2023

Inclusion as Prevention: Improvement Lead

Inclusion as Prevention was a 5-year systems change initiative within the community of South Lanarkshire, supported by the Scottish Government & National Lottery.

As Head of Design for Dartington Service Design Lab, I acted as Improvement Lead within the partnership between organisations including Action for Children, CYCJ and South Lanarkshire Council. With responsibilities including:

  • Supporting the theory of change within the community, seeking to apply co-design and participatory-led practices to all aspects of the county area regarding the inclusion of young people, to develop initiatives which would test traditional service provision - allowing young people to prioritise, drive and see change through ‘researching’ ‘testing’ & ‘prototyping’ initiatives.

  • Supporting participatory-led practices across 10 ‘tests of change’ ranging from education, youth justice, sports & leisure, policing via the application of design methodologies to support the local council to involve, include and remove traditional power balances in the elevation of young people within service exploration & decision making.

  • Supporting the partnership by presenting the outcomes of ‘tests of change’ and the overall program, representing the work in local government chambers, presenting to the media, podcasts etc.

  • Applying ‘systems thinking’ and visualisation methods at scale to achieve broad understanding of problems at a community level, where systemic change can be achieved through not only the consultation, but direct inclusion of young people in the improvement of their communities.

    Note: you can view the public evaluation of this work by CYCJ here

A breakdown of what I have done:

1. Evaluation of services across a local authority

IAP was spread across an entire Local Authority area, with services ranging from sports & leisure, the built-environment & public shared spaces, education, policing et al. The evaluation of the current state of play involved multi-partnership working, formative and summative evaluation methods over a 5-year period. I worked weekly with core-partner agencies and through dedicated ceremonies to shape this together.

2. Participatory-led design with young people

To truly value and abide participatory-led practice values in the inclusion of young people, a large part of my role was the facilitation of that inclusion. The invitation, welcome, co-creation of working practice values, removing power structures, supporting young people to shape the ‘where we work’, ‘how we work’, while upskiling young people along the way on how design & improvement methodologies can achieve change.

3. Communication & presentation within a high-profile environment or government policy setting.

IAP had high-profile interest from the Scottish Government, Police Scotland, South Lanarkshire Council et al. As Improvement Lead a part of my role alongside other core partner agencies, was to represent the work and provide updates from tests of change as well as the program overall within briefings, council chambers and at large scale events.

5. Storyboarding & visualising change

IAP was multi-media, physical and digital in nature, exploring all aspects of community tests of change. Ranging from supporting young people to express themselves through graffiti art within local authority approved locations, to storyboarding and visualising changes within the built-environment. As a designer & facilitator it was my role to support young people to consider these ‘out there’ methods and demonstrate how they could ‘play’ but also be ‘impactful’ through that play.

4. Facilitation & production of visual media outputs including animations for schools

Our work to develop resources for schools around the prevention of gender based violence was just one example of working with young people throughout the problem space itself, the narrative development of resources to address the problem, facilitating the co-production of illustrative outputs including an informative animation rolled-out into schools. 

6. Systems thinking & communication for systemic change at scale

Another aspect of my role was to support senior stakeholders from multi-organisations to understand this broad-brush program, the problems within the local community, our position within the exploratory change management process, where funds were being allocated, how problems & tests of change were interconnected when seeking to achieve improvement at scale - to achieve this a large amount of systems thinking visualisation was applied. Ranging from problem trees, systems dynamics visualisations, causal-loop thinking, participatory practice diagraming.

Gender based violence: animation & educational resources for schools

  • Just one out of ten examples of outcomes from the tests of change across South Lanarkshire as a result of Inclusion as Prevention.

  • Young people aged 11-15 years co-produced this animation as well as wrap-around educational resources to be rolled-out to local secondary schools.

  • The result of 12-weeks of participatory led practice, working alongside myself as facilitator, support workers, an illustrator/animator.

  • Careful steps were taken to ensure that young people were at the heart of not only the character and narrative development of this production, but right down to when we meet, how we meet, the organisation of the space, when it was time for play and when it was time to focus, co-creating shared values and working practices.

  • The result being an impactful educational resource developed by young people with lived experience of a societal issue, from the ground-up.

  • One example from a wide variety of ‘tests of change’ ranging from storytelling within the built-environment through graffiti art, putting research funding into opening up sports & leisure facilities for longer durations to reduce local crime rates, to peer-to-peer support networks.

Animation & Illustration Credit: Rosie Ellen Design. https://rosieellendesign.co.uk/projects/

Challenges

  • The scale of IAP was huge, 5-years, multiple organisations and governing bodies all with different cultures and approaches to getting things done.

  • Managing the experimental approach, of systemic thinking and participatory-led design with young people setting the agenda required a large amount of communication, expectation setting and presenting results.

  • The program was of national interest which tested my ability to present within settings such as council chambers, large conferences and to the media. But knowing the genuine value the work could bring, the voices and interactions with young people participating in my ear - made this ask easy.

So What? (The big wins)

  • Alignment of multiple organisations, a local authority and national government to be experimental with a large sum of funding, time and resource to evaluate the impact of ‘approaching change differently’.

  • The continued engagement of young people seeing the value of taking part, building trust between the community and the facilitation.

  • As close to genuine buy-in for co-design as I’ve seen from local and national government.

    Note: you can view the public evaluation of this work by CYCJ here

Creative Conversations Podcast

You can listen to the Creative Conversations Podcast episode with some of the young participants, and the project partners including myself here:

  • "Personal highlight: "Working at the scale of a 5-year systemic change, experimental program, in particular with the support of Local Government to just try do things differently, receptive to true co-design initiatives at scale, is something I'll always remember and which sets South Lanarkshire apart from many authorities."

    Nate G Sheach