Here are some of the things that I’ve learnt along the way:

As with any co-design it’s always important to co-design the co-design approach with people:

Create a rough idea of how you could run a workshop or research chat and run it past some children and young people, co-design core activities to make sure they will be fun, engaging and the right fit for different ages!

Getting children and young people moving is a great way to keep up engagement and get discussions started:

I often play a game where I ask everyone to stand in the middle of the room and then I give them options eg “stand to the left if you like chocolate ice cream and stand to the right if you prefer vanilla ice cream” (I’m always surprised at how many people choose vanilla!) This is a great ice breaker but also a great way into understanding peoples thoughts. You can ask research questions like “Would you prefer to have a space for arts and crafts on the children’s ward or a place to play games” you then get a discussion going and some people can stand in the middle and say “well actually I think XYZ”. There is something really powerful about getting people up and about - it makes co-design workshops feel more free, different from school and children really love coming up with some silly options also to ask the group to choose from, so that’s always fun way to end a session. 

Safe guarding, support and consent:

Under the age of 18 you need parental consent and as well as consent from the child. You should aim to co-design consent forms with children and young people of different age groups to help ensure they enable someone to make an informed decision about taking part. 

It’s often best to arrange a workshop through an existing group in a space that they are already familiar with- this might be a sports group or an after school club. 

Trying to recruit children under the age of 18 to join a workshop can be really challenging and you have to be very careful if you try to do that online as you have the potential of someone pretending to be child and trying to join a workshop. Unfortunately you need to think about the worst case scenario and make a plan that minimises those risks to help ensure you keep everyone safe. 

Different approaches for different age ranges:

Someone aged 14 and someone aged 17 will engage with something in a really different way so you need to consider adapting research approaches for different age ranges and ideally have no more of an age gap of 2/3 years in a workshop where possible. 

Having art and craft materials is always helpful, thinking through creating is often something children and young people are far better at than adults:

Some of the most imaginative co-design sessions I have run have been with children and young people. I once played the game “100 ways to squeeze a lemon” where everyone comes up with as many wild ways of squeezing a lemon as they can and one young person suggested a stampede of Chihohuas. I just love this. 

I always bring play-do, bring colouring pencils, glue, stickers, pom poms. I’ve found that they are often enjoyed and helpful. 

Hope that’s helpful!

This is just a few things on the top of my mind from some recent projects but we are running a Service Lab event soon focused on design with children and young people so will share more learnings soon. This event is already sold out now but I will share video from the event so that you can access the learnings there!