The European Commission has identified co-creation as an important part of RRI and although it is not one of the 6 thematic elements it looks like it will be crucial in the next framework programme of Horizon Europe. What has become apparent is that across projects and policies the concept of co-creation raises high expectations.

University College London’s team members Melanie Smallman and Trupti Patel have examined how co-creation has been understood and operationalised in EU funded projects and policies. The many lessons learnt are summarised in the RRI research landscape report and have helped us inform the next stages of the SISCODE project and we thought that they will be of great use for the rest of the community.

In a nutshell, what have they found?

• Projects working on conceptions of RRI aspire towards citizen-led practices, in which citizens become the decision-makers and exhibit higher levels of control.
• In practice, however, the level of participation adopted by projects range from co-creation to consultation, with many tending to fall towards the consultation end of the spectrum.
• Throughout policy, theory and practice, there were calls to institutionalise co-creation processes such that participants are sufficiently rewarded for implementing co-creation methods and that it becomes embedded in the innovation process.
• Methods and objectives of co-creation need to be explicit and carefully selected to be appropriate to the subject, context and people. Also, we need to be clear about the objectives of co-creation and participation exercises.
• Participants from all stakeholder groups will need to take part in these co-creation processes and sessions will need to be well facilitated.

Taking into consideration the momentum these methodologies are gaining and their expected impact in future research programmes, we would recommend the reader to have a look at the complete research results here.