That’s a rap! Three creative methods for co-designing with young people
Barnardo’s has partnered with East Riding of Yorkshire Council (ERYC) to design a system that responds better to the needs of exploited children. The system will identify exploitation earlier, ensuring children are safer sooner. Its working culture will support children and families in a way which does not blame them for what has happened to them.
We are taking a service design approach to co-design solutions with children, families and professionals.
The children and families involved have experienced a significant level of harm. We have found that utilising creative methods and tools has enabled us to navigate sensitive topics and involve this audience in an upbeat and positive way.
Although we are only half-way through the project, we have learnt a lot already about the value creative methods can have to engage and inspire stakeholders in co-design at various stages.
Emily Kay and I wanted to use this blog to share these insights, as well as the creative outputs themselves.
Things we learnt
- Illustration can be a useful tool to communicate complex points in an accessible way
- Storytelling can be a powerful way to represent the voices of children and families to professionals
- It’s important to make sure all facilitators understand the purpose of a co-design session and lead creative activities in a way which enables all young people to express their voices
Creative methods we used
Playback illustrations
After our initial discovery research, we needed to play back to participants to check we had heard and understood them correctly. We wanted to bring people together in person but unfortunately weren’t able to due to logistics and safeguarding concerns.
Instead, we created an illustration which used visuals and simplified language to show the key research insights. Alongside showing the illustration, each child’s worker asked them three questions which they respond to via an online form or voice note.
- What seems right, what do you agree with?
- Is there anything you disagree with?
- Have we missed out anything important?
Young people told us they found the illustration easy to understand and it reflected their views. This illustration became a useful visual snapshot of the findings for us to share with wider stakeholders at the council. It was also a helpful exercise for the project team to distil our insights down into 12 short snappy points that fit on one page with pictures!
Animated stories
We created a collection of five short, animated films to help us tell the stories of children’s journeys through services.
The characters are fictional but based on true stories and quotes. The animations are based on a collective of experiences to highlight the consistent challenges experienced within services. Each links to a specific ‘how might we’ question. These animations became a vital tool in co-design as they enabled us to:
- tell complex and emotive stories while keeping children’s identities fully anonymous
- connect a wide collection of multi-agency stakeholders to the children’s service journeys in a quick yet engaging way
- communicate the complex context behind our ‘how might we’ questions
- use an alternative to personas, which can be overly simplistic, or user journeys, which can be overly technical
- bring the voices of children and families into the room when it wouldn’t have been appropriate to have them in the session
- communicate the ‘problems to solve’ in the form of a story. This allowed parents and children in co-design workshops to talk about what would help each character rather than having to think about their own experience
The films also have value beyond the immediate project. The animations have become a platform for us to share the system challenges with a wider audience beyond East Riding. We developed a video guide to help professionals in other local authorities use these resources in training or reflective spaces.
Music and art workshops
We wanted to make our co-design sessions with young people meaningful and enjoyable.
We teamed up with Noise Academy who specialise in engaging youth through music and street art. Their work usually focuses on music education and confidence-building. We thought their expertise in working creatively with young people could make co-design more exciting.
Together, we ran two three-hour sessions.
Session 1
The first session focused on ‘how might we support children and families when risks of exploitation are first identified so that they are kept safe from further harm?’.
Five young people with lived experience of exploitation took part in the session. We started by played some games and watching two of the animations. We then had a conversation about who or what the group would like to help them if adults were worried about a young person being exploited. It was tricky to get the discussion going, but having prompt cards with suggestions helped. The young people noted their ideas down on leaf-shaped post-its and stuck them on the ‘positivitree’.
Our intention was for the group to articulate their ideas through rapping and drawing workshops. We quickly realised that this was different to how youth workshops usually run. This was a challenge to explain to both the artistic facilitators and the young people. On reflection, we felt the session lacked focus and we didn’t do enough upfront to help the group feel comfortable voicing their thoughts and opinions.
The session produced a rap entitled ‘No secrets’. It expressed how young people wanted workers to ‘throw out the rule books’ and treat them as individuals. However, we felt that the lyrics leant too heavily on the interpretation of the adults in the room, rather than truly representing the voice of the young people.
Session 2
The second session which focused on the language and approaches used by workers. We asked participants to say what they thought adults should do differently so that young people feel:
- better understood
- less judged
We made some changes to the session format based on what we learnt from the first session. We:
- invested more time in briefing the facilitators ahead of the session so they were clear that the main outcome for the session was for participants to express their own opinions through the creative methods
- involved seven young people, all whom had experience of East Riding services, but not necessarily exploitation
- Included detached youth workers with existing relationships with the young people. This helped them to feel more comfortable contributing
- set-up the drum machine from the very start, allowing the young people to move about, get talking, and easily contribute to a group activity
- showed the group reaction videos to the previous rap from leaders at Barnardo’s and the council to show adults were really listening
- used prompt cards quoting what we had heard from young people in interviews
- asked everyone to pick one leaf from the positivitree that they felt strongly about to feed into the rap. This meant everyone had their voice represented, not just those who felt comfortable speaking in a group
- ended the session by painting a large canvas to visually represent the lyrics. Having the art activity allowed for those who were quieter in the music task to take more of a role in creating the artwork
All this allowed us to have an open and honest conversation as a group. Doing this before going into the rap exercise helped the young people feel more confident in their ideas.
The facilitators sat back, encouraging the young people to take the lead as much as possible on writing the actual lyrics. A couple of the group in particular showed themselves to be fantastic poets!
What resulted was a truly powerful rap entitled ‘Positivitree’, overlayed on a beat created by the young people themselves. This time, it spoke directly to the council, telling them what young people wanted — “safe spaces and friendly faces”.
Feedback from the young people was positive, with all saying they:
- enjoyed it
- felt able to give their views
- felt listened to
If we were to run the session again, we would set up multiple creative activities at once so people can chose how to express themselves. We’d also like to allow people to create something individually to encourage personal expression within the collective, but this would need more time.
What’s next?
We now have three concepts which have the potential to change the system around exploitation. Our focus now is on working with professionals, children and families to develop these further, incorporating as much creativity as possible along the way! The project runs until 2025, so watch this space for updates.
