The Civic Innovation Hub is a place where every Hackney citizen can have their say on how to address the biggest social and environmental challenges in their neighbourhood - both identifying challenges and driving solutions.

It is based on the premise that those who experience social issues, those who have a deep understanding of a place and their community from living in it, have the skills and knowledge to create better, more relevant and effective services and changes in their own communities. 

It is a place where communities come together with people who seek to address it (e.g. the council or community groups) or those that should (e.g. business) to define local challenges, develop solutions, and drive or influence change directly.

It is a community centre and a co-working space which will be owned by the community and proactively shaped by them. It is a place that will link people and organisations, facilitate conversation and collaboration, and enable local people to have a voice in the way the borough develops.

An absence of involvement from urban communities in research, analysis and design is resulting in a lack of engagement, community mistrust, and deepening inequalities.

Between tokenistic approaches to community engagement and a top-down approach to defining local problems and implementing change, services and programmes are not culturally relevant, accessible or inclusive of the communities they seek to benefit.

•Hackney has a tradition of being an innovative / trailblazing inner London borough: We want to continue this, and will seek to anchor ourselves in the community recruiting and growing and developing the Hub through Hackney talent, residents and infrastructure first – our end goal is a hub delivered by Hackney people for Hackney people.

A vision for civic engagement

A key element of the Hub is a physical space that people could visit, join projects, hear about new ways of working and delivering, partner together around a particular challenge or solution, or contribute to learning.  To enable this, the hub will host a co-working space, which brings organisations (or local representatives form those organisations) in, who share the values of collaboration and participation, maintain a citizen-led mentality, and are open to rethinking their work through co-design. See here for a list of other partners and supporters of this work.

DESIGN CHALLENGES

The core part of the hub is our design challenge model. These challenges are identified from listening to what matters to local residents. This includes reflecting on the unconferences and the topics identified, as well as reviewing Mayoral priorities, recent local publications, and conversations with residents and local organisations.

This methodology has been tested with young people in Hackney over the last 6 months. See here for more info on our pilot.

It includes, at a minimum a half-day ‘unconference’ event, bringing 20-40 people together interested in covering a key theme (e.g. see our blog), three workshops where a group of 15-25  individuals (with lived experience, organisations or individuals working to address the problem) agree the specific challenge to be addressed, and co-produce a new or improved programme, and access to a grant for an organisation to deliver the co-produced idea. See our funding packages for more info on how to support the Civic Hub design challenges.

Other activities and elements sometimes included as part of the design challenge process to improve the quality of the service developed, increase wider buy-in across the community, and further develop skills and local ownership include:

To effect practical change, TSIP and Shoreditch Trust developed a managed fund to support communities involved with the Civic Hub. It aims to:

• Develop new (or improve) programmes, services, and products for local people in the area (e.g. young people, afro-caribbean communities, etc.) that are more culturally relevant, accessible and achieve better outcomes (health and wellbeing)

• Provide entrepreneurship opportunities for people who want to lead change for their communities

• Broker conversations with individuals who wouldn’t normally speak with one another (e.g. councils, local leaders, businesses and civil society)

FUNDING PACKAGE 1: CORE DESIGN CHALLENGE

• Locally recruited community director, TSIP and Shoreditch Trust time to do outreach, coordination, facilitation, event management and brokering of relationships and conversations

• A half-day ‘unconference’ event with 30-40 people attending

• Three design challenges with 15-20 people attending (70% are people with lived experience, 30% are people representing relevant organisations)

• Prototyping of innovative idea(s), which will receive £15,000 to be delivered in the subsequent 6 months to a year

FUNDING PACKAGE 2: COMMUNITY-LED DESIGN CHALLENGE

• Community director, TSIP and Shoreditch Trust time to do outreach, coordination, facilitation, event management and brokering of relationships and conversations

• A half-day ‘unconference’ event with 30-40 people attending

• Three design challenges with 15-20 people attending

• Prototyping of an innovative idea, which will receive £15,000 to be delivered in the subsequent 6 months to a year

• 10 local people trained in design, with 3 selected to facilitate the design challenges

FUNDING PACKAGE 3: COMMUNITY-LED DESIGN RESEARCH & CHALLENGEs

• Community director, TSIP and Shoreditch Trust time to do outreach, coordination, facilitation, event management and brokering of relationships and conversations

• A half-day ‘unconference’ event with 30-40 people attending

• Three design challenges with 15-20 people attending

• Prototyping of an innovative idea, which will receive £15,000 to be delivered in the subsequent 6 months to a year

• 10 local people trained in design, with 3 selected to facilitate the design challenges

• 5 local people trained to research their peers, gathering insight from up to 50 individuals to feed into the design process.

We want to speak with you!

Current and past supporters and partners

Contact us today