The challenge was not simply about engaging communities more effectively. It was about fundamentally changing how public services, system leaders and communities worked together. 

Despite significant investment in community development, social prescribing, neighbourhood working and workforce transformation, many people still felt disconnected from formal systems. Communities often described experiences of tokenistic consultation, decisions being made without them and a sense that they were being done to rather than worked alongside.  

Public servants meanwhile reported uncertainty about how to meaningfully engage with communities, concerns about getting things wrong and pressures from existing systems that made relationship-based work difficult. Many felt they lacked confidence, skills and practical tools to work differently.  

The project therefore sought to answer three critical questions: 

• What can communities do for themselves? 

• What can communities do with support from public services? 

• What do communities need public services to do?  

How Did Collaborate Out Loud Help? 

Collaborate Out Loud designed and delivered a twelve-month programme structured around three interconnected areas: 

• Supporting the public sector workforce to work differently with communities 

• Creating spaces where communities and public services could connect and collaborate 

• Building community capacity for co-production and change  

The work included a wide range of innovative activities including: 

• Reverse mentoring between senior leaders and community members 

• A Community First Mindset development programme 

• Community Voices engagement processes 

• Community Collaborator recruitment and development 

• Collaborative circles focused on neighbourhood challenges 

• Inclusive messaging work 

• Coaching and capacity-building for community members 

• Development of practical tools and resources to support co-production  

A particular focus was placed on reaching communities whose voices are often absent from public service conversations. Over 260 residents participated through Community Voices activities, while community collaborators were recruited from diverse backgrounds including people with lived experience of homelessness, substance misuse, mental ill-health, disability and trauma.  

The programme also created opportunities for public service leaders to hear directly from residents about their experiences and develop a deeper understanding of the realities faced by communities. Through Community Conversations, Community Voices and reverse mentoring, systems and communities met in spaces designed around trust, honesty and learning.  

What Was the Impact? 

The project helped create meaningful shifts in how communities and public services related to one another. 

Evaluation findings showed increased confidence amongst workforce participants in working with communities and stronger understanding of the communities they served. Staff reported greater confidence in co-production and increased appreciation of lived experience as a source of expertise.  

The project successfully established: 

• Nine active Community Collaborators 

• Community Voices processes involving over 265 residents 

• New co-production principles for Bury 

• Community First Mindset training across all five neighbourhoods 

• Reverse mentoring partnerships between community members and public service leaders 

• Practical tools and resources now being used beyond the project itself  

One of the most significant impacts was the emergence of community-led initiatives developed by collaborators and local residents. These included: 

• Happy Me, Happy Mums 

• Happy Me, Happy Women 

• Hear Me Roar 

• Recovery Rocks 

• FREE (Freedom, Recovery, Engagement, Empowerment) 

• Recovery Walking Groups  

These initiatives represented community-led alternatives and additions to formal services, demonstrating how local people could identify needs and develop solutions themselves when given support and opportunities to connect.  

The work also influenced wider system developments including mental health transformation, homelessness partnerships, Health and Wellbeing Board discussions and Bury Council’s values and behaviours framework.  

We learned that communities possess extraordinary assets, creativity and problem-solving capacity. 

Many people who participated had valuable lived experience, ideas and aspirations for their communities but lacked routes into formal decision-making processes. By creating opportunities, relationships and support structures, people were able to contribute meaningfully to shaping change.  

We learned that trust takes time. While communities welcomed opportunities to contribute, many participants remained cautious due to previous experiences of consultation processes that failed to result in visible change. Building trust requires ongoing relationships, transparency and clear feedback loops rather than one-off engagement exercises.  

We also learned that public servants often want to work differently but need practical support, permission and organisational conditions that allow them to prioritise relationships alongside operational demands. The Community First Mindset programme and reverse mentoring activities demonstrated how powerful these experiences can be in changing perspectives and behaviours.  

Perhaps most importantly, we learned that co-production cannot be commissioned as an isolated activity. It needs to become part of the culture, systems and everyday practice of organisations. Community-led approaches succeed when power, resources and decision-making are shared in meaningful ways with local people.  

The project laid important foundations for this shift in Bury. It demonstrated that when communities and systems come together as equal partners, new possibilities emerge, relationships strengthen and more responsive, human-centred approaches to health and care become possible.