Reflections on co-productive research in a youth-focused climate education project

Abstract

The 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child emphasises the value of listening to young people’s voices. Since its inception, there have been significant moves to involve young people in research that concerns their lives in a time of environmental emergency. Drawing on critical analysis of our work with Youth Action Partnerships (YAPs), this article explores how co-production with young people can effectively be achieved and offers meaningful ways for young people to share their stories in a time of climate crisis. We draw on rich insights from our experience of working in partnership with young people and explore how they have been supported to shape and influence the research process. Our findings enable us to build on Hickey’s five principles for co-production with adults in a health and social care context. We show that, in addition to those, there is need to consider three other principles when co-working with youth. We embed the eight principles for co-production in a new model for effective co-production with young people to support researchers to successfully prepare for, and implement, such co-production processes in other work.