What We Learned from Community Research

In each borough of Greater Manchester, Local Infrastructure Organisations took on the challenge of distributing funding in participatory ways with communities.  In some places communities chose funding priorities, in others projects were codesigned with people who lived there, we learnt how communities ‘pitched’ for funding or were part of decision making panels. What emerged through these different ways of participating in funding mechanisms, was a clear insight: co-design is not about asking people for feedback on decisions that have already been made. It is about sharing power before decisions are made.

When communities helped design funding criteria, application processes and decision-making, the system became more accessible, transparent and responsive. Long application forms became conversations. Lived experience became evidence. Communities moved from being recipients of funding to architects of the funding system itself. The result wasn’t just better engagement; it was decisions made, that reflected the realities of people’s lives.

Participatory Funding In Practice – Learning Pack

Rather than producing a report that captured what happened, we co-designed a Learning Pack that helps people apply the learning. Drawing together community research, lived experience, locality case studies and system insight from across Greater Manchester, it translates collective learning into practical principles, tools and examples for community-led, system-enabled funding. 

The learning pack turned co-design into something that others can adapt, test and build upon and is now being used to support the next phase of the Live Well Communities Fund and wider ‘Live Well’ system development across Greater Manchester. Rather than starting from scratch, partners can build on shared learning, adapting proven ideas to their own local context.

Community Research and Systems Change

For us, this project demonstrates that co-design can create practical tools that enable change to spread.

The Learning Pack captures the shared knowledge generated through community research, co-production and experimentation across ten localities. By embedding this learning into a practical resource that continues to guide funding decisions, local development and future investment, the value of the project extends far beyond the original programme.

This is how co-design creates lasting systems change. People come together to create something useful, and that shared resource becomes part of how the system learns, makes decisions and continues to evolve.