The Pengegon Estate in Cambourne, Cornwall has problems. There are high levels of unemployment, child poverty, drug and alcohol abuse and low educational attainment. What could designers do to help a community as deprived as Pengegon develop services that will benefit the people who live there?
A Dott Cornwall project, to bring the design and project planning of a new community centre back into the hands of the people who'd use it, Designing Communities saw agency SEA Communications working with Cornwall Council's Neighbourhood Manager and on behalf of the Camborne, Pool and Redruth Regeneration Company (CPR).
Most importantly though, SEA worked with the people who lived on the Pengegon estate. They helped them share ideas for what, if there was a new community centre built, they would like do there, what services they would expect it to deliver. Through text-message questionnaires, films, social media and by talking to people at events like the community Christmas party, the SEA team was able to involve the people of Pengegon in compiling a list of services they needed as a community - this included sports clubs, child care facilities and over-50s social groups.
After engaging the community in diagnosing and discovering what it needed and wanted, SEA enabled the people to start co-designing their ideal community centre. They held a design day where children modelled out of cake their ideas of how a community centre would work. They held a workshop with the Resident's Association who told the designers that many people in the community would be interested in helping to build a new community so they could learn new skills that could help them in employment.
Get children involved in the design and they'll use it. Get adults involved in building it and it will teach them new skills. Kathryn Woolf, Director, SEA Communications
Together with the community of Pengegon, SEA has created a co-designed brief for potential architects that could be asked to design a new community centre. Now the team is hoping that their ideas brought to life with a series of sketches that show how a community centre could be laid out will help project sponsors invest in turning the ideas into a reality.
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