Workshops
Evergreen: co-designing sustainability with communities
Using workshops to bring people with very different experiences together, build confidence and turn uncertainty into shared action.
The challenge
The starting point was the desire to introduce a sustainability programme within supported housing communities, for older people in Hackney.
Many residents were living on low incomes and experiencing isolation, health or mobility challenges. Sustainability was not necessarily something they saw as relevant to their lives.
Rather than arriving with a fixed programme, I wanted to understand what mattered to residents and staff and build from there.
What I did
I began by meeting residents, housing managers and corporate staff and used a series of interactive workshops and activities to elicit an understanding of their priorities, concerns and ideas.
The programme evolved into Evergreen - a much more tailored approach built around establishing what people themselves saw as useful and achievable.
I elicited through co design sessions the importance of food growing as a staple activity meeting multiple needs. Although confidence was very low, residents wanted to grow food because it connected with things they had done earlier in life, could help save money, support their health and well-being, provided opportunities to spend time together socially and made use of outdoor spaces that had often been underused.
Other activities that emerged into highly replicable and scalable programmes across communities included ‘making do and mending’, energy bill reduction, practical environmental improvements and mixed audience climate debates.
As confidence grew, the workshops expanded to include more residents and staff, corporate partners, local businesses, schools and other community groups.
Intergenerational sessions helped bring together groups who might otherwise have had little reason to engage with one another.
The workshops were not simply consultation exercises. They were a way of co-designing the programme itself and developing participants' confidence to take responsibility for evolving it
What changed
The programme of workshops and associated activities engaged hundreds of residents, many of whom had given up on involvement in communal activities. Engaging in 'Sustainability' was new to them all yet an instinctual understanding was awakened in many.
Residents established self-sustaining groups for food-growing, energy reduction, the development (or relearning) of practical skills, while creating new opportunities for social connection.
Staff confidence increased too, with housing staff increasingly able to support and deliver sustainability activity themselves, plan multi partner events and visits.
The approach was subsequently core funded by the organisation and our adopted by other organisations in London and Scotland.
The work demonstrated that bringing people together for tailored workshops , can do more than create alignment around an existing plan. They can draw out knowledge, build confidence and generate a better plan than ever envisaged in the first place.
