Social Integration Design Lab
As part of All of Us: The Mayor’s Strategy for Social Integration, we are working with local authorities to embed social integration and design principles into public service delivery, projects and policies. The 2019 Social Integration Design Lab and 2020 Social Integration Design Network bring together local authorities that wish to lead innovative practices which promote social integration in their local area and provide a stimulating space to design, test and share interventions that support a more socially integrated London.
Both the Lab and the Network are focused on supporting regeneration projects and practices that are committed to creating an environment where Londoners find it easy and beneficial to have positive and regular interactions with those around them, and to bring different groups of Londoners together through shared experiences. Through this, Londoners will be supported to develop strong, meaningful relationships as well as shared identities.
Using regeneration to shape how we all live together
The Social Integration Design Lab 2019 programme report brings together what we’ve learnt so far and showcases the work of the 17 boroughs that took part. It shares outcomes of the Lab with principles, project snapshots and recommendations to help local authorities and other regeneration partners to deliver a more accessible, welcoming and inclusive London.
In 2019, We Are Snook were commissioned to deliver the Social Integration Design Lab. The lab's first year focused on supporting regeneration projects that were committed to creating an environment where Londoners found it easy and beneficial to have positive and regular interactions with those around them, and that brought different groups of Londoners together through shared experiences. Through the lab, Londoners have been supported to develop strong, meaningful relationships as well as shared identities.
A key aim of the Lab was for each participating project to become a best-practice example of designing regeneration projects for social integration, and inform a set of social integration design principles that can be used by others.
Key Outcomes of the Social Integration Design Lab 2019 included:
- a series of London-based case studies which show how regeneration projects can be designed, tested and evaluated for social integration
- increased learning for London and other regions on how social integration can be improved through local public projects, policies and services, implemented at the local authority level
- a peer network of local authorities who are committed to using their powers and resources to improve social integration in London
- a published set of evidence-based social integration design principles which can be used by local authorities more broadly
The Social Integration & Regeneration Learning Network brought together urban regeneration and social integration professionals, experts and academics with the aim to share and develop learning across London boroughs. Our primary focus was on providing space, time and skilled facilitation to local authority regeneration teams to come together and learn from one another. With an exciting programme of networking and training events, supplemented by focused peer exchange sessions that ran throughout 2020, the network fulfilled its promise to build participants’ confidence and capacity in embedding social integration principles into their work on regeneration.
Learn more and read an evaluation of the Learning Network here.
To register your interest and be contacted about upcoming network events, please send your name, role and borough to London Metropolitan University, at: [email protected].
Connective Social Infrastructure
Our city’s social infrastructure is the cornerstone of thriving, inclusive and resilient neighbourhoods, and its these places, services and support structures that can nurture social integration, celebrate diversity and help Londoners build relationships to enable greater participation with each other and our city.
Jointly commissioned by the Mayor’s Design Advocates, as part of the Good Growth by Design programme, and the Regeneration, Social Integration and London Plan teams, the Connective Social Infrastructure research inquiry is intended as a first step and a catalyst for a long-term process of making London a more socially integrated city, by realising the potential of social infrastructure.
The Connective Social Infrastructure report provides an evidence base, best practice examples and sets out, through actions and design tactics, how policymakers and those involved in the design and delivery of social infrastructure can support the realisation of its social integration potential.
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