Introducing ‘We Design for the Community’ pilot scheme

Discover how our pilot scheme has helped support struggling organisations and provide real-world experience for design students

What we do:

At the Culture and Community Spaces at Risk office, we have had a busy few months offering targeted business support advocacy and training opportunities for culture and community spaces at risk of closure. Since March 2020, we have helped over 1,200 organisations and 11,500 artists.  We have also launched a new pilot programme called We Design for the Community.

We Design for the Community:

We Design For the Community was a pilot programme conceived in collaboration with objectif design studio, pairing design and communication students with culture and community organisations. 

Through the support we offer organisations, we have been tracking the challenges faced by culture and community spaces.  One of these challenges is that many organisations do not have the capacity to improve their communications. Whether this is documenting their work or simply telling the story of their journey. This puts culture and community spaces at an acute disadvantage with a lack of visibility and presence, which can impact everything from funding to being seen by the local authority. Objectif had previously organised a communications webinar for organisations supported through the Culture and Community Spaces at Risk programme.

That's where the We Design for the Community programme comes in. We invited organisations to apply for support (79 cultural and community spaces applied) and then paired with students who applied to offer their support (59 students applied). 12 organisations and 16 students were shortlisted to participate in the pilot. The organisations were matched (based on their needs) with students (based on their skills). Students were paid London Living Wage for their work and were able to develop briefs with guidance and support from design professionals.  

The final day of the programme was held at the Camberwell College of Arts last month. It was a delight to see the cultural and community organisations coming together to see the design projects and students were awarded certificates to celebrate their contributions.   

Three exciting outputs: 

• Amy Wright created a design project for Latin American House, an organisation that, amongst other activities, provides advice and education and holds community events and workshops for the Latin American community and beyond, in London. The re-design involved a new logo, colour scheme, and layout proposals for social media pages, posters and front of house signage. Find out more on Amy Wright's website.

• Danni Xu helped Samafal, a Somali-led organisation, update their website photos with new, more authentic images. Samafal has been established to support Black, Asian and minority ethnic women and their families to overcome barriers and integrate widely into the community. Danni Xu became part of the Samafal family for a day and took a series of shots to represent the organisation’s different aspects and activities. Find out more on Danni Xu's Instagram. 

• Jiefei Zhan created a beautiful set of icons and illustrations for Money A+E’s new project, aiming to provide care and accommodation for young homeless in Newham, as well as immigrants, ethnic minorities and ex-offenders. These friendly graphics represent how the service provided should help the users “move on” in their journey through the programme, their life and the community. Jiefei developed this colourful, uplifting and energetic visual language to be appealing to youngsters, and to better suit the values of this specific project.  Find out more on Jiefei Zhan's Instagram. 

We are currently evaluating the programme and exploring what the future iteration of the We Design for the Community programme looks like. In the meantime, you can see the full portfolio of work that the students designed for the programme and read more details about the pilot programme.