Agenda 2 - Community Planning

We see our role as co-authors of the places we create, and we believe better places are shaped by the people who are connected to them. We want to create places that reflect the personalities and values of the people who will use them. To achieve this we design through a process of dialogue and co-creation. We start by asking questions, playing games and testing scenarios. We design together: informed by the ideas and ambitions everyone brings to the project.

From this emerges buildings and spaces full of playfulness and spirit - celebrating uniqueness and difference and resonating with the people that live/work/play in them. Putting people at the centre of the process creates stronger communities, better and more sustainable buildings and healthier and happier lives.

We are urbanists and bring our skills of assessing, designing, and curating places to the strategies we create - but our work with communities has led us to question the term ‘masterplanning’. Traditional processes can be reflective of a top-down approach. The very term ‘masterplan’ implies that a designer assumes a masterly stance. Instead, we feel our strategies only become plans when communities have been involved. One example of this is the Mistress Plan, created with Nudge Community Builders.

The importance of engaging positively with the people and communities who will use or live close to a project can't be overstated. We aim to go beyond traditional 'consultation' to bring communities inside the design process as partners and co-creators. We facilitate structured workshops, use games, modelling, drawings, and action based role plays to engage an array of co-creators from young to old and local to national. We lead this process for our own projects as well as support larger practices and teams on collaborative bids and delivery. Our skill lies in turning the engagement into meaningful and measurable outcomes