Alternative imaginings of regulation: An experiment in co-production

Despite decades of regulatory scholarship that took responsive regulation and regulatory space as starting points, much regulatory practice still has little focus on the experiences of those at the ‘sharp end’ of regulation. This article develops some of the insights from a five-year research programme that aimed to explore what regulatory systems might look like if they took seriously the idea of ‘regulating for engagement’, working with community organizations to understand how regulation is experienced ‘at the margins’. We argue that the methodology of co-production expands our ways of knowing by allowing in expertise-by-experience to the deliberative processes of regulation; the creative processes that artists bring in can produce artefacts that have an important role in developing ‘really responsive regulation’.