4.4 Co-Creating with Immigrants & Locals
This chapter talks about how I designed the co-creation sessions, the co-creation outcomes, and my learnings from leading these sessions. Two co-creation workshops were conducted — the first in partnership with Manchester Refugee Support Network (MRSN), and the second with the support of Faith Network 4 Manchester (FN4M).
MRSN is a 20-year-old grassroots organisation which helped build a network of independent organisations to support refugee communities in Manchester. It also promoted public awareness about asylum issues and help voices of asylum seekers and refugees be heard by policy-makers (MRSN, 2013). Faith Network 4 Manchester is a 12-year-old body that helped enable the opinions of faith communities were considered by local decision-makers and strategic planners (FN4M, n.a.).
Both workshops facilitated immigrants and locals to find out which issues were more important to them and allowed them to come up with solutions.
Co-Creation Workshop 1
Co-creation workshop 1 was held in partnership with MRSN, and involved immigrants who were asylum seekers — users considered to be extreme users, as they arrived in this new country under more dire circumstances than other immigrant types. By understanding what extreme users needed, it could create solutions that were relevant for users across the spectrum (ideo.org, n.a.), including asylum seekers.
Workshop 1 Format
CHECK-INS: I started the session with a group check-in, so that participants could get to know each other, and begin the process of creating an environment in which they felt comfortable sharing ideas with. Most of them were strangers with each other, so I had to build some trust between within a short period of time.
Besides getting them to introduce their names and what were their professions, I also got them to share an embarrassing moment which happened to them the week before. I started sharing first, and came up with a not-so-embarassing example, so that set the bar for the rest, showing them that they did not have to have spectacular examples for sharing. By the time my turn was over, people could see that I was not ridiculed for sharing an embarrassing moment. This was important, as I wanted them to notice this, and put them at ease, that they would not face judgement from others.
WORLD CAFÉ: For the co-creation workshop 1, I adopted the World Café method, which was useful for facilitating intimate dialogues between participants (The World Café Community Foundation, 2015). I grouped the participants into groups of 3, moving from table to table for 3 rounds of conversations, each lasting 15 minutes.
I got participants to share their views about the three key insights obtained earlier, and facilitated their discussions to derive two focus questions to work on for furthur concept development.
TOPIC 1: People wanted to feel safe and socially included. But once people found their own communities, they tend not to welcome or bother to engage others. People moved on to other priorities (e.g. earning a living, spending time with family & friends).
During the discussion, both locals and immigrants expressed the need to learn about other cultures, so that immigrants and locals could share ideas and help one another. However they also recognised that some communities might prefer to stay within their own communities, as stated in the Topic, for reasons such as religion, culture, and language barrier.
TOPIC 2: The older generations held a strong sense of equity over illegal immigrants “fleecing the system”, and were concerned for future generations’ well-being.
Many participants questioned the public perceptions of an “illegal immigrant”, pointing out that the term had been inaccurately used. For many undocumented immigrants, their immigration status could be pending due process, and the term “illegal” dehumanised them, who were simply human beings moving from one place to another to seek safety. Some locals highlighted that for immigrants to remain in the country, the rule of law had to be respected; public services could become over-subscribed. They questioned however if the media had been reporting complaints from older people about equity and well-being issues, giving the impression that younger people were not complaining as much.
The participants also suggested that it would be good for proper orientation to be given to host communities to facilitate better integration of immigrants.
TOPIC 3: Language barriers impeded cross-cultural understanding and social integration.
The participants indicated that it could be frustrating to be unable to express themselves in English; they might lose confidence and feel lonely. Language learning could be expensive, and they would not know if translators were interpreting correctly. One political asylee had encountered corrupted interpreters who purposely made asylum seekers’ applications fail. Therefore having trustworthy and competent translators was a challenge.
BREAK: A 10-minute break was taken to keep participants’ minds refreshed, and allow them to mingle and relax, after intense conversations.
SACRIFICIAL PROTOTYPES: I then exhibited 3 prototypes about food chats, musc pop-up tent, and community health champions, and got participants to individually provide feedback to them, so as to obtain their responses to specific research questions behind each concept, and provide participants with ideas of what could be possible solutions.
I selected this idea as prototype, to explore using music to overcome language barriers. I intended to apply the design principle of “making it easy for people to participate”. Based on previous feedback that this might seem attention-seeking rather than socially impactful, I removed any mention of “pop-up” which might seem frivolous, and kept to the core mechanics of the concept, which was using world music to share messages of peace on social media. However, the participants’ feedback was that while it was good way to expose communities to other cultures, this might be more suitable for children and the logistics of gathering musical instruments might be a hindering factor.
Food Chats was a prototype to facilitate the building of genuine relationships through common interest of food. Locals provide ingredients, refugee Participants’ feedback was that it was a feasible idea which promotes empathy between immigrants and locals; acquisition of members for Food Chats was a concern though.
Community Health Champions was borne out of a prior interview with a refugee community leader, who expressed her concern over mental health conditions in her community. This was also an application of the design principle to facilitate discussions of relevant issues holistically. Participants’ feedback was that this was a service which was very needed, but to be mindful about the language barrier.
IDEATION: During this part, participants formed their own teams, by choosing which focus question they would like to work on. Then I got the teams thinking about solutions for their chosen focus questions, and come up with 6 ideas within 2 minutes and then share their ideas with their team. However some participants indicated they were having difficulty coming up with many ideas. I interrupted the ideation process by introducing a warm-up exercise. I started the ideation process with an exercise to think of 5 ideas within 1 minute, about how to put a tennis ball into a lemon, so as to stretch their minds and get them thinking out of the box, before resuming discussions.
2 focus questions were chosen:
1. How might we bring refugees and host communities together? Engaging people of other cultures could expose them to new ideas and establish mutual trust between refugees and locals. However some communities might prefer to stay within themselves due to religious beliefs, cultures, or language barriers.
New Concept: Small Group Meet-ups Leaders from 2 different communities could meet in informal settings to get to know each other, and explore how each community’s strengths could help with another’s problems.
For example, a local group of health ambassadors could bring knowledge about diabetes/eye health; an immigrant group could provide them with language support and partner with them to reach out to immigrants in the community. Leaders of these two communities could understand each other’s strengths and needs better.
2. How might we build integrity in interpreters? Trustworthy interpreters needed. Screened by an authority to be reliable, and able to establish trust with refugees. Interpreters might also miss, or misinterpret, important technical terms. Need to be competent in specialised fields e.g. medical, legal.
New Concept: NHS Language Programme A programme for students majoring in Language studies to learn medical terms;; medical students could learn different languages too. This could be a sponsored programme by NHS.
These trained interpreters would then form an open and transparent network of interpreters, recognised by the public as sponsored by NHS — a trusted brand name in UK, which would help establish their credibility with refugee communities.
Workshop 1 Reflections
My time management for workshop 1 was poor. The workshop was planned to last 2 hours only, but it ended up being 3.5 hours long. This was atrribuable to extended discussions after individual group presentations, when many participants were eager to share their views. I was eager to hear what they had to say too, and did not want participants to feel that their voices were not being heard, so I was hesitant in reining in some of the more vocal participants and relaxed on requirements to adhere to time allocated for group presentations. When it was past the planned end time, a handful of participants had to leave on time. So the move backfired — I still missed out on participants’ inputs in the end.
Some participants suggested that I could display the workshop programme on the large screen throughout the workshop, or put a large clock in front, so that everyone had a better sense of time. Perhaps there could have been lesser time for each round of World Café, and more time for big group sharings instead.
In addition, most of the absentees were locals, which was reflected in one participant’s suggestion that perhaps more non-immigrants could be present to furthur increase the group diversity.
Co-Creation Workshop 2
During co-creation workshop 2, I repeated the same format, with slight modifications to stay within time limit. This time, the number of participants for workshop 2 was smaller, and it worked well enough to have participants discuss in one group instead of dividing them up, so adopting the World Café method was not necessary in this case.
In addition, I removed the segment about giving feedback on seed ideas, to see if participants might come up with ideas incorporating similar design principles without being influenced by my seed ideas.
During the 1st half of the workshop, participants shared their visions about how social integration might look like. They mentioned about different people working together in a networked world, an integrated society “web” of interconnected and diverse groups, and spaces which connected people and fulfilled their needs e.g. housing, schools.
After that I facilitated participants’ discussions around the three key insights:
TOPIC 1: People wanted to feel safe and socially included. But once people found their own communities, they tend not to welcome or bother to engage others. People moved on to other priorities (e.g. earning a living, spending time with family & friends).
The participants resonated with the insight that people might not feel the need to integrate, as long as they themselves were coping fine with life, and they could just stay within their own community for safety.
TOPIC 2: The older generations held a strong sense of equity over illegal immigrants “fleecing the system”, and were concerned for future generations’ well-being.
The participants were aware that “illegal” immigrants would not be eligible for claiming benefits from the state, but they thought that they probably knew how to “work” their way around the system. They also felt that there were not many communities which cared about one another, and that was worrying.
TOPIC 3: Language barriers impeded cross-cultural understanding and social integration.
The participants reflected on their own English learning experiences and realised that they might have forgotten how difficult it once was to learn the language as a beginner. They recognised that a lack of proficiency could present a barrier to developing a sense of belonging and result in feelings of isolation.
During the 2nd half, I then facilitated their ideation to come up with solutions that would be useful to them for social integration. During the discussions, it then became apparent to the participants that regardless of what the final solution was, at the end of the day, the value of respect was most important element of all interactions between immigrants and locals. It should also be fun, and adopting a needs-based approach adopted for community development.
Workshop 2 Reflections
The no-show rate was even higher than before and this time, it was immigrants’ absent rate that was high instead. I had to adapt the workshop programme on-site to cater to a significantly smaller number of participants. Two attendees mentioned that the event venue was hard to locate; one absentee failed to arrive as his satnav went dead and he gave up after circling around for an hour; another failed to make it as her flight was delayed. One absentee said she did not receive the reminder email.
I learnt that while there might be norms for workshop no-show rates, an unusually high no-show rate would doom a workshop even before it started. I was more concerned about obtaining informed consent from any vulnerable immigrants, or failing to meet expectations of participants during the workshop and those of the partner organisations about deliverables at the end of the workshop, rather than the risks posed by participant no-show rates.
Next time, I would emphasise to registrants on the sign-up page that this was going to be a small and engaging workshop, and to inform me in advance should they expect to miss the session. I could also have explicitly advised participants to ring me up should they have difficulty locating the venue of the day of the event.
Conclusions
In both workshops, participants expressed the need to learn about other cultures, so that immigrants and locals could share ideas and help one another. However they also recognised that some communities might prefer to stay within their own communities, for reasons such as religion, culture, and language barrier. as long as they themselves were coping fine with life, and they could just stay within their own community for safety. Having meals together was a means through which both groups could interact.
In addition, participants also mentioned that the claim that “illegal” immigrants were fleecing the system was a myth and immigrants had been incorrectly portrayed by the public. While the law needs to be respected, participants also felt that there was a lack of care for each other between communities. Health was brought up as a common concern for both immigrants and locals.
Lastly, English learners voiced their frustrations when they felt unable to express themselves. English-proficient participants reflected on their own learning experiences and how they had failed to empathise with beginner language learners. Feelings of low confidence and isolation were highlighted in both workshops, and trust was an important element in relationships, which suffered due to poor language ability.
