NSRP
CO-CREATE Ireland: Art and Design Research Network for Inclusive Futures : Co-Production for Community-Led Public Services
Overview
Project duration: 4 years (2026 – 2030)
Partners: NCAD, Belfast School of Art at University of Ulster, ATU Donegal, The Liberties Community Project, North West Community Network, Department for Communities NI, Department of Public Expenditure Infrastructure Public Service Reform and Digitalisation (DPER).
Impact
DFHERIS’s announcement of NSRP funding to support NCAD and Belfast School of Art in launching CO-CREATE marks a truly significant step towards crafting a more cohesive, all-island approach to leveraging the value of art and design practices and research methods. Through varied initiatives, CO-CREATE will uniquely platform the voices of public collaborators and develop their agency to address social, political and environmental challenges across the entire island of Ireland.
Overview
NCAD Design Lab: Civic will be contributing to the research strand ‘Co-Production for Community-Led Public Services’, a research partnership between communities, academia and government to enable innovative community-led ‘in-sourcing’ of public services. The project will take a co-creation approach to community services – drawing on best practice examples from around the world along with models grounded in art and design research practice.
Researchers will work with community service providers and government agencies to understand what services could be in-sourced by communities (e.g. childcare, social enterprise development), and the potentials and challenges to an in-sourcing approach. Drawing on methods from service design and socially-engaged arts practice within social justice frameworks, co-production cycles will ensure communities are central to planning, designing, delivering and evaluating the services that affect them.
Funding Partners
CO-CREATE is one of four Shared Island projects to be funded as part of the North-South Research Programme (NSRP), which is administered by the Higher Education Authority (HEA)on behalf of the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation, and Sciences (DFHERIS). NSRP is central to the Government’s Shared Island Initiative.
Funded through the Partnerships of Scale strand (Strand III) of NSPR, CO-CREATE will enable staff at across the four partners higher education institutions to collaborate with a broad range of colleagues at public bodies, non-profit and community-based arts and design organisations, and industry partners across the island of Ireland.