Written by:
Sophia de Sousa
I may be showing my age, but it’s astonishing to me that we are now in 2026. The world and events are moving at an extraordinary pace. At the same time, it feels like we are slipping dangerously backwards in some ways.
Fifty years ago, Stevie Wonder launched an urgent call to action with his song Love’s In Need Of Love Today on his 1976 album Songs in the Key of Life. His moving lyrics, which spoke of the dangers of hatred gaining momentum and the importance of our collective investment in love and peace, seem more relevant than ever. It really does feel like we all just need to try a little harder to combat the movements of hatred and bigotry that seem to be growing at pace across the globe. I don’t want to get political, and instead speak from a position of the values that are important to me. I think we should all be asking ourselves what each of us can do, in both our personal and professional lives, to proactively champion and support people working together for common good.
Here are three key values we are planning to champion at The Glass-House Community Led Design this year:
1. Generosity
Organisations are often encouraged to protect competitive advantage and not let others beat us to the punch. However, there is a lot we can be generous about no matter how we choose to position ourselves in the marketplace. This is particularly true when it comes to knowledge exchange. It is both a wonderful thing and makes good business sense to share learning with others. Doing so helps build robustness and catalyses innovation within both movements and industries. We will all inevitably adopt and apply that learning slightly differently, and that is what will help us remain distinct, but sharing knowledge helps us all.
At the Glass-House, we have always approached our work with a commitment to sharing what we learn. In the coming year, we will be looking across 25 years of activity to identify more stories, learning and resources that we can make available to others. Our intention is to inspire and empower as many people as possible to have a go at what we do, adapt and evolve it, and ultimately, progress the movement of community leadership and cross-sector collaboration in design and placemaking.
We have learnt, and continue to learn so much from the communities who invite us into their projects and spaces to work with them in a variety of ways. It is striking that no matter what form our collaboration takes, we are treated with kindness, respect, appreciation and above all generosity. We look forward to continuing to work with communities in 2026.
Our online Glass-House Chats and Research Rooms events will continue to create informal spaces for conversation and knowledge exchange with us, our partners and a great spectrum of both co-hosts and participants from different places, disciplines and sectors. Here too, we are repeatedly struck by the incredible generosity of those attending, who share their experiences and learning with us and with each other so openly.
I personally, will be creating more space for conversation and sharing. As well as playing an active role in all of our events, I will be making myself available as a critical friend through our Ask The Glass-House initiative. This protects regular space in my diary for people to come and pick my brain and bounce ideas around with no strings or fees attached. For what it’s worth, I encourage people to take up the offer.
2. Collaboration
We are hyper-aware of the challenges being faced by partner organisations across sectors, and the communities we all work with. Through collaborative action, we can certainly do more together than we could alone. However, successful collaborative action relies on a generosity of spirit as well as sharing resources.
A university tutor recently told me that she begins every briefing session for students taking on group projects with the recommendation that they should be kind to each other. Despite and because of their differences, they should assume the best, rather than the worst of others when misunderstandings or unexpected challenges emerge. The same can be said of any collaboration. Most of us are doing the best we can.
As we work with partners and communities through our projects and programmes this year, we will do our best to give people the space and time to collaborate as is possible for them and be clear about our own challenges and limitations. We will also commit to reciprocity, and do our best to ensure that every collaboration brings benefit to all those involved.
Our ongoing strategic partnership with The Open University’s Design Group as well as our enduring partnerships with so many others across sectors and places are invaluable to The Glass-House, and we are hugely grateful to all our partners and collaborators who continue to work with us across our programmes.
3. Experimentation
Necessity is the mother of invention, and despite our challenges, we should continue to try new things, learn from these new experiences and then reflect, evolve, connect and share with others.
This year, having recently introduced co-hosts into Glass-house Chats, and launched both Ask The Glass-House and our new series of Research Rooms with The Open University, we are also trying a couple of new things with our 2025/26 WEdesign programme, Multigenerational Places.
The first is to experiment with a student design competition with our partner Newcastle University. Our brief for students in their School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape will not be to design a building or a space, but instead, to design a process for engaging people in design across generations. The students will share their ideas at our event Multigenerational Places: Newcastle on 10 March. We will then share them through our networks.
Another innovation for this series of WEdesign is that our accompanying series of Multigenerational Places Think Pieces is being co-curated with the Intergenerational National Network. This has helped inject a whole range of new voices and thinking into our networks and conversations.
Every year, we share our WEdesign series through blogs and publications. For the first time, we will also produce a Multigenerational Places Manifesto, a call to action for communities, practitioners and policy makers alike which draws on the voices, ideas and recommendations of those participating across the series.
So bring on 2026; there is a lot to do. But as we all hunker down and deliver, let’s also remember that our workplaces, communities and the people we encounter all need a bit of kindness and generosity mixed in. This can help fuel collaborative action and innovation built on respect and reciprocity.