Connecting with Communities through Co-Creation in Tyne & Wear, UK
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This case innovation has been analysed using the Transformative Intervention Mixes (TIMs) framework. The framework maps the regulatory, economic, social‑behavioural, technological and material interventions at play, clarifying how these elements interact and what this configuration suggests about the innovation’s capacity to support transformative change.
Citizen Science
Connecting with Communities through Co-Creation in Tyne & Wear; UK
Marine and coastal environmental science; community engagement and environmental justice
Tyne & Wear (northeast England), delivered through a regional Community of Practice within the Engaging Environments programme, co-creating projects with four local community groups and a Newcastle University team.
Local to regional (multiple community groups within Tyne & Wear; locally situated projects with some outputs linked to national monitoring systems).
Practical: co-designed environmental activities including beach clean-ups/surveys and rocky shore species recording with data submission.
Political: co-researchers outlined community actions and engaged with local council resource allocation discussions.
Personal: participatory co-creation and evaluation reported shifts in perceptions, empowerment, and community building.
Shared learnings were consolidated into a roadmap of guiding principles and recommended practices intended to guide future co-created initiatives, with emphasis on trust-building, inclusive conditions, and culturally responsive methods.
Summary
Evidence is strongest for Information / Education, Knowledge, Technology and Infrastructure (Hard/Soft), reflecting an intervention pathway centred on co-created learning processes, data collection, and the co-production of locally salient evidence. Social Norms and Emotional Appeal are also materially present through the intentional creation of ‘safe spaces’, relationship-building practices, and creative/participatory formats (e.g., art-science collaboration) that support engagement. Regulatory and Financial / Market-Based mechanisms are not evidenced in the named sources, and the case does not rely on binding rules or price-based incentives to mobilise participation. Biophysical Resources appear in a limited, activity-linked form where project work directly involves litter removal and local biodiversity recording rather than long-term resource reallocation. Overall, the configuration implies a relational and epistemic transformative pathway, where changes in participation, legitimacy and knowledge integration are used to reframe whose concerns shape environmental inquiry; implementation depends on resourcing the additional time and intermediary roles required for equitable co-creation.
This analytical reflection suggests that, if the aim is broader transformative scope, additional alignment with Regulatory or Financial / Market-Based tools would need to come from outside the current case design (e.g., formalised commitments or resourcing mechanisms), rather than being assumed as inherent features. Strengthening mix coherence would also likely require explicit strategies for sustained institutional support and longer-term data-to-decision pathways, as the documented emphasis is on process conditions and locally grounded outcomes. Any such additions would need careful integration to avoid undermining the trust-based, participant-led mechanisms that are central to this case.
| Tool Category | Examples | How it ENABLES (mechanisms) | How it HINDERS (barriers) | Opportunities to strengthen | Risks / caveats | Additional suggestions and resources |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Regulatory | Public programmes facilitating further collaborations; formal recognition of community-led environmental stewardship initiatives; Planning regulations encouraging or requiring structured community engagement. | |||||
| Financial / Market-Based | Co-Creation Partnership Fund – pooled resources from councils, universities and local charities to sustain intermediary roles, facilitation and capacity-building for community co-research. Community Environmental Action Grants – small awards for community groups to deliver co-designed beach surveys, monitoring and clean-up projects, covering materials, data tools and inclusive participation costs. |
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| Information / Education | Co-created thematic workshops combining environmental awareness with practical activities; technical guidance and training (e.g., intertidal biodiversity surveys and statistical analyses). | Builds participant capacity and ocean/environmental literacy through shared learning activities and skills development embedded across research phases. | Co-creation requires substantial time and additional resources for training and capacity building, which may not be supported by institutions or funding structures. | Recommended practices emphasise allocating time to build relationships, using reflective processes, and supporting skill development to extend co-ownership of research and outcomes. | Education framed poorly can exclude or alienate; emphasis on ‘check-box’ approaches to inclusion risks misrecognising identities and barriers. | Link to complementary innovations focused on sustained capacity development and participatory evaluation. |
| Choice Architecture | Collaboratively adapting session frequency, length, focus and format in response to community needs; selecting venues and formats aligned with group-defined ‘safe space’ conditions. | Structures the participation environment to reduce friction and improve accessibility without restricting choice, increasing the likelihood of sustained engagement. | Design choices are context-sensitive; misalignment with what ‘safe space’ means for a group can reduce openness and participation. | Use ongoing reflection and co-evaluation to iteratively adjust settings, facilitation and formats as needs and group dynamics evolve. | Over-standardising participation formats can privilege some voices and reproduce power imbalances in ostensibly inclusive settings. | Link to complementary innovations addressing accessibility, facilitation and inclusive design in participatory processes. |
| Social Norms | Community values collectively defined at the start of projects to guide collaboration; emphasis on equitable partnerships and trust-building practices. | Establishes shared expectations for respectful collaboration and co-ownership, supporting openness and dialogue across diverse participants. | Academia and the language of science can be perceived as inaccessible, shaping norms that discourage participation from underrepresented groups. | Recognising and resourcing intermediaries who are trusted by communities is presented as a mechanism to build legitimacy and support inclusive norms. | Norm-setting can become performative if framed as ‘check-box’ inclusion rather than sustained relationship-building. | Link to complementary innovations focused on intermediary roles, community partnerships and trust-building. |
| Emotional Appeal | Art-science collaboration enabling participants to express concerns about plastic pollution and climate change through creative outputs; reports of increased sense of belonging and community. | Activates identity, attachment and meaning-making to motivate engagement, using culturally resonant creative methods alongside scientific activities. | Co-creation may not be suitable in all contexts; poorly matched approaches can generate frustration or disengagement if participants do not see relevance or value. | Use creative and culturally responsive methods to communicate value and support scaling, while maintaining participant-led framing of concerns. | Emotional framing could unintentionally amplify conflict if not managed within agreed safe-space norms. | Link to complementary innovations connecting environmental participation with arts-based and culturally responsive engagement. |
| Technology | Use of citizen science data submission to external biodiversity monitoring systems; integration of marine litter data with participatory maps and comparison with wider datasets. | Enables collection, organisation and onward sharing of locally generated data, supporting visibility beyond the immediate project group. | Technical requirements (data standards, tools and literacy) can create barriers for participants without adequate support. | Provide technical guidance and training, and ensure tools are selected/adapted to participant capabilities and project purposes. | Data quality may vary with participant experience and tool fit, affecting credibility for downstream use. | Link to complementary innovations in data platforms, interoperability and support for community data stewardship. |
| Infrastructure (Hard/Soft) | Regional Community of Practice linking researchers and community groups; use of intermediaries (e.g., charities, community development officers) to support local project management. | Creates organisational capacity and connective tissue for sustained collaboration, legitimacy and coordination across actors. | Partnerships with intermediaries are often insufficiently discussed and financially resourced, risking fragility in delivery capacity. | Explicitly recognise intermediary roles as a resourced component of project design, alongside reflective practices and co-evaluation processes. | Over-reliance on individual intermediaries can create single points of failure if support or continuity is lost. | Link to complementary innovations focused on long-term partnership infrastructures and resourcing for community-led coordination. |
| Biophysical Resources | Beach clean-ups and surveys to address plastic pollution; locally situated activities focused on reducing litter impacts. | Directly alters local material conditions through removal and documentation of pollution, and supports attention to site-specific ecological issues. | Short-term activity cycles may limit persistence of biophysical outcomes without ongoing support or integration into wider management routines. | Couple community-led monitoring and action with sustained local coordination and clearer pathways for acting on findings. | Risk of shifting responsibility for environmental maintenance onto volunteers without adequate institutional support. | Link to complementary innovations that connect community action to sustained environmental management. |
| Knowledge | Integration of local knowledge with data collected during projects; participatory evaluation embedded across research phases to capture participant-perceived value. | Generates locally salient evidence and triangulates knowledge systems, supporting more holistic understanding of environmental issues and barriers to participation. | Evaluation of citizen science often defaults to output metrics, under-capturing learning and transformative experiences. | Use participatory evaluation to document value beyond outputs and to inform iterative project design. | Knowledge claims may be contested if power dynamics are not actively managed, potentially undermining legitimacy. | Link to complementary innovations in participatory monitoring, evaluation and evidence-to-action translation. |
| Other | Roadmap of guiding principles and recommended practices to guide future co-created initiatives. | Provides a codified process framework intended to support replication and adaptation across contexts while foregrounding inclusion and equity conditions. | Principles may be difficult to operationalise without institutional support for time, facilitation and capacity development. | Maintain the roadmap as a living resource informed by ongoing reflection and dialogue with diverse practitioners and community partners. | Risk of institutional appropriation of ‘co-creation’ language without adopting the required changes in practice and resourcing. | Link to complementary innovations on governance of participatory processes and institutional change for inclusive research. |
Note: Blank cells reflect that the documentary evidence available for this case did not contain sufficiently explicit information to address these dimensions. This absence should not be interpreted as implying that such mechanisms were irrelevant or ineffective, but simply that they were not documented within the scope of the source materials.