Can community organising help us co-design? The origins of a new relational method

Amanda Tattersall & Marc Stears

Co-design is an alluring concept. But while the idea of researchers building deep partnerships with communities sounds attractive, the practice is interpreted and used in an almost confusingly vast spectrum of forms. Co-design may come from the traditions of design thinking, but today the terminology is used to label all manner of community engagement research methods across universities, the public service, corporate consultation, and civil society practice.