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Designing for citizen engagement Understanding how people support each other in daily life both through formal and informal volunteering and how to enhance that

HEI: Lancaster UniversityCourse(s)/Research body: MA Design Management, Module ‘Design Thinking and Research Methods’Main Partners: Lancaster City CouncilPlace: Lancaster

Keywords: service design, citizen engagement

The context:

This research project aimed at helping the Local Council to better understand the dynamics, conditions and forms of spontaneous and informal mutual help within communities as well as formal volunteering in both a rural and urban area, and to use this knowledge to improve their service infrastructure and provision to become more open and collaborative.

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project develop? what were some of the key outputs and outcomes?

Students in groups worked with different existing communities and initiatives both Council led and not. They then reported on reasons for citizens’ engagement and what the Council could do or use to improve their work: i.e. less hierarchical communication strategy, a digital credit system for time bank, guidelines for reinforcing community spirit, cross generational activities, etc.

Actor Profile: Lancaster City Council

Motivations for involvement (agendas): Lancaster City Council is exploring new approaches to citizen engagement and participation into local governance and service provision. The interaction with citizens is transforming, because of changing demands, limited resources and the advent of new social media that challenge traditional ways of communication and decision-making.

Contribution to the project (assets): Contacts with local communities; access to data and feedback to project proposals

The project outcomes for this actor: Insights into participation and engagement, what support and prevent them; some insights on few on-going initiatives and ideas to evaluate for implementation.

Other actors or initiatives:

•Warton Village•Hala Community Association•Highfield Regeneration Project•Lancaster Friendship Group •Connected Communities•Time Bank Lancaster•Street Pride project

Contribution to the project (assets): Support to students, access to information and co-design

The project outcomes for these actors: Insights in their work and visibility with the City Council

Design Process was open to students choice of individual methods and activities, but it had to fit within 10 weeks.

Methods used:

Students were presented with design research methods in general from generic ethnographic methods to more designerly approaches such as cultural probes, generative tools, co-design tools. They were free to choose the most relevant for their investigations.

Methods used:

Ideas Fair was an event organised to present to all communities and stakeholders involved the students’ ideas and get feedback for the students to finalise their work.

Role of Design

In depth exploration of people’s motivations and resistances to participation in community based or council driven initiatives. Also valorisation of existing resources and their reciprocal relationships: what is already there and how it can be reinforced.

Ideas generation beyond individual perspectives and interests.

Project output and impact:

The project outcome was a list of possible ideas to improve the Council work with existing local communities and insights in their motivations and needs

The council collected all ideas into a report for their communication and engagement team. Some insights have been useful to inform their future activities i.e. Street Pride (communication strategy), Time Bank (credit system) or Skerton Connected Communities (engagement strategies)

Learning outcomes:

List the key learning outcomes for the project for the different actors: Students, HEI, course, other actors etc…

Successes and Shortcomings/ Barriers and Enablers The successes of the project were the width and depth of the overview the students developed that was difficult for the Council to achieve; also the good relationships students developed with the community groups. Ideas and insights were taken seriously on board.

Shortcomings were the time frame of 10 weeks and difficulty to access some case studies with delays for students. Some ideas were not feasible in terms of implementation.

Enabling has been the strong interest demonstrated by the City Council to engage with Design and design students and how they facilitated access to data and people.