Principles into Practice – The Process
Putting the Guiding Principles into Practice will require ongoing reflection. The diagram and associated text below are intended to provide guidance for how and when to incorporate ES, EDI, and KCP considerations into your ACCESS activities.
Principles into Practice – Some Key Pointers
1. Recognise
- Environmental Sustainability (ES), Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) and Knowledge Co-production (KCP) are integral to our activities within (and beyond) ACCESS
- Incorporating these principles into your work may be challenging and will take time and effort
2. Engage
- Be proactive and engage with these challenges – explore relevant literature and be willing to critique own your (and others’) practices
- Seek out ‘how to’ and ‘best practice’ guidance (see Activity Matrices for encouraged actions and refer to the Further Resources)
- Engage with people who have an interest in the process or will be affected by decisions and plans you make – invite them to contribute and engage in meaningful dialogue
- Seek out marginalised/minoritised voices (who are less likely to be represented in academic journals and other ‘traditional’ forums). If invited to speak or contribute to activities, ensure people are compensated and recognised for their time (e.g., remuneration, co-authorship, leadership positions)
3. Plan
- Plan how to incorporate ES, EDI, and KCP into your ACCESS activities (and beyond), and at all stages of the process
- Consider budget implications for these activities and increase/adapt budget requests accordingly
- Remember that plans will be contextual and activity-specific requiring the use of both appropriate evidence and judgement
- Be mindful of the synergies and potential tensions/trade-offs between ES, EDI, and KCP (see below)
- Where ES, EDI and KCP have not been integrated at an early stage, review activities to determine how they can be embedded in future activities (or included in retrospective reviews/reflections if not considered earlier); better late than never!
4. Implement
- Enact your plans
- Do not be afraid of feeling uncomfortable or making mistakes – be flexible, adaptive and open to feedback and new ways of working
5. Evaluate and Reflect
- Review activities against plans
- No person or process is perfect; examine and acknowledge what went well and what could be improved next time
- Proactively seek feedback and engage in self-reflection
6. Learn, Share and Repeat
- Consider how to best share learnings with wider ACCESS community and beyond
- Incorporate your learnings into planning for future activities
Principles into Practice – Synergies and Trade-offs
As noted above, while the three Guiding Principles of Environmental Sustainability (ES), Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), and Knowledge Co-production (KCP) share a number of common characteristics and operational principles, it is important to recognise that there may also be significant tensions. In some contexts, putting these three principles into practice may reveal clear synergies between them, while in other contexts, it will be apparent that certain trade-offs will need to be made.
Principles into Practice – Making Decisions
These Guiding Principles are not intended to be too prescriptive. When deciding on the best course of action to take – for example, whether to hold a meeting/workshop/event in-person or online – we suggest adopting a considered and balanced approach to decision-making, on a case-by-case basis. In some instances, a hybrid meeting might be an appropriate compromise, in others it might not.
Incorporating the Guiding Principles of Environmental Sustainability (ES), Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) and Knowledge Co-production (KCP) into ACCESS activities will inevitably lead to some tensions arising and trade-offs being made. However, there are more synergies between ES, EDI and KCP than there are tensions. Not all meetings with a co-production requirement need be in-person. Similarly, sustainability considerations do not mean you should never travel to an in-person meeting/conference, even when there are hybrid options.
Adopting new ways of working will sometimes be challenging, and you are not required to always get it right. What you are required to do, however, if you haven’t done so already, is to engage with these issues, reflect on your own current practices and start taking steps to embed the core principles of ES, EDI and KCP into all your activities, across – and if possible, beyond – the ACCESS programme. To this end we hope these Guiding Principles provide inspiration useful guidance.
