co-production involves both creative and emotional labour. Fair recognition of this work is a matter of justice.
  • Wherever possible, co-producers will receive fair monetary payment for their work, reflecting the expertise and labour involved.
  • As a social justice organisation with limited funding, there may be occasions where financial payment is not possible. In such cases, we will collaborate through voluntary or in-kind exchange.
  • When this happens, we will offer clear, meaningful alternatives (such as training, mentoring, shared authorship, access to paid courses), or other agreed benefits that support the contributor’s growth and autonomy.
  • Such arrangements will be mutually negotiated, based on informed consent and fairness — not assumption or expectation of unpaid work.
  • We remain committed to building financial sustainability so that monetary payment becomes the norm for lived experience contributions.

Participation is voluntary, informed and reversible
  • Co-producers retain agency over how their stories, identities, and experiences are represented.
  • Sensitive or personal disclosures will never be used without explicit consent and the option to withdraw later.
  • While all efforts will be made to remove a participant’s contributions when requested, in some cases (such as when the contribution is already public) it will not be possible.

Co-production spaces must be accessible to diverse body sizes, disabilties, learning styles, and sensory needs
  • We practice trauma-informed, safe storytelling.
  • Meetings will include rest breaks, captioning or transcripts, and flexible formats.
  • Emotional wellbeing and mutual respect are prioritised.
  • We approach collaboration as a caring relationship, not an extractive process.

Co-production is an ongoing relationship with community, not a one off consultation
  • Feedback from learners, facilitators, and partners will directly inform future practice.
  • If harm occurs, we will address it transparently and with care, using restorative approaches where possible.
  • We recognise the different kinds of power people hold (institutional, financial, social) and strive to make those dynamics visible and accountable.

Co-producers will be credited for their contributions in all relevant materials.
  • Credits will appear in courses, publications, websites, and events — unless the co-producer chooses anonymity.
  • Intellectual and creative ownership will be respected. ReGrowth will seek consent for any future reuse or adaptation of co-produced materials.

Implementation

Co-founders will review co-production practices annually to ensure equity, transparency, and compliance with the Equality Act 2010 and UK GDPR.

Accountability & Growth

Co-production at ReGrowth is a practice of mutual growth. We welcome feedback and constructive critique from our community and commit to revising our principles and processes in response.

Listen

We actively seek feedback from co-producers, learners, and community members.

Reflect

We review our practices annually and when harm is identified.

Revise

We update our principles and processes based on what we learn.

NOTHING ABOUT US WITHOUT US

We honour lived experience as expertise, compensate it fairly, share power openly, and centre care, access, and accountability in everything we create.