About Designing Communities

The Designing Communities project gave the people of Pengegon a greater say in the changes they wanted to make to strengthen and improve their community.

Pengegon was chosen because 37% of the adult population on the estate are in receipt of benefits and child poverty is acute, affecting 66% of households in Pengegon and topping the county’s child poverty league.  With income in the lowest 2% of the country and unemployment rates being the highest in West Cornwall, an increase in community morale was both needed and welcomed.

We talked to more than 80 residents in and around Pengegon, enabling them to share their views and build positive ideas about the future. Various design methods were used to raise awareness, encourage community involvement and bring the needs of the community into a public arena, including an article in the community newsletter, a residents’ survey, social documentaries, attendance at residents’ association meetings and opinions published via SMS and blog.

During the initial stages of Designing Communities, Senior Producers Kathryn and Robert Woolf of SEA Communications, supported by CPR Regeneration worked to discover and diagnose the needs of the community and assess the viability of a new community centre. ‘We have found the people of this community to be passionate, forthcoming and enthusiastic about instigating positive changes within the neighbourhood’, said Robert Woolf.

A co-design process

What emerged was not what was expected at the outset of the project. Some of the needs uncovered were quite basic, such as the provision of changing room facilities for the basketball team, or toilet facilities nearer the playing fields. Yet others evolved more slowly over the course of the project such in the shape of more inspirational aspirations for what was possible, once change started to take place.