Written by:
Sophia de Sousa
We at The Glass-House are mindful that there is a growing interest in co-design as a valuable approach within the placemaking landscape and beyond. The appetite for co-design has grown considerably over the past few years, yet many still struggle to define it or know where to start when it comes to setting up a co-design process of their own.
Working with our strategic partner The Design Group at The Open University, we have created a series of short animations to help.
- A Brief Introduction to Co-design introduces the concept of co-design: what it is, why it is needed and what role professional designers can play in making it happen.
- Developing a Shared Design Purpose introduces a structured way to facilitate the creation of a shared purpose among participants in a co-design project.
- Connecting Challenges, Assets and Opportunities introduces a technique for generating ideas for design by unearthing and combining individual and collective challenges and assets to create opportunities.
Those in search of co-design approaches and methods might also be interested in our Cross-pollination Resource Pack, which we also developed with The Open University and launched last year.
- The Cross-pollination Resource Pack sets out a practical approach to incubating networks of place-based projects, collaborative research and innovation. The approach is based on the principle of creating a sharing economy of assets (skills, projects and resources) among different people and organisations, across disciplines and sectors.
- We also produced a series of films capturing both how to run a cross-pollination workshop, and stories of communities using it.
It’s wonderful to see the co-design movement growing, and we hope that these resources will help build confidence across sectors to give it a go.