Designing Communities

Getting everyone around the table to co-design a better future, Camborne, Pool, Redruth (CPR) Regeneration, commissioned Dott to work with local residents and service providers to identify potential new community services designed to bring about positive changes.

Designing Communities was a project based in Pengegon, Camborne – a neighbourhood named in the top 5% of the country’s most deprived areas. A neighbourhood that has been consulted by support agencies and received investment, but had been described as ‘hard to reach’ with many complex, unmet needs. CPR Regeneration decided to employ the Dott process to better understand some of the issues affecting local residents of the Pengegon Estate. We asked the question ‘What kind of community facilities and services would improve your lives?’ By working with a clearer picture of their needs, some concrete solutions came to light.

Update:

Summary - Why is Designing Communities a good platform on which to build?

The residents already feel that they own the new community centre, even though it doesn’t yet exist.
Claire Arymar, Neighbourhood Manager, Cornwall Council

In five years time, the people of Pengegon may be the proud tenants of a community building – thanks in small part to the Dott methodology that Sea has practiced. Our innovation-led design methodology will have ensured the community building will be sustainable and embedded into the fabric of the community.

Designing Communities has helped to recognize that social innovation within deprived communities is best achieved in partnership, with capable individuals and embedded organisations already performing in the community.

Nevertheless, the real success stories are yet to come in Pengegon through continued co-design. We have observed three ways to take this forward, here and elsewhere, and are developing these opportunities further.

Co-design - The community design day

Following diagnose and co-discovery residents and service providers were invited to attend a “community design day”, together, on the proposed site for a new community building. Senior Design Producer Kathryn Woolf facilitated the event alongside Nigel Stock who is an architect on the Dott design panel.

Following this initial co-design activity, architect Nigel Stock used this information to develop some early stage building space plans for further discussion with the community.

We learnt from this exercise that the community building could be innovative across all iterations of the design and build process – a flagship for Cornwall Council’s approach to community. Through diagnose, co-discovery and co-design, we observed that residents became steadily more focused on their needs and more creative about ways to share spaces as the process develops. The new community centre could be designed to develop, adapt and grow over time - a good metaphor for the community itself.

Visualisation

Using information from the previous stages, a large-scale poster visually summarized the needs of residents, which we used to facilitate discussion and provide opportunities for participants to add new ideas or raise issues.

Space

Service providers were asked how much space would be required for each activity and theme, to help them deliver their services to the community. We also asked them to consider how the space could be shared and maximised between activities.

Sharing

Residents used our floor plan templates to sketch out and write down their ideas of what should go in the community building. Postcards collected ideas for a suitable name for the centre.

Connecting

Following concern from Cornwall Rural Communities Council that “residents seem be asking for lots of things that already exist”, both groups talked about the need to build stronger links for current service and facilities available to residents.

Modelling

Children and parents came after school, they created floor plans and moodboards and made a community centre model out of cake and sweets. This was inspiring and insightful, demonstrating how it is possible to get any community motivated to participate.

Co-design Workshop

The best bit of the day for me was when all the children arrived after school and got busy drawing floor plans and making a community centre out of cake & sweets! This gave me an opportunity to talk to some of the mum’s about the idea of a community centre reward card / loyalty scheme which they thought would work really well. The basic idea being that residents could exchange volunteer time for points that they could cash in for things like cinema tickets, food, electrical goods, travel vouchers etc.

During the workshop everyone decided that the building should be:

ACCESSIBLE, INCLUSIVE, INSPIRING, FRIENDLY, UNDERSTATED, PRACTICAL, FLEXIBLE, INNOVATIVE, SUSTAINABLE, ECO friendly and in keeping the the local environment.

Co-discover: Unearthing hidden talents

In engaging with 200+ residents, the co-discovery phase helped to establish the need, willingness for and potential scope of a community building. Co-discovery provided a positive platform for community engagement and produced a number of headline requirements for services, proving that residents want to and will access services if they are delivered in the right way.

As well as verifying the overwhelming support for a new community centre on the proposed site, co-discovery brought to life the community dynamics in Pengegon. We observed that a community building as an end goal is likely to improve physical well- being and encourage positive behavioural change. We also observed that the means by which we interacted with residents, alongside the focus of a community building, helped to engage previously unengaged residents, and inspired some people to come forward for new challenges.

Focusing on the journey, and not the destination, may be key to unearthing hidden talents.

Films

Six social documentaries were made reflecting the views of many social groups in Pengegon and another social documentary was produced capturing the views of residents and service providers attending the Pengegon Christmas Party.