Recipes for co-production with children and young people

In this chapter, we reflect on the role of children and young people as ‘co-producers’ of our research. Over the course of the Everyday Childhoods project, we held a number of events and activities aimed at involving children in the research. Each event was conceived as an opportunity to experiment with different methods of co-production, drawing and building on participants’ existing skills, knowledge and competencies. These events were inspired by models of ‘public sociology’ that seek to engage wider communities in the co-production of research (Burawoy 2005; Puwar & Sharma 2012).[1] In this chapter, we ask how ‘co-production’ can generate opportunities for enrolling young people’s existing skills and knowledge to become partners in research: as data creators, consultants, or as data animators. The chapter focuses on three events staged at different moments in the Everyday Childhoods project – exemplifying ways of inviting young people into research. These examples showcase three strategies of co-production: a media competition (Space Invaders), the project archive (Curating Childhoods) and a hackathon workshop (My Object Stories). Although each were conceived as activities in their own right, understood collectively, they shed light on the possibilities and challenges of co-production in research with children and young people. This discussion aims to provide insights into our successes, as well as the numerous unexpected problems and complications we encountered. The events are presented in chronological sequence.[2] Echoing the approach taken in Chapter 2, we present these as recipes for co-production, revealing the resources and methods required as well as our sources of inspiration.