Co-designing connected communities

The Connected Communities project is run by Lancaster City Council in two of the city wards in the Skerton area. Originally developed as a response to the ‘Duty to Involve’ statutory guidance, this project provides opportunities for more active participation of local people in decisions and in the design, delivery and assessment of local services and policies. ImaginationLancaster has been involved in this project over the last six months, observing and evaluating the development of the co-design process, and recently helped to facilitate two community engagement workshops. These workshops provided the opportunity for members of the local community to discuss how priorities identified through the ‘Big Conversation’ and similar events in the area, could be developed into specific community-led initiatives. The focus is now on building a network of organisations, working together to support local people, to develop innovative and creative proposals to take these initiatives forward.