Co-creation: Working with diverse audiences

You should involve audiences with different backgrounds and lived experiences in the strategic and creative development of your campaign or communication activity. This could include disabled people and ethnic minorities, charities, and other community groups as appropriate.

This process is known as ‘co-creation’ and involves working with audiences and where appropriate their representative organisations to help devise the campaign’s approach. Co-creation can be invaluable in making the campaign effective, inclusive, accessible, and securing diverse audiences’ engagement with future activities.

Co-creation should include people from various backgrounds, recognising that some face different and intersecting forms of discrimination, for example, a disabled elderly person of ethnic minority background.

You should make sure you meet participants’ needs so they can participate fully.

Key elements of co-creation

Early engagement

We recommend you actively involve diverse audiences from the very beginning of your communication planning. They can help to identify issues, provide insights into lived experience, define objectives, and shape the direction of your overall approach.

Their time and expertise should be recognised and valued from the beginning, with clear agreements on their support and involvement.

Collaborative design and development

You should work closely together with audiences throughout the campaign planning process, ensuring their ideas and experiences are integrated into every element.

Test creatives with a range of diverse users to ensure they pass accessibility and inclusivity requirements, and that they make sense in the context of the audience’s lived experiences.

Where feasible and appropriate, work with creatives, such as photographers, videographers, graphic designers, models and influencers that reflect diversity.

Make sure research and evaluation activities are representative of different disabilities in user samples.

Use accessible research methodologies. Find out more in the Government Analysis Function guidance on accessible and inclusive survey design.

Shared decision-making

Try to foster genuine influence by enabling diverse audiences and stakeholders to actively shape decisions and outcomes, moving beyond consultation.

Ongoing participation

Make sure to maintain continuous involvement, so that diverse voices are central at every stage – from initial development through implementation and review.

Accessible and adaptive processes

Make sure to implement flexible, innovative approaches that accommodate diverse needs, making the co-production process truly inclusive and accessible for all participants.