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Transcript: Inclusive Spaces: Preventing ‘ruins of regeneration’ through youth-led co-design
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Culture, development, design, youth
SPEAKERS
Hannah Sender, David Adesanya, Diana Hysenaj
5:50 Hannah L Sender Okay, good afternoon everyone, I see we're still being joined by people so I’m just going to start my introductions and then hopefully that gives people a little bit more time to join us. Welcome to this presentation, as part of the Inclusive Spaces webinar event, my name is Hannah Sender. I am a research fellow at the Institute for Global Prosperity and a PhD student at the Development Planning Unit. Today I’m just going to be introducing this session and also chairing the Q&A and I’m going to be handing it over to Two of the people that I work with as part of the Fuse project, David Adesanya and Diana Hysenaj, and they're going to be sharing today what they've learned about this youth-led process of research and co-design.
So Fuse is a research and design project which is led by The Plug, which is a youth innovation agency predominantly working in Hackney, And they've been supported by Institute for Global Prosperity, where I work, Hackney Quest, the youth charity, and the London Legacy Development Corporation, who also are partly funding this project alongside UCL, and the Wick award.
So Fuse had employed and trained six young people from four boroughs in East London to work on this project alongside that team, and it was founded to investigate some of the challenges that young people in East London face around achieving their prosperity, and the kinds of - the kinds of things that make difficult their capacity to kind of achieve their aspirations. And the project aimed to create a solution, and it did actually deliver a prototype solution that would help young people to tackle a key barrier that we identified in our research when young people are trying to achieve decent, and keep decent and fulfilling work, so the project that we ended up kind of delivering was around wellbeing and we'll talk a little bit about that in the session today. But mostly I’m going to be reflecting on this process of youth-led co-design and what we could learn as researchers, as policymakers, about involving people and getting people to lead these processes. And Joshua Dickinson is also joining this call, and he will be joining us for the Q&A part of the session. I urge you to write your questions in the Q&A as and when they occur to you, and I will try to get through, as many of them as possible when we reach the Q&A section of this event, but for now I’m going to hand over to David Adesanya who is going to talk a little bit about why Fuse was created in the first place. David.
9:02 David Adesanya Hey everyone, nice to meet you all, can't see visually but yeah great to meet you. Just to before we begin, some aims for the event, this talk today - just for quite quick ones. Being able to better grasp what government approaches to regeneration can be. Being able to hold each other as organizations and community groups accountable for planning and programs, which are supposed to be inclusive. Thirdly, sharing examples of, this particular example, sharing an alternative approach of what youth-led co-design can do, and lastly, invite you all to consider the main takeaways to help shape your own projects.
So, as you can see, on the screen, it says Building Back Better and I guess, this is very much in line with our government approach to what regeneration can be but let's kind of – like nitpick that and unravel it a bit more. The aim of regeneration in general is to enable communities that have suffered from economic, social and environmental decline, who have just been left behind, to be able to rebuild their own communities. But I guess, one thing that makes me uncomfortable about that, or makes me uncomfortable about where we are at the moment, is that there have been and continue to be efforts made to create projects that serve and improve to regenerate communities, but there seems to be - there seems to be continual complaints about what's been created. Continual, just my own perspective growing up in Hackney and seeing the 2012 regeneration, feeling excluded.
So, most of us have heard of inclusive growth or the Build Back Better campaign to address imbalances in the economy that Covid had had kind of created, but who says what that looks like? Who says what regeneration can be? Who says what the future can be for our next generation? So equipping our younger generations with the ability to be IT specialists, is a noble and like forward thinking cause, but it raises the question again of forward thinking for and by who. if you go into the next slide it touches on again a campaign up with I guess we've all seen. But we're going to just touch on again where it looks at, Fatima's next job being in cyber but she just doesn't know it yet, and it makes me raise that question of like why doesn't she know it? Has there been that invitation – not even invitation that recognition that your future is not decided by a bubble, a group of people in an office, but rather it is part of you, you are the master builder, you are the co-facilitator, you are the co-creator in that journey. So yeah, how do we make sure our future cities are created by us and not in the bubble of a politically driven boardroom where's one passion is called - where one's passion is cultivated and not placed on the curb. And to reach an inclusive understanding should the subject whose future is in question, not be the cornerstone of our thinking, our building or executing?
So, introducing Fuse. A project that wanted to know how young people who are passionate about change can find a way to solve issues that affect their communities.
12:39 Diana Hysenaj Fuse followed follow the design cycle, discover, define, develop, deliver, and evolve. Fuse is research-led, which means that as designers, we did not pursue a solution or product until we had understood what really mattered to young East Londoners. We looked into what kind of services are missing or under provided within current service provisions and what a good intervention looks like for both young people and local businesses. (pause)
13:11 David Looks like that was on me. We learned about young people's environments, their relationships and their aspirations, we couldn't address all of this in our intervention, but we captured everything we learned and researched, and that will inform our next iteration of this youth prosperity model. And please ask Hannah some questions about this afterwards, if you want to learn more.
13:32 Diana We also learned about the challenges to young people's wellbeing and looked into local businesses’ interest in supporting their own and their employees’ wellbeing while not having the capacity to do a lot. We designed a wellbeing service which responded to specific needs discovered in the research, such as a safe space, but not with management, so not with peers, and also learning from others who have different stages in the journey of finding work and being in employment. The wellbeing service therefore seeks to incorporate wellbeing into our work culture though affinity groups.
Now, moving on to the main takeaways and future practices. Young people's lives are being affected by change, both good and bad change. For both I believe we need to ensure that young people have the chance to share what matters most to them and question areas of concern. A study conducted by Community Links found that young people feel intensely disconnected and excluded from the wider communities. There is a sense of both disconnection and detachment from local services and facilities. Young people should be involved in decisions affecting their lives and communities. In order to make this possible, we need to do three things.
Number one, organizations and policymakers need to give young people a seat at the table. Young people often have ideas and thoughts which can contribute to the growth of organizations and inclusive policy.
Number two, use co-design. The Fuse project, for example, empowered young people to be involved with the change they would like to see. We participated in research training, data management and ethics training. We led research processes and consequently analysed the data we found. Once we finished the initial analysis, we then categorized research into defined themes and later needs. We were able to have in-depth conversations with young people, touch on intimate subjects that maybe other researchers and consultants wouldn't be able to do. The collaboration and involvement of young people in making this service shows how important co-design truly is.
And moving on to number three, getting young people directly involved in your organization. So recruit young talent, to ensure that processes, on a daily basis, have the support and ideas from young people. Pay them for their time. Through making these changes, we begin to see transformative change needed. Young people are leaders, both leaders of today and leaders of tomorrow. By gathering information from young people and co-designing impactful services, we young people feel involved and included
16:16 David Thank you, Diana. I wanted to really kind of touch on the next area, which is looking at this idea of a cookie cutter model. There were so many things that we've shared today in terms of like takeaways. But also being aware that, as we share these takeaways and many more, we could mention in our research, it is essential that this isn't just a plug and play. All methods must go under extreme screening, however similar in time place and culture, because cookie cutter models remove contacts and do incredible damage because of the lack of investment in understanding, equipping and educating the local communities you inhabit. Essentially don't assume that if something has worked in one place that it will work elsewhere. The map is not the territory. Local context is more Important than we think.
And lastly, I think that we need to start from first principles. So what do people need, what do they aspire to, how can we deliver a service which responds to these, but also how do we include young people, include them from the beginning, ensure that they have the proper support, decent pay, opportunities to shape their own roles, and to determine that the trajectory of the of the project.
So I guess there's some key areas or key areas of exploration for future practices that you may want to take on. But just also to shed light on the fact of the realities of how - not how difficult, but how complex this can be. So firstly recruitment. It’s amazing, as Diana said, bring young people to the table. To add to that, it’s six young designers recruited for Fuse, but that's not what made it complete. There's - it's necessary to also resource the six designers, whereby there is support. Somewhat building infrastructure to educate and equip them to be able to use their voice effectively, whether it be providing wellbeing services to help them reflect, or being able to have times where they can challenge and debate on these - on their views, to be able to provide or create a language which not only they understand, but can be understood within government, in council, and other corporate meetings.
I touched on recruitment before regarding this idea of providing infrastructure, but also in terms of how you create your selection bias, so when you are looking at young people being part of your group, how do you go about recruiting them? Are you going to create somewhat - a predisposed template that everyone normally uses, where it's like, okay, degree, et cetera - like, how do you - how do you create it consciously recognizing the biases that we have in our community and what we validate as a successful young person or an influential young person or a change maker?
Thirdly, this idea of reimagining. One thing that happened throughout this project was this concept of being able to challenge our own notions of what the future could look like, and that is something that I feel like needs to be applied for every practice is, how do you know what you don't know? And so, recognizing that if you are in a climate where you've been told, this is what you can achieve then when you when you try to dream your dreams, then you’re limited to those - to that bubble, to that parameter. So having things in place where now's young people you bring on board, to also allow them to dream further.
Two final points. Before final words, immediacy. So you are engaging with needs now, and so recognizing that the objective and the things that you create shouldn't just be five years down the line, ten years down the line, 20 years down the line, but also piloting projects that allowed the needs that are being expressed right in front of you to be met in some way, shape or form. Enabling that level of trust within the community you’re inhabiting. And lastly legacy. Build not to last, but to meet the needs that are - that have been expressed to you, shared to you, given to you at that period in time. We can always do this again. We can always fund more projects. Don't always run a project to be the longest lasting project out there, meet the needs that needs to be met. And if you are no longer needed anymore, then hey, you've served a job, and pass it on, pass the torch to the next group. So yeah. Thank you. I’ve been David, and -
21:40 Diana And I’m Diana.
12:43 David Thank you for coming to D&D talks.
21:46 Hannah Thank you so much, both of you. Before I go to the questions, I just think because we have a little bit of time, it'd be good for us to go back and talk a little bit about the experience that you had specifically, and I’m going to invite Joshua to turn on his video and join us as well, and on three different things. So first of all I think it'd be great to hear about your experience with the recruitment interviews. Could you describe that process, anyone?
22:23 Diana I don’t mind going first. So I definitely remember when I first joined the recruitment interviews for Fuse, it was quite an interesting process. Because I’ve never been told before to kind of send in a portfolio and also do the reverse interviews. And I remember being like, we were at the group interview stage, and I was like oh my gosh, so we have to do reverse interviews. What kind of question am I going to say? And then I asked a question about the research conducted by Prosperity Model . And I remember, because I had a lot of questions, I find it really interesting, I’m asking those questions, and I feel like from doing that reflective process at the end of the recruitment process I was able to truly understand what kind of - how unique the Fuse project was in kind of doing this different processes to other job applications, or like what experiences I’ve applied to previously.
23:13 Hannah Okay, fantastic. So for those who don't know, reverse interviews, we invited candidates to interview the team, Hackney Quest, The Plug and myself, about our experience setting up Fuse, so the idea was people would learn about why Fuse exists in the first place, and we also got to familiarize ourselves with their kind of interpersonal skills and their interview techniques which are really important, obviously, for the research phase, the work. So thank you Diana. David or Joshua, do you have anything to add to the recruitment process that Diana just described?
23:54 David I think on my end, just from experience it was being able to create a safe space where you feel comfortable sharing your honest opinion about your neighbourhood and community. And I think sometimes when you are in recruitment spaces, it is very much standoffish, you feel like okay, I have to protect my space and they're protecting their space, and there's like this kind of back and forth that you're having with each other And not really getting to know honestly who each other are, or who each of you are. Also the context of where you come from and what you're working towards, and like the issues that you're - you have, really, with - with what you're trying to solve. So I think again it's the idea of being able to reframe - reframe what recruitment even looks like or means when it is this kind of collective journey that both of you are trying to be on.
24:59 Hannah Joshua, do you have add anything to add before I move on?
25:04 Joshua Yeah, just quickly before you move on, the reverse interviewing is quite a unique experience of it, I really think it - it does twofold, it allows the people who you're hopefully going to going to get on with, some insight into how you actually interact, and also for the person who's asking the questions it allows them to gain an insight into what - what they're actually - what they're actually getting themselves in into for, and so it benefits both parties and it's really something to consider if you're ever in that position, I would think.
25:48 Hannah Thank you so much. I’m going to start asking some of the audience questions now. Let me see what - Okay, let me see if we can answer.
This is a question from an anonymous attendee. He says, “Thank you for the talk. I would love to hear more about how local businesses responded to the project and the challenges to recruit young talent and support their recruits.” So can someone talk a little bit about their interaction with local businesses and - and particularly what they thought of Fuse? David, do you want to take this one first?
26:35 David Yeah, sure, happy to touch on it. So yeah, from the conversations I was having with local businesses, they seemed like very forthcoming in - in being able to express their views on recruitment on the changes within the community. I think it was - again it, I think it came from the fact that, firstly, they knew that we were of the same locality, we understood the pressures that were going on and so It didn't seem like there was just an individual coming in to gather data and then leave, it was just like I’m speaking to someone who is literally in the same quote-unquote “mess” as me or just in the same environment as me. So yeah, definitely forthcoming and definitely allowed us to be able to, I guess, document information that maybe wouldn't be as easily accessible, if it was not from us or not from a group like us, grounded within the community already. Yeah.
27:49 Hannah Thank you. I'm going to ask a question now from Tagh Caffery . He says, “Well done all, you've articulated well the issues that emerge when decisions are made by people who are out of touch with those who are affected by those decisions. What role do you think universities can play in this? Were there any concerns about the university perspective also being out of touch?” Diana, we're going to ask you to answer that question.
28:19 Diana Yeah, sure. So as a university student myself, I’m currently in first year university, and kind of when speaking to a lot of the young people I spoke to, a lot of young people said that sometimes universities are not kind of understanding what the young people specifically need. So there needs to be a bit more open conversations, but with these conversations, the universities actually need to kind of listen and acknowledge what's being said and kind of show the students what's the steps that they're going to do to address the problem that's been concerned. Because sometimes we can find out - if a concern is raised, that it will say that it's going to be flagged up but we don't see it, like no change happening, or maybe like a year, or even a few months. So it’s just kind of working collectively with the young people, students in the university to ensure that anything that is of concern, or even things that you would like to develop within the university, are kind of being brought upon within a collective perspective, so not just the people who are kind of managing the university.
29:18 Hannah Yeah, I think Diana’s right, it's really about the partnership, I think that made this all possible. So obviously UCL was a part funder and the Institute for Global Prosperity, were partly kind of co-managing the process, particularly for the research part. But this also was led by the Youth Innovation Agency, which is founded and managed by three young people who live and work in Hackney. It involved the London Legacy Development Corporation, and the Good Growth Hub, and the managers of that as well, so there's really - oh that's better, thank you - there's really a lot of, there was a lot of people coming in to kind of make sure that whatever we were doing, it had a direct impact. So we were doing the research, but there was a kind of product that we would be creating, and that could be implemented within the lifespan of the project. So it made sure that our research wasn't out of touch, it was directly informing the design that was being created, and that is what makes - that kind of partnership is what made that research applicable, impactful and yeah, so I hope that answered your question.
Let's move on now, so I think that's quite a nice question. Another anonymous attendee has asked, “What support was given to the young people to make sure they could keep in touch with other young people in the area and know that what they were saying was representative of all young people in the area and perhaps representative” Yeah, that's a big challenge for working in these four boroughs, which are incredibly diverse, so Joshua, would you like to jump in and talk a little bit about how you communicated with other young people as part of the research?
31:27 Joshua (pause) Apologies. We found our own young people to - to conduct the research with, so in that in that regard there, there were no - there were no more new relationships built. However, I do think that most - most young people who we spoke to you were - were at being interested in - in the Fuse project and what it was trying to achieve. It was quite interesting as well being able speak to both young people who – who had, or who were already in employment, and so young people who weren't in employment, so those two dynamics were quite - quite interesting, as well as obviously, the project being held during the Covid times, so I think actually the Covid pandemic allowed us to get more out of the research, because obviously people had a different perspective on - on jobs and on life, I think all that - all that really made young people more - more engaged, especially given that this was a localized project, so everybody was kind of, lived or had some kind of connection to East London, I think all that added to young people’s engagement. I don’t know if that answered your question. I hope it does.
33:01 Hannah I think that was a fantastic answer. Does anyone have anything else to add to that question about how you engage with other young people?
33:10 Diana Yeah, I could add a bit on that one. So we also, part of the process, in order to kind of make sure we were speaking to a lot of young people, I also was able to reach out to some community groups. So say, for instance, a local choir I used to attend, and - and like from groups I know around the area. And by doing this, we were able to kind of get the word around to make sure that a lot of young people are learning about Fuse and also know what Fuse is all about, and we were able to then get a lot of different views and different perspectives as a result. So kind of by making sure we kind of make - push the word around and also inviting a lot of young people to events, we were able to kind of share the message across, and get a lot of different views that could have been included within the Fuse project.
33:58 David Yeah, I think to touch on two sides of that, so yeah, being able to pass the torch to like other groups and youth groups and organizations who have a larger pool of young people that they engage with was definitely – yeah, definitely beneficial, just because yes, we are young people and, yes, we can engage, but if we haven’t established relationships with them already, then it's good to kind of work through others who have done that themselves and establish that rapport with those groups so that we have that shared vision and shared understanding.
I think the other side of being representative, yeah I’m touch and go with that, because, again, there’s just an idea of that information being living, like data being living, everything is changing regularly, so it's - what is it to be representative, I mean like I smirk a little bit because I kind of want to throw that question back to you and say what is an example of representative work when we're speaking about populations and people? And I’m quite curious and conscious on that, but for the time that we had and the engagement that we did, it definitely allowed for voices to be represented and we definitely intend to push it further to be able to represent more voices. Yeah.
35:27 Hannah Yeah, absolutely, I think I, I share David’s concerns and we - we did our best, you know we did map out kind of characteristics that we wanted to make sure we covered so you know, obviously, making sure that we had a range of ages, who were involved, and you know different employment statuses, obviously that was key to the theme, so we looked at self-employed, unemployed, underemployed, employed students, you name it, we tried to kind of make sure that we spoke to a lot of different people. We also thought a lot about ethnicity, locality within the four boroughs, was important to have a good spread of those different kind of – yeah, geographical locations. And gender, of course, as well, so we did we did make an attempt to make sure all of those bases were covered and - and relatively fair across all of those, but I have no doubt that we didn't manage to speak to, you know, every single group that might be identified, and I hope that in the kind of next phase of work when we're going into actually trying to implement this prototype that was created as part of the Fuse project, we will be engaging with more people from other groups as well to make sure that those voices are heard. But yeah, we - we were aware of that and we absolutely did our best to make sure that the voices from across these different communities were represented.
I’m going to ask Simon’s question – sorry, Simeon, sorry. So, “They say great insights that resonate with my own experience and research. How do you think we can formalize these experiences and better inform institutions about the role that young people can play? Is the message getting through? I’m particularly interested about engaging built environment professionals and local authorities.”
Actually, David, I think this touches on your, one of your later points that you made in the presentation so maybe you can take this question about formalizing your experiences in Fuse and informing institutions about the role that young people can play.
38:00 David Yeah, sure. I’m actually rereading it myself, because again, like being able to say these are our experiences and then presenting it, I think that's - that's important. I think again, there's a sensitivity to – there’s a sensitivity after that, where it's like I’m going to compile everything and make it one uniform message, and I think that's when – what - when there's a bit of an issue. Is the message getting through? (pause)
38:43 Hannah You could reflect a bit on the interactions you had with the LLDC, I’m thinking particularly of Tasnim, being with them through the whole process
38:53 David Yeah, with engagement with, I guess the larger organizations that we - we conversed with, yes, the fact that we were able to hold them accountable, have the space to hold groups accountable and say, what is actually being done, like when we're talking about impact measurement, like this is what you're presenting to the public, what is being done on the background and how do we make that - how do we make that consistent all the way around? So yes, that they could - there was a space for us to be able to present that, to hold them accountable and them to be able to say yes, we are going to move forward with this. There is - to say has – like, but will it happen? At the moment it's a green light. But there is always that - that doubt, right, there's always the doubt of history repeats itself and why, why does it repeat itself, and so I think at this current moment in time, we are hopeful that what we've worked on and what we've built and what we've created, and how we've held groups accountable, will move things in the right direction. But yeah time - time will tell.
And you're particularly interested about engaging with built environment professionals and local authorities, I think yeah just on that kind of side I’m – I am – to - like architecture consultation, the very premise of like the built environment and again, Hackney, working on projects where you felt that you're literally Putting out 2% of your time for the community consultation, but you kind of know where you want to go with it, or the language that You communicate with your consultations aren’t accessible to the local community who are going to be affected by what you're going to be creating. So definitely there needs to be a level of – and we've discussed this, I think this is, this has been discussed on - on a number of platforms throughout time, but being able to have uniform language, being able to bring all these groups into a table and translate this information, and make it accessible and equip the local community, to be able to not just show ideas of what the plan to look like, but also inform the plan, to inform design decisions. So yeah, totally - totally agree with where you’re kind of going with it. And yeah, happy to kind of like discuss further, and I feel like there's a lot of people on this call, who can do that too. Thank you, Simeon.
41:58 Hannah For me, and just from my experience of talking about Fuse with people is that there is a lot of enthusiasm for working with young people and making sure that they are part of the entire decision making process. So we started Fuse, as I said, in November last year, but we started talking about it quite early on, and The London Prosperity Board, which has been established by the Institute for Global Prosperity, is a mix of academics, community-based organizations, policymakers, councils and so on, and I have been very busy responding to emails from a lot of different partners and people connected to those partners about working with young people and youth-led processes, so there is a huge amount of enthusiasm and I think an important part of this work that we're doing now as part of this webinar, is sharing those experiences and what we've learned so that it doesn't become kind of a superficial consultation with young people, that they're genuinely involved In the whole process.
And with that I’m going to move to Simeon Donovan's question. “How much were young people involved in the design of Fuse, or was the idea largely formed before young people were recruited?” Okay. I’m going to just preface this by reminding everybody that The Plug is one of the partners on this project and led the entire process, and The Plug was founded and is managed by young people who are from Hackney, and so their whole - their whole USP is that they understand Hackney, they understand young people who live there, and they are best placed to conduct the kind of work that Fuse was trying to do, and that a lot of consultants from outside are invited to do, so The Plug is absolutely an important part of designing Fuse and determining the whole direction of Fuse. But maybe Joshua, would you like to talk a little bit about how you as designers were involved with determining the direction of Fuse?
44:33 Joshua Certainly, and just to add on to what you is - what you were saying, Hannah, I’d rather, I think, just to emphasize and this point, even though as Hannah said, The Plug is - is run by young people, but even the people that ran The Plug were very enthusiastic about this being a youth-led project. Now obviously they led us on - on a practical sense and just guided us along the right tracks, but I do think it’s really important to emphasize that they - they had - there was no - when we came on board, there was no idea in which way, and what design solution was going to come out of Fuse, nobody had any idea at that point, and it's only because of the research that the designers have done, that this, well, big idea that Hannah was talking about earlier, it is the - is the idea that came out of Fuse, but there was no - this - this conceived idea where the project would go for them, and we were able to give our idea and to lead to the project and to really take ownership of it, which I think is a real asset to The Plug and the other partners.
46:16 Hannah Thank you, Josh, that was great. I’m going to ask Karen’s question now. Karen says, “It's really great to hear about the Fuse project and what you've learned during the process of launching the project, and some of the things you did to shape the program continuously. I’m really interested in your approach on passing on this knowledge of what you've learned from Fuse for the young people you've worked with, but also as an organization so local communities may set up similar initiatives.” I mean, this is something that we haven't really talked about, as a group, because we're kind of writing up our reports at the moment, but maybe Diana – maybe, because you have connections with a lot of local community groups in Newham, maybe you could talk a little bit about your interactions with those groups and whether there's any interest in setting up similar initiatives to Fuse.
47:12 Diana Sure, so part of process of speaking to a lot of the businesses and young people was kind of making - asking the businesses, do you want to be kept in contact? And a lot of businesses and young people did agree, so kind of after this process, and once we’ve finished the report, we're definitely going to be forwarding the report across, and also opening those conversations so that if those businesses and young people would like to talk about anything specific, we are able to give them like any tips and also like speak to them and, like open up that conversation, and I also know that, for example, one of the organizations, I spoke to did kind of mentioned how the recruitment questions we asked and the different questions we asked in the interview kind of made them think about in a different perspective, so now they're going to use those practices into their recruitment methods, to see kind of what they can do as an organization to change and bring more young people into the organization. So already, we can see how much of an impact this kind of the Fuse project, and also the process has had on the local community and kind of making a lot of organizations and young people, reflect on the different processes.
48:19 Hannah And the final product that was created, this wellbeing service that came out of Fuse, is being implemented by the Good Growth Hub in the Olympic Park, and I would hope that what we'd doing is we’d be communicating how the wellbeing service came about, who designed it, who did the research for it, whose voices are heard, so the Good Growth Hub is hopefully also going to be a kind of living hub for information about involving young people in design as well.
And I think David’s going to love this question, it comes from Christine Hannigan, she says, “Some of the words or concepts in Fuse’s slides, e.g. ‘transforming a place,’ reflect the same language used by the current political regime that drives the planning system in which –“ oh, it's disappeared, where did it go? Oh, there it is, “in which the end state is maximum land value extraction, typically through regeneration, regardless of the consequences for people who already live there.” Okay, so, some of the language that we're using in our slides echoes a lot the language that is being used to kind of justify projects that push people out of our local area. “What David just said about representative, resonated, can he talk more about the language and approach that we use.”
49:59 David Right, hi. I think, just going back to the language we use, I think we need to, again, as I mentioned before about cookie cutter models, and just like bringing things together and making - putting down certain - yeah putting down certain, or, no, taking certainty over reality, like I think there's - there's so much nuance and there's, I think there's a lack of transparency on the fact that we don't get it right. We don't get it right all the time - we don't get right, most of the time. But it seems that we are trying to kind of sell this image of - the next project is the best one, is like, it's always good, it's always better, it’s always going to fix what came in the past.
And I think that's where I was kind of sitting on this, is that that needs to be just a level of honesty and transparency in how we engage with redevelopment, and recognizing the things that we don't know, and being just being honest and holding our hands up and saying we don't know if this is going to do a good job, from the people we spoke to, hey, this is what they said, this is how we engage with them, this is how we tried to do it, and this is what we created from their responses. But then to then package it in a way where it's like, now this is the only solution that comes out from the engagement that we have, and this is why it's amazing, I think that's where we go wrong. It's - it's okay, you've done the research, and this is one possible solution that we've created.
So I think that's where I come under it, it's just being incredibly transparent with what you've done and not presenting it in any other way than that. And I guess we do live in, I mean we live in a world where we, we need to - we ask for certainty, we kind of - we yearn for it even when processes like this can't provide that. That there is uncertainty in the work that we do. Because there is just so much nuance and so that's where I kind of like to land on that final comment, and again like I would love to have a further conversation with you and this, because, like this that would be like the back and forth I think would be amazing. But yeah, language is definitely important and just not relying on the language that you feel comfortable with in communicating what you think the issues are, what the solution is, and there needs to be a level of iteration on all levels of communication, especially when the features you are intending to regenerate, it’s not it's not your own. Yeah.
53:08 Hannah Yeah, and I think this is something that, you know, we touched on at, the beginning, which is one of the first questions we asked people was like what do you aspire to, so we were trying to understand what the desirable outcome would look like for the people, particularly for young people who live in these four boroughs, and I think knowing what those are and being transparent like David said about the people we spoke to and what they told us mattered to them, the outcomes that they would want to see from something like the Good Growth Hub or from regeneration projects, those become the things that we measure ourselves against so that we can't hide behind language like “transformational,” “innovative.” We have some something of substance and so that kind of makes sure that we're also accountable to the people that we spoke to.
We don't have much time left so I’m going to ask one last question, from Briony Fleming. “This has been so interesting, great to hear from you all. I have a question about the legacy of the project, what is next for you as a team?” And that's going to be a difficult question to answer, because we are just kind of wrapping up. But maybe Diana, would you kind of close with a couple of sentences about the final product that came out of Fuse and - and what will happen with it?
54:37 Diana Sure. So you mentioned previously, the wellbeing service, and this is hopefully going to be going into the Good Growth Hub, so as a result of kind of bringing up this concept and co-designing this idea of, we have now spoken to, like, the Good Growth Hub, and all the organizations involved in the Fuse project, and now we're hopefully going to see it become a real thing so it's gonna be really exciting to see that process. And another legacy we have is the actual report, so we've done a Fuse report, which kind of sums up a lot of market research we have, but also a lot of the reflections. So kind of looking at the secondary research data, and also the primary research data and showing all the reflections we have and kind of showing what we think organizations should do next, so kind of showing the next step. So I really think that's going to be a really big impact for a lot of organizations and young people to read and kind of understand the process of Fuse and kind of what direction we took to make this a really impactful ending hopefully. So yeah, I hope that kind of answered the question and we're still kind of seeing what's next with these projects.
55:44 Hannah Yeah, and just to kind of follow on from what Diana said, part of the writeup will be about the governance structure of Fuse, so we're going to be reflecting on what we've reflected on today, which is how do we do youth-led work in policy and programming, and also in research. So we'll make sure that everyone gets the link to that, all those reports when they're out. I was wondering if David, Diana, Joshua, if you had any final thoughts that you wanted to share before we before we finish. One last statement.
56:25 Joshua I think just - just quickly, something that really struck me throughout this process is especially for the businesses, people, the business didn't necessarily have an answer to the questions that we asked, however, they did have a really - various really insightful impacts. And they didn't necessarily link to the questions we asked, but they were they were really relevant too, and we therefore gained a lot more knowledge, and a lot more understanding of what different types of businesses wanted from this experience, so I think the fact that we able to speak to a range of people and they were brave enough – not that’s the right word, not to answer the questions, but to give their own insightful impact, really added to the entire value of Fuse, I think.
57:30 Hannah That's great, thank you, Josh. David.
57:34 David Yeah, so I think just being aware of like how many participants are here. And all of you have your own, like, sphere of influence, I would just kind of – not a call to action, but just recognize that hey, you came to this talk for a reason, right, and being able to say in your - in your spaces, in your environments, how can you - yeah, how can you challenge the status quo. We can see commonly that you can present those Build Back Better campaigns, which may be less inclusive and still pass the line, so we know how to pass the line. But is the extra work now that like, people are not going to push you on, but really needs to be done and you're here today, so again, just no call to action but yeah, just continue to ask those questions and be curious and challenge.
58:43 Diana Yeah, and I definitely agree with what David said, and just please, please let's not end this conversation here, and let's make sure we speak to all young people we have in our organizations and get their thoughts and ideas, because it can really help the growth, as I mentioned previously. So yeah, thank you very much, everyone, and please, let’s not end this conversation.
59:03 Hannah I’m actually sharing, hopefully - am I sharing my screen? Yeah, OK, great. So here is a list of contact details, and myself, David and Diana, Joshua as well, can share his email -we’ll share all of this in an email after the event, with everyone who registered for the event, so don't worry about taking it down now If you can't, but yes, we would love to carry on the conversation. The IGP is convening a kind of group of people who are interested in carrying on this kind of work, so you know, Fuse is not ending here. We’ll also share the reports from the project, and hopefully we can share an update as well about the handover to Good Growth Hub, and you can see what happens to the service that these young people have designed. So I’m just going to stop sharing now, and just want to say thank you so much to everyone for coming, really appreciated all of your questions, I wish we had time to answer all of them, they were really fascinating. Please be in touch and we will look forward to hearing from all of you again. Also Joshua, David and Diana, thank you so much for putting all of that together, that was so clear and brilliant, so thank you.