Sustain seeks a co-production advisor for Bridging the Gap

What is Bridging the Gap?

Food that is good for people and the planet, benefits communities and supports decent livelihoods is currently more expensive than food that is bad for health and produced in ways that damage the planet. We want to change that by bridging the gap between communities experiencing low incomes and health inequalities, with affordable and planet-friendly food that enables everyone to enjoy a universally healthy, just and sustainable food system.

What are we trying to achieve with co-production?

The programme has a spirit of enquiry, and we want to create and test innovative solutions to complex problems.  The solutions need to not only suits the needs of the communities we’re seeking to serve, be that low-income households, traders, farmers or others involved in the food supply chain but also be shaped and potentially led by them.

 Due to the complex nature of the food system, the time that is needed to tackle it, and the number of people involved in the food system, we want to involve people in the design  and decision making behind the solutions we will test and are planning on setting up a collaboration group consisting of co-advisors to:

• Understand the complexities of the ‘gap’ we are trying to bridge
• Work with experts to identify effective solutions
• Support the evaluation of pilots to understand their efficacy

What support do we need from a consultant?

Sustain have used co-production principles in our work, but would benefit from working with an external person with experience of co-production. We would like a consultant to work with the Bridging the Gap coordinator to:

Review our ideas to date 

• Work with us and our partners to identify and refine our ideas and create our collaboration group and support recruitment of co-advisors (working names)
• Codesign and run 2-3 workshops to create a shared understanding among the group and design a co-production process for the development of pilot interventions.  We envisage at least one and maybe twho of these would be in person, so travel may be required.
• Design and support the delivery 2-4 workshops for co-advisors to co-produce pilot interventions
• Suggest an evaluation plan for the collaboration group which the Sustain coordinator can use to monitor the impact throughout the programme.

Budget and timelines

We have a budget of £5000 (including VAT and travel) available for this and would like the work to start as soon as possible in 2022. We anticipate this will involve 10 – 14 days of work over a 4 – 6 month period.

How to apply

We are inviting early stage submissions and conversations before the 17th October, but may seek further applications after this date.

If you would like to be considered as part of this first stage then please submit a proposal stating your experience or CV and outline your approach to the work, and email to bridgingthegap@sustainweb.org by Monday 17th October, 5pm.