On the 15th June the Brighton and Hove Common Ambition (BHCA) team delivered our first big co-produced event! This was called Working Together.

Through the work of the group, an overall purpose for the event was developed: to showcase the work of BHCA, to bring services, commissioners and people with lived experience of homelessness together to feed back on the work we have done so far, understand the challenges that currently exist and work together to improve the homeless healthcare system.

The event was delivered by the BHCA Steering Group. This team was made up of people with lived experience of homelessness (many of whom had been working with the project for the first year and were part of the Media and Comms Group), 2 members of the University of Brighton academic team and the project’s Manager and Participation Lead. The day’s agenda was as follows:

• Networking time
• Opening speeches (every member of the group presented at the beginning of the event)
• 4 workshops in rotation, scroll through the slideshow below for details on each one:

The members of the Common Ambition steering group felt very positively about the event they co-created, as evidenced in these quotes after the event:

‘It felt great and I wanted to go again’

‘Since I have given my speech it has given me confidence to go further’

‘There were people from lots of different services talking to each other, we don’t often see that’

‘Having lots of people there shows people are interested, this makes it worthwhile for the group’

• We felt safe in the environment, this was made possible by visiting the space together, keeping the event informal and relaxed, running through the event the day before, taking time out when we needed it and having a ‘green room’ which only we could go into and was a designated quiet space.
• Great teamwork within the Common Ambition team, we all felt confident with what we were doing and looked out for each other during the day.
• It was great to bring people together. To have senior leaders, commissioners and frontline workers and people with lived experience of homelessness alongside the Common Ambition team felt really good.
• There was lots of interest from others. People were listening, encouraging, positive and open minded. We were starting to changes people’s minds about how services and the system can be run
• It really helped people to understand our work by taking them through the journey we have been on with small workshops. From mapping, identifying challenges, ideation, through to our first prototype. Instead of reading about our work we were able to show and include people so that they could experience what we do.
• We were able to share the knowledge and learning we had and we were able to see how useful this was for services, frontline workers and commissioners
• The 2 months of planning the media and comms group did was absolutely vital in us being able to deliver a well organised event.

We would like to thank everyone who attended the event and took the time to engage with the project. We really appreciate your input.

If you would like to be kept informed of any future events, please contact Nicky Pyper, Project Manager, Brighton & Hove Common Ambition