Lab4Living leads on Special Issue in Evidence & Policy journal

Creativity and Co-production

An interdisciplinary global editorial team, convened by Lab4Living’s Dr Joe Langley, has launched a call for papers for a special issue of journal Evidence & Policy. The editors seek expressions of interest on papers exploring Creativity, Co-production and healthy societies in the context of evidence and policy. Evidence & Policy is an international peer reviewed journal of research, debate and practice.

Evidence & Policy: Special issue topic: Creativity, Co-production (and healthy societies…)

A previous issue of Evidence & Policy has identified a need for focussing on how creativity can be applied to ‘evidence into practice’ debates, and how understanding the roots of and differences between co-creation and co-production will help us to identify their potential contribution to evidence-informed policy and practice.

Through this call, an editorial team convened by Lab4Living with friends from our global Design4Health network therefore aims to explore Creativity and Co-production in the context of ‘evidence into policy and practice’ and its issues of knowledge, power, culture, change, state-of-being and more. This embodies the Lab4Living ethos of sharing knowledge, leading the discourse beyond the boundaries of existing spaces and examining our work through different lenses.

The fields of Health and Design have very different perspectives on what knowledge and evidence are and how they are created. It is important to reflect this in the editorial team. Joe has brought together expertise from across the global network developed through the Design4Health conferences to bring a range of perspectives to this special issue.

Editorial team

  • Dr Joe Langley – Principal Researcher, Lab4Living. Design engineer with interests in co-production and knowledge mobilisation in health and wellbeing.
  • Prof Ian Gwilt – Professor of Design and Visual Communication, UniSA Creative, University of South Australia.
  • Associate Prof Nicola Kayes – Associate Professor of Rehabilitation, Director, Centre for Person Centred Research, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand; Guest editor for Special Issue of Disability and Rehabilitation, past-Associate Editor and expert qualitative reviewer Postgraduate Medical Journal, expert review Rehabilitation Research Review.
  • Prof Erna Snellgrove-Clarke – Vice Dean, Health Sciences & Director, School of Nursing at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada.
  • Prof Claire Craig – Prof in Design and Creative Practice for health, Lab4Living, Sheffield Hallam University; Editor of Design for Health Journal, Editor of Design4Health conference proceedings. Historian and Occupational Therapist.
  • Sarah Smith (aka Smizz) – Artist, Radiotherapist PhD student in Lab4Living using drawing to explore and enhance the experience of therapeutic radiotherapy

Questions to explore in research articles, contemporary debate pieces or articles from practice include:

  • what do we understand by the word ‘evidence’?
  • where are the ‘evidence gaps’?
  • how can creative practices, tangible objects, visual language or constructed cultural experiences bridge these gaps?

Full details are in the Creativity and Coproduction in Evidence & Policy journal: Special issue Call for Expressions of Interest. The editors invite abstracts of 600-700 words by 5th December 2020. Full details on paper formats and submission here.

Those with accepted abstracts will be invited to submit a full paper for double blind review by 31st May 2021.

The editors encourage those interested in submitted to contact j [dot] langley [at] shu [dot] ac [dot] uk or another member of the editorial team in the first instance.