Who Owns the Story?

By Caroline Robbins, Joint Acting Head of Creative and Head of Content

Why co-production is how we tell it properly

When someone trusts us with their lived experience, we inherit two responsibilities: to tell the story accurately, and to ensure the process of telling it does not cause further harm.

At BFBS Creative, we tell different kinds of stories. Every one of them is true. And many of them are hard; grief, moral injury, gender-based violence, the loss of colleagues, the long shadows difficult experiences can cast.

One of the most reliable ways to hold both responsibilities at once is through real co-production, working with contributors as partners, so they have meaningful control over how their story is shaped and shared.

Co-production is often talked about as if it is a “nice to have”. In practice, it is a form of professional rigour.

The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) definition is clear: co-production is an approach in which professionals and members of the public work together sharing power and responsibility from the start to the end of a project, and it is explicitly “much more than consultation or collaboration”. That emphasis matters in communications, because it draws a line between stories that are merely checked by the people who lived them, and stories that are genuinely told with them. It requires us to rethink who holds expertise.

People are the experts of their own lives

In communications, we often talk about “capturing voices” or “telling lived experience stories”. But lived experience is not a raw material to be shaped solely by professional judgement. It is a form of expertise in its own right. UK co-production guidance stresses the importance of valuing different kinds of knowledge equally and addressing imbalances of power that traditionally sit with institutions. When we do this well, we don’t just make stories more ethical. We make them more truthful.

This becomes even more important when stories involve trauma. UK policy and research increasingly emphasise the need for trauma-informed approaches. The UK Government’s working definition describes trauma-informed practice as an approach that recognises the impact of trauma, adapts practice accordingly, and works in partnership with individuals to support choice and control. In practice, this means creating conditions where people feel safe enough to share their experiences without being harmed by the process.

What co-production looks like in communications

It starts with making the “power agreement” explicit early on: agreeing where the story will appear, what the audience is, what the risks are, and which decisions the contributor can genuinely influence, and being clear that at any point, the contributor can decide they don’t actually feel comfortable sharing their story at all. That transparency is central to trauma-informed practice, because predictability and informed choice are part of psychological safety. It is also central to NIHR’s co-production approach, which emphasises shared ownership and clarity of roles throughout the work.

It continues with interview and production choices that centre the contributor’s expertise. Trauma can affect memory and expression; careful, respectful interviewing recognises this and prioritises the person’s control over pace, breaks, and what they choose to disclose. But beyond technique, co-production is about co-shaping meaning: the contributor should have genuine influence over framing, language, what context is necessary, and what details are private. That’s the difference between accuracy as “fact-checking” and accuracy as “getting the truth of the experience right.”

And finally, co-production includes reciprocity and care. NIHR is explicit that everyone involved should benefit, and that relationship-building is not incidental; it is part of the work. Care extends to teams too: repeated exposure to traumatic accounts can create vicarious trauma, and guidance in violence-related research stresses this as an ethical, organisational responsibility, not an individual weakness. In a storytelling environment, this means building in debriefing, peer support, and realistic timelines, not as “extra”, but as safeguards for quality and humanity.

Why this matters for BFBS Creative

Co-production is sometimes misunderstood as slowing down production. In reality, it can prevent the kind of harm that costs far more: damaged trust, re-traumatisation, withdrawal of consent, reputational risk and, most importantly, people left feeling used rather than heard. Co-production also improves the work. When people are treated as experts of their own lives, stories become more precise, more grounded, and more credible; nuance replaces stereotype; context replaces assumption.

At BFBS Creative, “telling stories properly” means the truth is not only accurate, but ethically held. True co-production is how we do that. It is how we share power with the people who lend us their lives, so that the act of telling is more likely to be empowering than re-traumatising. And it is how we earn the right to say: these stories are true, and they were told with the people who lived them, not simply about them.

Stories are not just content. They are how people make sense of their lives. The impact of telling a story, sharing an experience and trusting someone with a memory cannot be understated. Both the person and their story must always be respected and treated with the dignity they deserve.

A quick co-production checklist for communicators

If you can’t answer “yes” to most of these, it’s probably consultation rather than co-production:

Power: have we explicitly agreed what decision the contributor can shape?
Choice: can the contributor choose anonymity, topics, boundaries and pace? Do they know they can withdraw at any point without ramifications or judgement
Transparency: have we clearly explained the process, audience and constraints?
Co-shaping: did the contributor influence framing, language and meaning, rather than just factual detail?
Reciprocity: does the contributor gain something, such as recognition, safety, empowerment or connection?
Care: do we have a plan to minimise harm for the contributor and for our team?