Activism 4 Resilience: one – Bid Fever: nil – Co-producing a complex research bid in the midst of a pandemic – what’s not to love?

This blog was written by young people who co-wrote a bid for funding from an academic research council. We reflect on our experience of being involved. Even though the bid wasn’t successful it gave us valuable learning experiences. For young people to be properly included as co-developers of these types of bids, they really need to be paid to do it, like we were. 

Research councils take note…

Some of you will be intimately acquainted with the strangely exciting but ultimately angst-ridden experience we affectionately call “bid fever”. Luckily this has nothing to do with mutant viruses causing global pandemics, but the process of co-developing a bid from the original call, nurturing it along the way to the climax of hitting the green button to submit.

We are currently in recovery from our bid fever. ‘We’ being an eclectic group of young people, practitioners, parents & carers, leaders and academics (or boffin chums).

We co-developed a bid for an exciting research opportunity all about how activism can support young people’s resilience and mental health, called Activism 4 Resilience (A4R).

As the title suggests this bid was about developing activist opportunities for young people to build resilience by both beating the odds whilst also changing the odds. We’ve done quite a bit of work on this already through co-developing activism and campaigning opportunities, one example can be found here but there are others too.

Here’s a few quotes from the team:

Danielle youth sessional worker

‘’It was difficult at first, but after the support from colleagues and millions of questions I now have more of an understanding.’’

Sam, Youth Engagement worker

‘‘ For the whole team being able to translate the value and impact of our co-production approach and trying to articulate it in a way that stands up to the academic rigour of a research bid was a huge challenge.’’

We explored what excellence looks like for research bids and specifically what we thought excellence looked like for bid co-development practice. 

‘’For us, good was about everyone’s ideas being listened to and being taken into consideration. For us, good was about being in a space where we felt comfortable not to know things. It is clear that we did not, and still do not (as yet) know as much about developing research bids as our academic colleagues but feeling safe in the space to get to know more was really important to us.’’

We discussed collaborations between universities and community partners, and how it may work best. And that was all before actually planning the research! But it was worth it, even though we weren’t successful. The funding would have brought together a range of Universities across the United Kingdom. Lots of other organisations were also equal partners including BoingBoing CiC, Schools, CAMHS and Local Authorities too. All of the aforementioned were involved in the development of the bid – there is enough bid fever to go around!

Research into youth activism is already underway through the “Nothing about us without us” engagement project. A4R builds on the learning from this project, scaling it up to go national and eventually global.

So here’s what we did…

We first had to consider what we know, and perhaps what we don’t, so we could think about how our new ideas for A4R would meet the aims set by the Research Council. Research Councils work with communities to set research agendas outlining what they would like to know more about. They also administer the funding, so you have to apply to them. There are lots of different research councils specialising in traditional medical approaches, in Arts and Humanities & Economic and Social research. In our case, the research council behind this exciting opportunity is called the UKRI – United Kingdom Research & Innovation. As the wider themes are around young peoples’ mental health, there are shared interests across the various research councils previously mentioned, so they come together as a collective group to learn from the various research projects.

Our approach to developing this exciting bid was to set up specific groups to focus on different themes and co-write them. These groups included academics, young people and community leaders.

Focusing on the work of the youth co-researchers, let us introduce ourselves. We are Ellie, Elle, Kayleigh and Patrick, Laura, Hannah, Adam and Danielle and we are proud co-leaders of the Blackpool’s whole town approach to resilience, the Resilience Revolution (RR). We have various paid roles in the RR including trainee roles, apprenticeships and sessional worker roles. We also have a couple of supportive adults, Sam and Pauline who have paid roles in the RR (Oh, and how can we forget Kayleigh’s Dog!).

As a group we spent our first few sessions exploring what activism means to us, what it looks and feels like. We also considered from our own experiences what changes we and other YP might want to see. There was lots of lively debate and exchanges around the term disadvantage, part of this was about language and specifically words we did not like when discussing the challenges we face as young people in today’s society.

As a group we spent our first few sessions exploring what activism means to us, what it looks and feels like. We also considered from our own experiences what changes we and other YP might want to see. There was lots of lively debate and exchanges around the term disadvantage, part of this was about language and specifically words we did not like when discussing the challenges we face as young people in today’s society.

We felt angry about the words too often used to describe us and other YP – being labelled as damaged or vulnerable can be really offensive, patronising and holds us responsible for issues that lie in the system. We felt so passionate about this issue around language that a separate group has emerged to co-design a video, explaining what structural disadvantage actually means and how YP and others should not be ‘responsibilised’ for systems failures. We can sense another blog coming on!…

In addition, we also thought about the value and importance of campaigning and activism and came up with this:

After exploring our own personal views on activism, resilience and words and language we would use in the bid, we decided we definitely wanted to move forward with being involved in co-developing the research bid and we meant business! Genuine, meaningful co-production. No faux-production in this project!

We think Ellie captures it best with this comment from the session:

It was crucial that our voices and opinions were influential and powerful right from the get go of the bid writing stage. To help us with our learning we started a young professional’s bid dictionary.  Here, we would all bring terms and words we weren’t sure about and come up with a definition to cut out some of the jargon! As research bids were very new to a lot of us we started highlighting words and making sure we could understand the research summary.  We used that as a nice introduction to engaging with the full extent of a research bid. Here are some of the words and definitions we came up with.

It was crucial that our voices and opinions were influential and powerful right from the get go of the bid writing stage. To help us with our learning we started a young professional’s bid dictionary.  Here, we would all bring terms and words we weren’t sure about and come up with a definition to cut out some of the jargon! As research bids were very new to a lot of us we started highlighting words and making sure we could understand the research summary.  We used that as a nice introduction to engaging with the full extent of a research bid. Here are some of the words and definitions we came up with:

  • Interdisciplinary – From lots of different backgrounds/areas – usually used to describe people that research a range of different things or work in different areas e.g. Public Health, Mental Health, Policy.
  • Routinely – Often/consistently happening.
  • Substantive flagship – Big/best example of something. If it’s a flagship it’s an example of how something should be done/modelled.
  • Enduring – Something that stays for a long period of time.

Our group sessions came thick and fast from July – December. We had various opportunities to learn more about the bid- including working with our chief boffin (The Prof – Angie Hart) on details of the budget. The whole bid writing team, young and not so young, were passionate to ensure the right levels of support and funding were in place for YP.

Not to blow our own collective trumpets, but we all had some brilliant insights along the way. As you’ll see from Ellie and Kayleigh’s comments, we really know our stuff about changing the odds. Nothing about us without us we say! 

Getting back to the issue of language, after lots of discussion about the impact of structural inequalities on YP we decided to go with the term YPFMSD – catchy isn’t it? Well anyway, it stands for Young People Facing Multiple Systemic Disadvantage. We know from our collective experiences that growing up facing issues such as poverty, poor housing and special educational needs for example, and still getting on in life is an uphill struggle. Remember, none of these systems issues are our fault.  We also get routinely forgotten and missed out of ace opportunities, like the ones we are planning in this bid, so making sure this research is specifically for YPFMSD we feel is really levelling out the playing field. 

We spent a lot of time thinking about potential barriers YPFMSD might encounter in getting involved. For example, how can we support young people who have felt ‘othered’ in their communities to get involved and actually believe that they can have an influence on their own lives and the lives of others.

We also considered how we can make sure that young people get the opportunity to build fantastic relationships with the adults in the space, so that we all feel comfortable to hold each other to account and value each other’s expertise. One potential barrier could be young people being able to access opportunities. The solution we came up with for this is that every young co-researcher involved in a paid capacity is paid the Real Living Wage.

Being aware of barriers is crucial, otherwise how can we support young people to overcome those barriers, or even better how we can remove the barriers from the get-go. We are serious about doing whatever it takes to make sure that this exciting piece of research is as inclusive as possible.

Finally, we started co-writing. We first explored what to cover in the youth engagement section, making sure all of our exciting ideas were included and fully understood. We paid special attention to the language being used to make sure it was accessible. We then moved on to other areas such as the model for apprenticeships, ethics & safeguarding, curriculum and education and digital engagement. We chose different areas to co-lead on to make sure we met the deadline.

We came up with loads of ideas for A4R, such as having an apprentice in every University involved. We considered what support they would need, we thought about other roles and opportunities within the A4R that young people might like; including paid members of the Co-Research Team (CRT). There might have been other opportunities if we had been given the go ahead, such as paid sessional worker roles supporting the different strands of campaigning and activism.

“One potential barrier could be young people being able to access opportunities. The solution we came up with for this is that every young co-researcher involved in a paid capacity is paid the Real Living Wage.”

Having survived bid fever, including lots of meetings, lots of reading and lots of getting our head around new ideas it’s time for a break. Of course, we hoped with all our hearts that would have been successful. But even though we weren’t we gave it our best shot, built knowledge and skills along the way and built some great partnerships. Over and out from us until our next bid fever experience!

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