Introduction

In Chapter 1, we described the problem with regulatory systems that self-referentially exclude ‘ordinary’ citizens from processes of decisionmaking. We suggested that regulatory systems needed to find ways to bring in ‘experts-by-experience’ to work alongside technocratic expertise. To produce regulatory systems that are human-centred, we need to find new ways of incorporating the expertise of citizens who experience being regulated on a daily basis, that is, we must work towards the co-design of such systems.

In this chapter, we discuss our experiments in shifting understandings of expertise and in co-producing research that formed the basis of the Productive Margins programme. Those experiments were structured as the Productive Communities Research Forum, a series of gatherings that included all active co-researchers and occurred every three to six months over the lifetime of the Productive Margins programme. Before we discuss this experimental method, we need to ask: who is the ‘we’ in this chapter? Co-production as a specific set of approaches to collaborative research involves diverse voices. In this chapter, we bring together the Productive Margins principal investigator, community lead, arts and humanities lead, and one of the co-investigators who worked as a link between two projects and the core management group. We have different research interests, forms of expertise, values and standpoints on collaborative working in communities.