PAUL STEPCZAK
Helping organisations work with people, not on them.
Community participation • Co-design • Co-production
How I can help · How I work · In practice · Frameworks · Book · Contact
How I can help
I help organisations involve people more meaningfully in the decisions, services and ideas that affect them.
Community Engagement
Helping organisations build stronger relationships with communities, understand what matters to people and create meaningful ways for them to shape decisions.
Co-design & co-production
Helping organisations move from doing things to or for people towards designing, delivering and owning things with them.
Workshops & facilitation
Practical workshops that bring people together to explore challenges, generate ideas and turn conversation into action.
Engagement strategy
Helping organisations think differently about participation, diagnose where engagement is getting stuck and design a better way forward.
How I work
Work with people.
Not on them. Not to them.
Good participation is about more than asking people what they think. It is about changing the relationship.I help organisations create the conditions for communities and people with lived experience to influence, shape and share ownership of the decisions, services and ideas that affect them.
Why work with me
Community participation isn't something I've learned from a textbook. I've spent more than 20 years doing it.
I've worked inside communities, alongside public services and with organisations trying to involve people differently.That means I bring together lived experience, community development practice and practical co-design - helping organisations turn participation from something they do into something that changes how they work.
20+ years community development and participation experience
Co-design in practice facilitating real challenges with communities and organisations
Practitioner, not just adviser My methods have been shaped through doing the work, testing what works and learning from what doesn't
Read my thinkingI write The Participation Paper, where I share practical ideas, frameworks and lessons about community participation, co-design and co-production.Click to read The Participation Paper
Work in practice
I use these approaches in real settings - helping communities, organisations and services work through live challenges, develop ideas together and move towards action.
Social hackathons, community ideas days & co-design workshops
I co-design and facilitate practical events that bring communities, organisations and services together around a shared challenge.The process helps people map strengths, explore the issue, generate and test ideas, build prototypes and agree what should happen next.The outcome is more than a sketch of an idea. Alongside practical ideas and prototypes, the events capture rich, grounded insight, build shared understanding across different perspectives, create new relationships and networks, and provide an evidence base to support what happens next.
Nearly 90 events
Co-designed and delivered across community and public-service settings.Built around real challenges
Participants work on live issues that genuinely matter to the people involved.Recognised collaboration practice
Awarded in 2025 by the Institute for Collaboration for collaborative work across sectors.
Who I work with
I work with organisations that want people to have a more meaningful role in shaping what happens.That includes public services, third sector organisations, social enterprises and partnerships working with communities.
Public services & partnerships
When you need communities and people with lived experience to help shape services, priorities or decisions.Voluntary sector & social enterprises
When you want to strengthen participation, co-design something new or rethink how you work with the people you support.Communities & cross-sector groups
When different people and organisations need to come together around a shared challenge and find a way forward.
Got something you're trying to work through?
You don't need to know exactly what you need yet.If you're trying to involve communities or people with lived experience more meaningfully, improve the way participation happens, or bring people together around a challenge, let's have a conversation.Email me: [email protected]
Click to connect with me on LinkedIn Limited consultancy capacity available.
Frameworks for better participation
Practical frameworks shaped through more than 20 years of community work, co-design and facilitation.
The Impact Iceberg
Outputs are visible. Impact isn’t. Trust, relationships and ownership sit beneath the surface - and that’s often where lasting change begins.Ask: what’s changing, and for whom?
When Community Engagement Hits a Brick Wall
When engagement stalls, changing the method may not solve the problem. First examine the conditions around trust, relevance, relationships, capacity and motivation.Ask: What's really stopping people from taking part?
The Community Memory Cycle
Every experience of engagement shapes what people expect next. What happens this time can strengthen trust - or reinforce scepticism next time.Ask: What will people remember about this experience?
Becoming More Co-productive
Co-production isn't something a project either passes or fails. It's a direction of travel shaped by co-design, co-delivery, co-ownership, equity and reciprocity over time.Ask: What would make this project more co-productive?
The Shared Responsibility Model
Lasting change rarely sits with one actor. Institutions, communities and individuals each bring different strengths - the best possibility comes when they work together.Ask: Whose responsibility are we currently overlooking?
Growing a Community Movement
Community movements aren't built through one engagement exercise. They grow through shared purpose, continuous learning, widening participation and increasing community ownership.Ask: Are we building participation - or the conditions for something to grow?
I'm writing a book about community participation.
Twenty years of lessons from working with communities and organisations - about trust, relationships, power and what happens when we genuinely work with people rather than simply involving them.It's practical, grounded in experience and currently being written.
Want to follow its progress?
I'll occasionally share new frameworks, practical ideas and updates from the book.No noise. Just useful things when I have something worth sharing.
Your email will only be used for updates about my book. Unsubscribe anytime. I won't sell your details or share them with other organisations for their marketing.
Privacy noticeWhen you sign up for book updates, I collect your email address so I can occasionally send you news, ideas, frameworks and updates relating to my book on community participation.I use your information on the basis of your consent. You can withdraw that consent at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link in any email.Your email address is stored and processed using Kit, the email service I use to manage this mailing list. I will not sell your information or share it with other organisations for their own marketing.I will keep your email address while you remain subscribed. If you unsubscribe, I will stop using it to send you book updates, although limited information may be retained where necessary to record your opt-out.You have rights over your personal information, including the right to access it, correct it, ask for it to be deleted and withdraw your consent.The data controller is Paul Stepczak Community Consulting. If you have any questions about how your information is used, you can contact me at [email protected].You also have the right to raise a concern with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO).