Endeavouring to co-produce: Insights from interviews with arts therapists

Myerscough, Francis ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9646-5229, Purcell, Catherine ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0301-2555 and Reagon, Carly ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6370-3705 2026. Endeavouring to co-produce: Insights from interviews with arts therapists. The Arts in Psychotherapy 99 , 102463. 10.1016/j.aip.2026.102463

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Abstract

Co-production is a term used to describe processes which require input from more than one person or group, with more recent definitions often adding explicit references to equity or social change. Co-production has attracted scholarly attention in the arts therapies, as well as increasingly finding a place in public policies which impact on arts therapies practice. However, there is a lack of previous research about co-producing the settings through which arts therapies are offered. More general texts about co-production of healthcare and other public services are available, but these do not address the particularities of the arts therapies. This article outlines the concepts identified in a grounded theory methodology research project investigating the co-production of arts therapies provision. Examples are drawn from interviews with six arts therapists (six initial and five follow-up interviews, with three music therapists, two art psychotherapists, and one dramatherapist). The concepts identified convey a complex set of processes which interact with one another in co-production practice. Several of these take the form of tensions which need to be navigated in a co-produced setting. Four concepts which contextualise co-production are meaning-laden-meaning-less, intrinsic-challenging, communities\settings, and complexity. The remaining concepts represent relational processes: empowering-burdening, opening-boundarying, comforting-discomforting, and the intertwined temporal processes of getting on the same page, projecting into the future, and living legacy. In this theory, co-production is less something that is fully achieved, and more an ongoing and evolving practice, captured in one interviewee’s language of co-production as endeavour.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Healthcare Sciences
Publisher:	Elsevier BV
ISSN:	0197-4556
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	13 April 2026
Date of Acceptance:	3 April 2026
Last Modified:	13 Apr 2026 13:15
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/186347

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