Kraft Copilot: 1st hands-on meeting with the Citizens' Advisory Council

On Sep 21st, the first hands-on meeting with the citizens' advisory board of the Kraft-Copilot project took place.

What does the citizens' advisory board actually do?

The Citizens' Advisory Council is an accompanying body to the funding guideline and accompanies the research and implementation process of the individual projects. This procedure is a pilot project with an experimental character. We are testing an innovative format by trying out different approaches to involving citizens in research processes.

How is the citizens' advisory board involved in practice?

The involvement of the citizens' advisory board in the research and development process takes place, among other things, through so-called hands-on meetings. In this way, the citizens' advisory board gains practical insight into the current research work. At the same time, the project team and the citizens' advisory board work together on the project idea in a co-creation workshop.

The first hands-on meeting was dedicated to the continued work on the project vision, which was developed and built using the LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® method. In another workshop, we worked on possible applications of participatory methods (e.g. Photovoice, Community Mapping) and tested the suitability of the methods for our target group (informal caring adults).

What do we take away?
 
Each participant and contributor in the process brings valuable experience - this advances the shared vision and benefits the project. Furthermore, we would like other research and development activities to benefit from our shared experience with the Citizens' Advisory Council and to design their own participation formats against the background of this experience. We will be happy to report further on this!