As part of our contributions to Scottish Co-Production Week, I co- facilitated a workshop as part of the Scottish Mediation conference 2019. It focussed on the question of ‘Are the words of mediation accessible to communities?’ and how we can use co-production methods in practice as tools to make things more accessible to communities.

Scottish Mediation are beginning the journey of taking their practice to communities – mediators in the workshop were keen to explore practice examples of co-production and how we use words as an organisation to engage with people.

I shared a practice example from our Local People Linking project that works with older people from different community groups to co-produce community based human rights training. The world of rights is shrouded in the academic use of words and can be a barrier to supporting people to understand what they mean to them.

Using words that make rights real based on people’s everyday lived experiences helps groups take ownership and to understand how their rights can make a difference and help effect positive community change. I highlighted that this is a transferrable practice approach.

Scottish Mediation are keen to use co-production as an approach to support local communities to access mediation techniques so that people feel more skilled and confident when dealing with difficult situations.