An example of their impact is the #Right2CleanAir Road Show, which came out of the second phase of their work.
They partnered with the Thailand Clean Air Network to raise awareness and encourage action in different ways, including:
- A ‘Clean Air Blue Paper’ evidence-based case for policy change
- 10 online and offline sessions in English and Thai, on topics like:
- economic costs of air pollution
- the impact of air pollution
- gaps between current and proposed solutions
- Creative responses to things like:
- gaps in the current system
- democratizing the access to air quality
- A petition to parliament signed by over 25,000 people in support of a Clean Air Act
How they work
They take a whole-systems approach to designing for complex issues.
- Co-initializing – Groups with diverse perspectives work together to gather and share information about the problem
- Co-sensing – Examine the data to uncover the driving forces behind the issues, and identify points where they could intervene
- Co-creation – Prototype, test and iterate on ideas developed in the first 2 stages
- Co-evolution – Groups come back together to share what they’ve learned, with each other and with new connections they have made
Source
The study involved 13 peer researchers (also known as community researchers) and 38 community members experiencing energy poverty.
Findings
Key findings were:
- Awareness of what people need to do to transition their household to a net zero is low
- The expense of green choices could make inequality in the energy market worse
- Private rental and social housing tenants do not have the power to make green adaptations to their homes
- Low-income consumers will not be able to transition to net zero unless barriers to smart technology are removed
- Energy companies need to get better at proactively identifying and supporting vulnerable consumers
Recommendations for Ofgem
They recommended that Ofgem (the energy regulator for Great Britain) should:
- make energy companies offer a ‘green social tariff’
- encourage energy companies do more to identify and support vulnerable consumers, backed up by Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
- explore how tenants can be given more power to make green energy changes to their homes
- commission research into how low-income consumers can feel more confident with smart technology
- drive more inclusive communications practices in the energy sector
Outcomes
Iterative workshops led to:
- a communication strategy
- 3 roadmaps for:
- increasing awareness of green energy options
- identifying and helping vulnerable consumers
- promoting access to green technology among low-income groups
Source
It:
- is volunteer-led and citizen-driven, with over 500 members
- has a flat governance structure with no director
- uses micro-grants to pay for materials, and volunteers to run events like panel discussions, design workshops and pop-ups
- investigates and creates prototypes for local problems chosen by the community
Topics they’ve tackled
Their first project was on Bangkok’s waste management system. There was no grand plan upfront.
They just started doing what they could with the resources they had. Then they built on momentum and enthusiasm using small grants to keep going and expanding their work.
Phase 1
In the first phase, they worked on:
- people’s mindsets
- single-use plastic
- food waste and recycling
Phase 2
In the second phase 3 months later (with support from the Royal Society of the Arts) they added:
- air pollution
- unsustainable fashion supply chains
Phase 3
Next (with support from The Incubation Network) they worked on:
- ocean plastics
- food system
Source
The Story Cube is a tool you can use to start inclusive innovation conversations and facilitate co-creation sessions:
It can help you:
engage diverse groups and foster a collaborative environment
gather information about participants’ – essential for designing inclusive and innovative solutions to their problems
The cube has 6 sides, each with a different conversation starter. People roll the dice, then start chatting about whatever the dice tells them to!
1. Self portrait
Draw a self-portrait. This encourages people to express themselves creatively.
2. Skills
Circle the tools you are familiar with, from a choice including things like hammers, sewing machines and computers. This helps understand people’s existing skill sets.
3. Daily life
Draw a typical day in your life. This gives insights into their daily routines and the challenges they face.
4. Environment
List details about your surroundings and community.
5. Aspirations
Share your dreams and aspirations. Helps understand people’s goals and motivations.
6. Challenges and barriers
List the challenges and barriers you face. Helps co-create solutions that are relevant and impactful.
Source
This method will help the Community Engagement events you organise so you’ve planned and organised your engagement event. If you haven’t, come back after you’ve read the section on planning and organising an event!
Now you just need to make the planning all worthwhile for you and your participants. It’s time to learn the art of facilitation.
Facilitation is how you conduct the workshop. It’s about managing, motivating and inspiring your group.
Good facilitators:
- tell a story about that helps people understand why they’re there and what’s expected of them
- prime participants with the information they need to contribute
- listen carefully
- are unbiased
- make sure the group stays on track, but guide the conversation, rather than taking control or showing off their knowledge
- know when to move on or change tack
Practicalities on the day
- Make sure you’ve got all the stuff you need to run the activities you’ve planned. You don’t want to interrupt the flow by going off hunting for missing pens and sticky notes
- Share an agenda and timetable. Let everyone know what to expect
- Use a warm-up exercise to set the tone and alleviate any tension people might be feeling. Choose an exercise that involves the kind of thinking you want to encourage for the rest of the event
- Some people may be more familiar with the topic than others. Bring everyone up to speed, so everyone can contribute
- Some activities could be a big jump for some participants, so build the group up to maximise their potential. For example, do a problem-framing exercise before a problem-solving exercise
- Sometimes it is useful to give participants space to work on their own before coming back together as a group to share, reflect and discuss
- Give the group a break if your event is longer than an hour. If it is a whole day, give them multiple breaks including lunch
- Give people a way to give you feedback after the event, so you can do even better next time
Thinking about your audience
Think carefully about who is in the room:
- Children might be more open with people closer to their age. Depending on their age, children might be more open with or without parents or carers there
- If you’re talking with an excluded or underrepresented group, the demographics of the facilitators might alter their engagement
- People might be less willing to honestly share opinions if their bosses or other authority figures are present
Being agile and reactive
Good planning will help the workshop go smoothly. But don’t expect everything to go to plan. Common challenges include:
- conversations going off-topic, going on too long, or going round in circles
- conflicting opinions or conflicts over language
- negativity and internal politics
- some people dominating the discussion – make sure every person in the room gets heard
- technical issues
Stay sharp, and if any of these happen to you, you might need to react and intervene!
This method helps you make sure your engagement events themselves are accessible and inclusive – not just its outcomes.
It is simply the right thing to do ethically. But it will also give you better results, that are more representative of the people you are designing for.
Here are some basic guidelines for both online and in-person events:
- If you use visual prompts, make sure there is high enough contrast between text and background colour
- Use alternative text descriptions (alt text) for images
- Send out an agenda and timetable in advance, including when any breaks are planned
- Some people might ask to see more details ahead of time
- Be flexible and allow more time for activities if you need to
- If someone doesn’t speak the language you are running the sessions in, you will need an interpreter
- Offer options and alternatives to the group before as well as during the session – some people might not want to tell you about their needs in front of other attendees
Online sessions
- If you are planning a session, workshop or other event online, check beforehand that your technology is accessible to everyone you’ve invited
- Some of the tools in this guide use virtual whiteboards like Mural or Miro. Some aspects of these can be difficult to use for some people.
- Use a variety of different-shaped sticky notes, so anyone who is colourblind can tell them apart
- Put a grid in the background to make it easier for people to find their way around the board
- Ask everyone to put their own name on their cursor
- Hiding cursors can help prevent motion sickness
In-person sessions
- Make sure the environment is accessible and comfortable for everyone. Is the venue accessible for wheelchair users and therapy pets? Also think about noise, light and temperature
- Let people sit if they need to. And if you’re sticking things on the wall, put them at an accessible height for everyone
- Use a variety of different-shaped sticky notes
This method will help you plan your Community Engagement events to get the best out of the people you invite.
Why you should do it
- Working with people helps you create things for them. This is more effective than making assumptions about what they need, a key goal of inclusive innovation
- Taking part in events gives people the chance to share their nuanced perspectives and experiences
- If you invite a diverse group of people to your event you will understand your problem from a richer and more inclusive point of view
- Watching people as well as listening to them can give you an insight into unspoken attitudes and behaviours as well as the things people tell you directly
- You get a chance to see people disagree with each other and work through their differences, helping you reach consensus and agreement
Number of attendees
There is no set limit for how many people can attend an event. If you have more than about 8 people, we recommend breaking out into groups of 4 to 8 people for activities.
Resources you need
You will need at least one facilitator (and maybe more for a big event).
For an in-person event you might need:
- tables for group work
- paper, pens or pencils, sticky notes
- anything else you need for your activities, like glue, scissors, Sellotape, Blu-Tak, magazines, Lego
- drinks and snacks, if your event is going to last a while
This might look like a list for primary school students. But in fact, activities that use things like glue, scissors and Lego are great for adults too. They can help open up different ways of thinking that don’t just rely on discussion and writing.
For an online event, you will need to choose and set up:
- videoconferencing software, like Zoom, Teams or Google Meet
- an online whiteboard if you want one, like Mural or Miro
Always make sure all your activities are accessible to all your attendees, and come up with alternative ways for people to take part. See our guidelines on running accessible sessions for tips on making sure nobody is excluded.
Organising your event
Start planning as soon as possible – ideally 6 to 8 weeks in advance.
Choose a date:
- Make sure there isn’t a competing event at the same time for the same group of people
- Or maybe you can tag your engagement onto an existing event, for example a community event that is already happening with a group you want to talk to
- Consider school holidays, travel logistics, and anything else that could impact people’s availability
Find a place (for in-person events):
- Make it as easy as possible for people to get to your event
- Think about locations your attendees already use, like a local community centre
- Consider physical accessibility like wheelchair access
- But don’t forget about other types of accessibility needs, like light, noise and temperature
Find out who you need to speak to, to check availability and book your space.
Invite the people:
- People are busy, so the sooner you send out invites the better
- For tips on finding the right people, see our advice on finding and building a network
- You may need to go back and tweak the dates, location and other arrangements until you find the sweet spot that works for the most people
This method will help you find the people you need to innovate in an inclusive way in your community.
Most of the tools in this guide need you to work with people outside your organisation. If you already have an established network to call on, then great. If you don’t, you will have to do some work to find and build one. It will be well worth your time.
Understanding who’s out there
The first step is to look around you and see which local organisations exist who might be able to help you.
- If you’re not already working for them, contact your local councils or unitary authorities. They can be useful in themselves, but can also help you find other people and organisations to talk to
- Find policies and reports that are relevant to your area. As well as being useful background information, they will often mention, be sponsored by or co-written by organisations you can get in touch with
- Look for bodies who fund schemes related to your area, and find out which organisations they are funding
- Organisations like Connected Places Catapult exist to bring others together and promote collaboration. Talk to us!
- Go to events. Even if the topic of the event is not 100% relevant to your work, they are great opportunities to network and make new connections
- Get yourself in the room where it happens. Spread the word that you are interested and available. Invite yourself to policy discussions as early as possible
- But to be truly inclusive, you don’t just want to talk to official organisations. You’ll need to find grassroots community groups, or if they don’t exist, set up your own
Organisations to try
- Your local city, county and district councils or unitary authorities
- Local enterprise partnerships
- Chambers of commerce
- Industry leading businesses
- Schools, colleges and universities
- Local community groups
This method helps you go beyond talking to people about their needs, to fully bringing them into the whole design process.
Words like co-design are often misunderstood or misused. Co-planning, co-design and co-delivery mean truly involving people every step of the way, and crucially, handing power over to them so that their input is not just a superficial box-ticking exercise.
Giving away power like this can be scary for organisations, but it leads to more successful results.
Co-planning
Co-planning means starting to work with people to plan your whole project, before you even get to the design stage.
It helps you:
- understand the local context
- prepare people for effective Community Engagement at the next stage
Things to do
- Use stakeholder mapping to make sure you engage a diverse group of people, and make a special effort to include people who are too-often ignored
- Consider the environment, not just humans, in your planning. This means animals, plants, rivers and the air we breathe. It also includes man-made infrastructure that we depend on, like buildings, roads and bridges.
- Build your core team, drawing on staff, stakeholders, community groups and organisations
- Give people specific responsibilities for things like the project brief and gathering feedback
- Review the results of any previous engagement activities
- Find out as much as you can about local issues, beliefs, needs and challenges
- Agree what you will do in the following co-design step
- Set timescales and deadlines, and allocate time and money (including fair compensation for people you engage with)
- Think about how you will make your engagement inclusive, for example to disabled people, people with childcare responsibilities, or who speak different languages
- Produce and share a co-plan report for feedback
Co-design
Co-design means designing together with your community, instead of just designing for them. Decisions should be taken together, not imposed on people.
Things to do
- Run engagements like meetings, workshops and community pop-ups with the diverse community members and stakeholders that you identified in the co-planning stage
- Don’t just go away and design on your own, you should be actually designing during those sessions
- Be aware of and take account of things like power dynamics and mistrust during your sessions
- Keep track of what you do and how you are making sure you have diverse and equitable community representation
- Agree clear roles and responsibilities, next steps and timelines for the following co-delivery step
Co-deliver
Co-delivery means involving communities in the delivery, running and governance of services, not just in their design.
Things to do
- Create delivery plans
- Get time and money to support ongoing community involvement
- Understand what skills members of the community already have, and invite experts to upskill them and staff
- Make continuity plans for when people have to leave the project
- Continue to engage less heard communities, even if they can’t get involved in co-delivery
- Be clear who is accountable for governance and monitoring
Ongoing processes
You can also communicate about and evaluate the success of your project in similar ways.
Co-communicate
Use existing ways that communities communicate to share information and updates widely and consistently.
Co-evaluate
Involve communities in evaluating success, based on metrics and outcomes that you have identified together. Make sure you consider inclusion and equity in your evaluation.
Source
Though the report is focussed on net zero, the guidelines are applicable to a much wider range of inclusive innovation projects.
The methods and case studies under the theme of Community Engagement will help you:
- involve people in the decisions that affect their lives
- design policies, services, systems or products that are more equitable, sustainable and regenerative
- build trust with and empower people and their communities
Effective engagement
Effective engagement means more than just telling people what you are doing. It actively brings people into the design process, to tap deeply into their lived experience and local knowledge.
If you don’t engage with people, you risk creating the wrong thing, that they don’t actually want or need. Or worse, doing something that they actively reject or is damaging.
This kind of engagement is especially important when you are creating something in an area where there is considerable historic and even intergenerational mistrust, for example policing.
Communities are diverse
A community is not a single creature with one set of beliefs, needs, priorities and challenges. The people who make up a community are different, even if they might they look similar from the outside.
It is important that you take the time to understand the differences within a community, even if you are only engaging in what seems like a community of like-minded people.
Communities are diverse
A community is not a single creature with one set of beliefs, needs, priorities and challenges. The people who make up a community are different, even if they might they look similar from the outside. It is important that you take the time to understand the differences within a community, even if you are only engaging in what seems like a community of like-minded people.
Source
Though the report is focussed on net zero, the effective Community Engagement guidelines are applicable to a much wider range of inclusive innovation projects.
