Ketso
The University of Manchester
Who would you like to contact?
Dr Joanne Tippett
Academic, venture lead
Joanne.tippett@manchester.ac.uk
Problem
Workshops and meetings often feel inefficient, with some people talking over each other. At the same time some feel unable to speak up, so the loudest voices dominate. Valuable insights are missed when we don’t hear the voices of everyone involved. Stakeholder buy-in is diminished when people don’t feel heard.
Solution
Ketso is a hands-on toolkit kit for learning and engagement. Each component of the toolkit is designed to embody a key principle of co-production, identified and tested through ESRC-funded research.
Ketso facilitates participation by marginalised groups and enables a deeper understanding of their lived experience and needs, leading to improved plans and processes. “The most useful aspect of Ketso is giving people without power a voice…Without Ketso, I would have used more traditional methods of doing focus groups and trying to record those conversations on flip charts. I would have lost voices and not heard from the quiet people. (SeeME Scotland Programme Manager – Communities).
Ketso is reusable and sustainable. It streamlines and simplifies what is often a complex process of engagement: “We achieved in days what would normally have taken weeks, if not months. I know I couldn’t have got the same results with flip charts or sticky notes” (Group President, PeerVoice, a global medical education firm).
Launched as a social business in 2009, Ketso has demonstrated clear beneficial impacts in: community planning, environment, health and wellbeing, social inclusion, business development and education (with over 70 peer-reviewed articles and two REF Impact case studies).
Sustainable Development Goals addressed
Some facts:
- Ketso was the first spin-off company to emerge from ESRC-funded research.
- The word ‘ketso’ means ‘action’ in Lesotho, where the kit was invented in the mid-1990s.
- Ketso has been used in over 80 countries, on every continent apart from Antarctica, and is used in over half the universities in the UK.
- Some of the components of the kit are created from offcuts from the carpet manufacturing business.
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