Co-production and transformative change: lessons and challenges

This article takes the case of the TAPESTRY project to look at how transformative change can be co-produced between local communities, researchers, community-based organisations and other actors. We lay out the process, challenges and tensions of doing co-produced research with marginalised people in marginalised environments affected by climate-related uncertainties and other crises. We reflect on the strategies needed to ensure that the voices of the most marginalised, who are at the forefront of climate uncertainty, are able to come to the fore and as far as possible in their own terms. We argue that despite significant challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic and in tackling existing power relations and social and gender inequities, co-produced research can help lift and give spaces to voices and perspectives that do not normally find their way to the realm of decision making. We demonstrate that critical transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary co-produced research can help reframe marginalised landscapes, and challenge dominant narratives and relations of power. While identifying concrete impacts on the ground can sometimes be difficult, co-production in itself can be a powerful agent of transformative change, leading to iterative learning and new insights among all participants. However, there are limits to how much can be achieved and scaled up in a conventional three- or four-year research project, calling for funders and donors to encourage longer-term engagements that enable local communities to take forward the research evidence and co-produced actions in locally appropriate ways.