Amplifying the voices of citizens in the community is a priority for both public and community-based organisations, however, encouraging those who aren’t active and regular voices within those public realms is one of the larger shared challenges facing this sector. The goal of this project is working to build more active citizens by giving people the tools, confidence and community they need to create real change on issues they care about.

The guiding principles explored within this project, evidence the promise of co-design to engaging communities and rebuilding citizen trust within governments. Drawing on unique methods and literature review, co-design is shown to be an effective method to empower communities to identify and respond to local areas of need, deliver solutions that improve people’s lives in measurable ways and create meaningful engagement opportunities for governments to work with their citizens and rebuild trust.

The outcomes presented, provides an effective guide of how policy-makers can use co-design, and the benefits of its use. The aim is to strengthen the ability of citizens and governments to solve public problems systematically, and provide opportunities and motivation to use innovative skills in future expanded practices. Replicating the processes and systems outlined within this report. opens the possibilities to use service design tools of place-based research, peer-to-peer data exchange, and participatory design in this industry.