Consultation & Co-Design with
Children and Young People
When it comes to consulting with children and young people there is good news and bad news.
The good news is that anyone can ask C&YP for their thoughts and opinions.
The bad news is those same C&YP are experts at figuring out the answer that you want to hear.
Authentic Co-Design
To engage C&YP in authentic co-design, agency needs to be genuine: outcomes must have the latitude to follow where C&YP lead and the facilitation needs to be responsive and creative enough to support them on their untrodden paths.
Using art-based responses, story-making and encouraging an environment of creativity and creative risk-taking, consultation sessions are always fruitful and surface surprises every time.
Creativity as a Catalyst
Children as Experts
I am a firm believer that by making the C&YP the experts of their own experiences, they can engage in any topic with enough appropriate context. They have sufficient ability and capacity, only lacking ‘years on the planet’.
Drawing Out Real Responses
If you have made a commitment to consult with children and young people to gain the valuable insight of their thoughts and experiences, I can help create and deliver workshops to engage classes and community groups.
Meaningful discussions around complex subject matter can be facilitated, surfacing actionable feedback and suggestions.
Meaningful Engagement
While leadership programs are essential in the youth landscape, they may not always be the best zeitgeist of the broader cohort.
Leadership programs celebrate those young people who can ‘speak grown-up’, whereas what is often needed is a grown-up that can ‘speak children and young people’, knowing when the words or presence of an adult might influence the outputs and outcome.
Connection & Care
In community groups, discussion can be facilitated to support understanding of complex issues, holding space for and amplifying the voices of C&YP.
In classrooms, engagements can be aligned with civics and citizenship curriculum outcomes, allowing real-life input into the decisions made in their local LGA.
Community & Classroom Settings
Over the years, I have explored and discovered the elements needed to support C&YP to comfortably enter into genuine consultation on a topic, issue or idea and share their feedback and honest perspectives.
Doing it right
Previously collaborators include the
Centre for Multicultural Youth,
Royal Botanic Gardens,
Bayside Council,
Deakin University,
Wyndham Council,
Lentara Uniting Care and
Ardoch.
If you are interested in working together, fill in the form below with a few key details of your project and we can take it from there.
