Imagining Solutions

There are a series of methods, especially within the field of design, which bring people together to develop solutions. Often this is called co-design. Increasingly, some of these approaches are being used within the public sector to re-design services.

User-led design

Users are often best placed to identify their own needs and come up with ideas about how best to meet them. In practice much of what...

Re-designing services with users and producers such as the work undertaken by design consultancies like IDEO, Think Public, Participle, and Live Work or the Hope Institute’s citizen teams around public service improvements.

Creative thinking methods such as Edward De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats and Lateral Thinking and the work of consultancy firm What If?...

Forum theatre is a form of theatre developed by Augusto Boal in Brazil, in which actors and non-actors play out stories of oppression (abusive husband mistreating his wife/ factory owner exploiting the workers etc.) Boal called this and other types of participatory theatre, the ‘Theatre of the Oppressed’.