How can a picture of a tree make us imagine the future? How can we inspire young people to imagine challenges and opportunities facing the community, in 10+ years’ time? How can we use technology to galvanise discussions with leaders in the community?

These are some of the questions I have explored over the past six months as part of STEaPP’s Co-Design Lab. Working closely with Associate Professor and founder of the Lab, Nidhi Chaudhary, our ambition was clear – test out and integrate creative, community-led and innovative methods for co-designed local policy engagement and solutions.

Our Newham Futures Partnership

The Lab partnered with the London Borough of Newham to launch their Partnership Innovation Lab and inform the development of a future vision for the Borough. This has been developed as part of our ongoing strategic relationship and MoU supported by the work of the Vice-Provost (Strategy) Office and the Pro-Provost (London) Office. Our objective was to co-create a series of workshops which were playful and engaging for community members and would enable them to explore what a ‘future vision’ for their Borough could be.

Transforming futures thinking

Imagining what the future might look like however, is not always easy. It can be difficult for people to break away from short-term thinking, what may happen just in the next year or two. It can also be difficult to separate enough from day-today challenges, in order to think positively about the future, or to make suggestions to others about what the future might look like – when there are so many unknowns.

There are multiple futures techniques and strategic foresight methodologies which, when carefully employed, can help overcome these challenges and help people from all backgrounds think collectively about the future. When co-designing the first Newham workshop we opted to use the ‘Futures Triangle’ method, which supports participants to consider the past, present and future in a structured way – allowing for diverse perspectives and viewpoints to be bought together.

We aimed to make the futures triangle exercise as engaging as possible and ensure it didn’t feel overly academic to the participants – which included council members, academics, young people, residents, policymakers and more. We kept instructions simple and clear, broke down tasks and offered support from trained facilitators, and allowed sufficient time in the agenda to properly explore different concepts.

We were constantly asking ourselves, ‘how would [x type of person] interact with and interpret this activity and our instructions?’ and ‘how could we be creative with technology to make the workshop more engaging and fruitful?’

We transformed the points of the futures triangle – weight of the past, push of the present and pull of the future – into the tree’s roots, trunk and leaves. The tree became a metaphor for time; roots holding us in the past and the present pushing up towards a future that is branching out into endless possibilities.

Participants then shared their ideas, pinning thoughts and key discussion points on post-it notes to the tree – creating a poster that captured all their ideas, from the past, present and to the future. Our next goal during this activity, was to transform these ideas into pragmatic action-points that would translate into local policy impact.

Getting creative with technology – AI-assisted visioning

Exploring creative and innovative ways to bridge the gap between community perspectives, academic insight and meaningful policy impact is a core ambition of the Lab. For this workshop, we opted to integrate Artificial Intelligence (AI) with community-led discussions. Our methods were adapted to ensure those who were unfamiliar with or uneasy toward such technologies felt confident their voices were heard whilst also ensuring integrity and security of their personal experiences.

To support this, we began by upskilling our facilitators on the AI tool itself, recognising that many of participants including local policymakers and young people, may be unfamiliar with the technology’s capabilities. During the workshop, we carefully explained how the AI was being used, what information it was synthesising, and how the participant’s identities and privacy were being safeguarded. This transparency was essential in building trust and ensured that everyone, regardless of prior knowledge or experience with AI technologies, felt confident and included in the process.

To bring AI-assisted visioning to life, our facilitators fed key discussions from the futures ‘tree’ exercise into an AI tool to generate 10-year future vision statements in real-time. At the end of the workshop, we shared back these statements with participants, including one on ‘sustainable futures’ for Newham:

“To empower Newham’s diverse communities—especially its youth—to co-create a greener, more inclusive future through education, collaboration, and sustainable innovation.”

Participants, particularly those with limited AI-knowledge or experience, were intrigued and impressed by the speed, creativity and precision with which AI distilled the entire workshop’s discussions into a single sentence. Seeing AI in action and bringing participants’ ideas to life created a real sense of local policy impact and engagement – cue some answers to the questions at the start of this piece.

Elevate Workshop: Voices of Tomorrow: Visioning Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park (QEOP)

In our next project, the Lab worked closely with members of Elevate and colleagues from the London Legacy Development Corporation to design a workshop for young people from two Boroughs in QEOP – Newham and Tower Hamlets.

Elevate is a youth leadership programme based at QEOP, focused on amplifying young people’s voices and creating more inclusive, accessible futures. It was an apt choice for the Lab to partner with Elevate:

“Elevate is designed for young people, by young people, made up of a collective of young people who use their unique lived experience to drive innovation, shape change and elevate futures.”

We worked collaboratively for several months to design and deliver this workshop which would give young people the opportunity to discuss their current experiences of living, working and travelling in the park, as well as future ambitions of the area.

Like the Newham project, and aligned to the mission of the Lab, we wanted to make this workshop fun and a creative experience for participants. The participants primarily fell in the age bracket of 16-21, so the activities we designed had to be designed by young people, for young people.

From our first icebreaker activity, ‘Hot takes’ on whether pineapple should go on pizza, we maintained a goal of making the workshop as entertaining as possible.

We used large print outs of maps of the QEOP, post it notes, and bike stickers to represent their journeys in and around the area – and photo postcards to represent their experiences. These visual aids were also useful in prompting the young people to think about different ideas, whilst also creating a living artefact of their community.

Engaging with these young people in futures-style activities, gave way for unique perspectives. The exercise was relatable, digestible; the participants could not only map out their journeys, but also visually see where others were coming from (literally and figuratively).

When re-imagining the future of QEOP, the young people wanted greater opportunities to interact with the environment and the community. Key ideas for QEOP they raised included:

• Increasing community-run events for young people in the park and using social media in creative ways to communicate these opportunities more broadly
• Supporting safety and crime prevention initiatives (including lighting, transport and visibility of community safety personnel) to increase young people’s engagement with the area
• Creating spaces that foster inclusion and celebrate the diverse cultures of local communities.

Final thoughts

As the Lab continues to evolve, I am excited to see what comes next as the vision develops and more community-based projects kick off. It has been an insightful project thus far; through creativity, collaboration and commitment to inclusive engagement I feel community members, young people and local policymakers have thoroughly felt a sense of impact and just how effective co-designing solutions can be.

More broadly, I have been left with a few lasting reflections:

• Co-design and local policy engagement go hand in hand – when local communities are invited to the table, policy outcomes are more relevant, real and enduring.
• Communities appreciate and enjoy shaping the policies that affect them – active involvement through workshops, consultation and conversation results in feeling more connected to policymakers and decision-making processes.
• Adapted ‘futures’ methods and techniques can be just as powerful – whether centring youth in the workshop design process or using a metaphorical tree, creative tools can unlock unique insights and enhance traditional futures methods. Futures methodology isn’t just one-size-fits-all, it should be pragmatic to the audience’s needs and tailored accordingly.
• Innovative methods, when used thoughtfully, can increase stakeholder participation and engagement– using AI to reflect back ideas and perspectives in real time helped increase impact and spark curiosity.

If you would like to work with the Co-Design Lab and/or get involved with STEaPP’s policy engagement activities, you can contact us here – get involved!

Acknowledgements

Written by Rhiannon Van Vliet, Policy Advisor at the Policy Impact Unit. Rhiannon provides policy engagement advice and opportunities to all members of STEaPP. Rhiannon has a background in strategic foresight and futures thinking and has contributed to toolkits on AI for Knowledge Exchange developed by the PIU (see here).

With thanks to Jen Reed, Head of the Policy Impact Unit for her valuable support and comments throughout the writing of this piece.

A final note to say thank you to the Lab’s partners on these projects – the Newham Council, Tower Hamlets Council,  Elevate and London Legacy Development Corporation – for their collaboration, support and engagement.