In 2003 I was cold-calling around 200 emerging technology businesses, inviting them to come to our Humanising Technology project launch in Cambridge in 2002.

“Hello, I’m calling from the Design Council. Would you be interested in being part of a project that explores design in your business?”

Back then I was working as design manager on a project aimed at demonstrating what happens when you apply strategic design into emerging technology companies. We (that’s me and Ellie Runcie, now at the BBC) set up Humanising Technology, a nationwide project that would engage 8 of these companies with a host of deep thinking designers and business people.

The project opened them up to the potential for engaging design at different levels of the business, sharing techniques, frameworks to help them to see how they could use design more powerfully in the business. Our goal was to get them to them to think differently about what they could do with design. Over time they got to enjoy the impact design made to their business, exploring multiple potential applications, articulating more precisely their value propositions for customers. The Design Council reworked the approach into Designing Demand, and I prototyped my learnings into a service model. At Carnegie Mellon University, I was invited to set it up it as an alternative career path for design and architecture students, and local social enterprises.

It was a bold rethink of entrepreneurship and startup incubation, based on this previous work. At the time the Silicon Valley model of startup incubation, their assumptions, language and values were so pervasive, and still are. I had a sense that this form of business incubation just didn’t work for creatives. They’re shaped differently and simply not interested solely in making money (though of course there are exceptions). I had seen that the creative and social businesses did not respond well to conventional business support.

I called it Upstarter because it served those who did not fit the profile of typical tech startups — women, people of colour, older people, the unusual suspects — and it needed a name that told the intention story, and to stand up next to startups as usual. It took 10 years to establish, demonstrate impact and get interest in it. Now its proved that it works, I’m bringing Upstarter back into its original parent business, Plot.

Upstarter was truly prototyped into existence. Its starting point was ‘what would a truly radically creative business incubator be like?,’ starting with the smallest form of what it might take: a single session that embodied how it would behave, and how it might look and feel like? I used this (design led) approach to design and to test out with the kinds of people who didn’t feel themselves entrepreneur types (but completely were).

The initial thinking behind the Upstarter model was simple:

Eat our own dog food

The idea was the Upstarter would walk its talk: to the same methods building Upstarter as we were expecting people to consider in our work with them. This kind of fidelity was essential, as in conduct our work to demonstrate our belief in prototyping a business. To bring design approaches to creative business development, emphasising existing and nascent capabilities that creative business people had and amplifying these.

Make it stand up

The operating model was that if it’s going to work, it should stand on its own feet rather than need grants to exist. Early stage founders were unlikely to be able to pay for our work, so a service commission model was our starting point. I started to offer it as a service to organisations working with creative startups and alongside creative R&D programs. This started with a commission to run a mini incubation program for their REACT program, followed by business mentoring for Network for Creative Enterprise, then being contracted to deliver Business Development work for South West Creative Technology Network.

Not BAU for creatives

The approach should feel distinctly different to business a usual and tightly audience-aligned. We wanted them to feel it was made for them. Our audience were small emerging business with solid creative skills in their craft (theatre/writing/marketing/design/producing etc.), and their motivations were unlike the kinds of companies attracted to business as usual programmes. Almost all wanted to do more than just make money, and to have a viable business that was a great place to work in, one where people were happy and worked well work together, where they could create an impact on their network, sector or community. Their business was never just about the business. Our approach reflected this, that business is both multi-threaded and multi-purpose. Over the years we’ve worked with 300+ businesses across a range of programmes, commissions, sizes, stages and with different business focus.

Competencies not dependancies

Our focus was always on building competencies within founders and not just giving them an answer that might not be appropriate to their company. We wanted them to know where to go next, how to approach decisions, how to use the network to get what they needed. We know there are more than enough gurus telling people how to do business. The initial sessions were designed to feel distinctly different to business as usual: to be open, encouraging, coming from a place of exploring any business situation and how can you approach this, rather than ‘here are our top five ways’. Upstarter did not need to add more noise.

Meet them where they are

Our original programmes were delivered in unusual places: not in plush co-working spaces but where creatives were already based, in bars, cafés, conferences and maker spaces. It is very easy for creative founders to feel that business services are not aimed at them. Each session was designed around a particular business theme, designed to engage them at their stage of business, with trainers who knew creative business. We got them to test out their early product/service/business ideas live in street markets, where they could show their ideas to time-poor people who had no reason to be nice to them: a tough crowd, tougher than your classic investor pitching audience, I’d say.

How its going

It worked. We designed 14 programmes and delivered 19 of them with 12 commissioning partners and 380+ businesses over the 15 years. There are also many more organisations offering creative business development now. I have seen companies and founders benefit from it. In a recent five year review of our growth programs we have seen the definite impact an uplift in confidence of founders and a very specific increase in survival rates during very turbulent times. These kinds of figures demonstrate that creative businesses flourish from a tailored approach to business support. After working with us, many went on to more traditional startup or business support programmes. Many simply would not have applied for that kind of programme in the first place.

Highlights include:
* Various creative founders and R&D pioneers that we’ve been able to support in the South West Creative Technology Network and B+B Creative R&D, one of the Clusters programmes.
* Our work with investors over the years, especially bringing creative R&D companies to sit with investors that they would never have encountered alone,
* the market testing stalls at Roman Road, Well Street and Cheshire Street Market where makers were told directly to put their prices up,
* the West of England Combined Authority Create Growth programs that we had to rapidly transfer to online during lockdown, and then delivered with Mark Leaver for 5 years
* working internationally in Cairo, Amman, Dakar and Sao Paulo with British Council and NESTA and the chance to speak at Beyond about what we’ve learned about fertile environments for creative businesses to flourish.

Most of all, I’m proud of these things:
* Our impact data, that proves it works. 95% survival rate compered to 74% for other creative business in the same area at the same time period.
* Just how many programmes (19) we have delivered and businesses supported (over 380).
* Building such a diverse and experienced network of creative people to train, mentor and support these companies, who look like the cohort as well as having the best experience of creative product and business and being at the top of their particular games
* Creating a distinctive, flexible and capability building methodology
* Making it financially viable over this period
* Pioneering a new form of working with creative founders, despite the compelling power of classic tech startup thinking
* Seeing companies like Air Giants and Anagram fly, and many, many more build great businesses in truly turbulent times.

How its going to be

Upstarter is now coming back into its parent company Plot. To use a phrase from Camille Acey, its like moving back in with your parents. The programmes on the shelf that will be offered to future clients and our foundation programs will continue to be developed in a new guise. We are looking for and exploring new and different forms of collaboration over the next years. It’s been an absolute dream to take Upstarter from an idea to an established methodology. It’s not over. We’re transitioning and iterating with the market.

As of 2025 we are running Two Step, a DIY Music incubator with the fabulous Noods Levels, and supporting another national programme CoSTAR with a tailored programme for early career researchers.

The work continues in new forms. We’ll be offering new versions of this work, available via our Plot website and also the usual space www.upstarterincubator.com

And to everyone else who has been involved in our journey to date: clients, collaborators, advisors, friends, allies, a huge thank you.

Gill Wildman September 2025.

It was an honour to be invited by British Council Kazakhstan to join with Creative Central Asia last week in the fabulous Almaty in Kazakhstan. My hook was being asked to give a keynote and run a workshop with the different organisations exploring social impact investment. What a great opportunity to encounter different creative organisations and how they approach Creative business development and support. The focus of this gathering of creative agencies and projects from across Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan was in social impact investment. Creative Central Asia is a gathering of organisations that work across Central Asia and wider, supporting creative industries in multiple ways. Each year they get together to explore, collaborate and evolve the sector and their practice. Invited to keynote and help frame the two day gathering and a workshop to help explore creating a new tool to help identify value creation and impact measures.

My brief was to inspire a group of people who are already doing an amazing work. My starting point to them was to imagine that they had absorbed all the lessons of every other country trying to do this, shortcutting the long way round, and harnessing the energy of affiliated creative sector groups. To project out to a future organisation where they had skipped the pitfalls, applied all these lessons in a relevant, imaginative way. This looked like success in bringing social impact investment into creative economies in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. What had been under-researched – where actual value and impact had been unknown — had become clearly measured and visibly impactful. We also included some time travel and a few smiles of recognition for the problematic aspects that come with this form of finance.

In the afternoon we got down to how do we make the unpacking of subtle and interlinked value created and impact as straightforward and clear as possible? Our target was to make a structure so that people and projects can identify different forms kinds of impact measures they can put into place, especially those that might be simple to monitor as part of everyday ongoing work. As Rahul Rangwala, Director MSDF’s India Programme nails it in Aunnie Patton Power’s fantastic book Adventure Finance: “you have to be aware of the cost of measurement so that it doesn’t exceed the amount of their reward. That means you have to weigh up the difference between outputs that easily captured rather than outcomes that might be more fulsome but more expensive and complex to track) and this becomes a balancing act for many attempting to engage with this kind of finance.

The workshop was both demanding and revealing, being tested out on some amazing projects and people from different parts of creative industries. It was a total pleasure to meet Daniar Amanaliev from ololo group Kyrgyzstan, Nazgul Kubakaeva Director of Creative Industries Association in the Kyrgyz Republic, and Lola Sayfi from Human House in Tashkent and protects really interesting in creating social value through collaboration creating communities creating markets for other creatives and building international community. As someone said what makes them stand out is that we small amounts of money they do an awful lot in a humble way. I’m wondering what creative businesses could do with a little more so that they didn’t have to scramble every so often to get the next injection of cash.

as one investor said: maybe this event can give you (Creative Industries) more faith in yourself.

It was great to work with Galina Koretskaya from British Council Nastia Goncharova whose deft scheduling and special touches (chupa chups as investment) kept us moving. As a non-russian speaker it’s huge thanks also to the two translators whispering in my ear so that I could participate. Finally, as one investor said: maybe this event can give you (Creative Industries) more faith in yourself. What really is clear is creative companies bring so much inspiration just because of who they are and what they do.

How do you invite a community to inspire a process of naming new streets This is a case study about the community engagement part of a naming project, and as such focuses on that work.

The original engagement project brief had three components:

1. To engage with the community in the Canada Water/Rotherhithe area to participate in the naming of new streets project.

2. To work with local schools in a way that would bring them into the project and also provide some skills exchange.

3. To both engage and show the community that their input could inform the framework that was being created for naming new built spaces in locations in the Canada Water area.

This area hosts many different buidlings from different times in its history. It also hosts many different types of people, some who have lived here all their life, to newcomers, which is what makes it so interesting.

Context

British Land is currently engaged in the process of developing the Canada Water area, and has been for 15 years to date. In doing so, they are creating new roads and spaces and found that they needed a way of naming them, and saw this as an opportunity to engage their community in that process. They asked City ID for a framework for thinking about naming for now and in the future. City ID brought in me/Plot Studio for the community engagement component.

Note: this focusses on the engagement work, and does not cover the design and naming processes produced by the amazing team at CityId.

Project constraints

Our team was unknown and unfamiliar with the area. We brought fresh eyes and were reliant on the client’s many existing relationships to connect us to people and projects in the local community. Plenty of evidence exists of partial and cosmetic community engagement and we wanted to make this really work for the project beyond consulting with people. We wanted to make sure that we could differentiate engagement work in a meaningful and productive way. Another constraint was that work with communities always happens at their pace so we started connecting with them as quickly as possible.

An iconic library is right at the heart of this area. Filled with young people studying, and a Library of Things, it serves as a community hub.

The challenge with naming

Naming can and often is contentious, and methods of engaging communities doesn’t always resolve this. Naming places after people can be challenging, especially where they often represent people who are rich or famous and exclude less famous people or recognised names who have also had a positive local impact. This can also lead to the need to change names if it is later discovered that the original names are of those who are not as wholesome as they first seemed. So we were guided to avoid using individual or historic names, from experience that time can reveal unwanted associations. Equally, the reliance on popular methods such as competitions can result in only one winner and a ‘Boaty McBoatface’ scenario. The recent process of naming the London Overground included public engagement yet still ended in controversy. We needed to design a process that was more than a battle for a name, or a competition and instead create something that captured the nature of the place and the wishes of its current and future inhabitants.

One of the main streets undergoing lots of change and renewal.

Starting points

Past experience has shown that communities in areas being developed are likely to have been consulted on multiple aspects of building work at multiple occasions. Some become moments. We have found that there is often a range of participation: a group of high participating individuals, and a group of individuals completely uninterested, and a wide range of different levels of interest in between. We needed to be mindful of that.

Working with schools who are already at capacity in delivering their main curriculum, and therefore had no flexibility for extra work, meant that they had limitations to how much and what they could do with us and when they could do it. We needed to fit into their availability.

Any community has many needs, which take many forms and potential participants are not necessarily going to be available every time that we are available. So we needed to design an approach that had multiple forms of engagement, so that at least one would suit them. A process that was thoughtful and fit around the community by making sure there were several options for timings, inputs and locations to ensure we could connect with people as much as possible.

We ran a workshop at an evening event with RJ4All, joining in with their regular event.

The set up

Experience shows us that engagement means different things to different people: for some it’s about showing an exhibition, for others it’s more of a dialogue. To engage a community in this process well, we had to frame the project in a way that they felt that their time would be well used.

Our approach used design research methods to explore and discover what people were thinking and interested in, and to use this information to inspire the naming work. We needed to design a process that was interesting enough to be involved in, that could be seen to use their time meaningfully, and that demonstrated that their comments and thoughts had been used in the process, even if not their specific idea.

We also needed to make sure we engaged with a sufficiently diverse group of people across the area, so that we didn’t just listen to the loud voices in the community and could bring back a range of perspectives about what was important.

Global Generation at Paper Garden was one of the venues we worked with to engage local young people.

Our scope: now and in the future

We had to steer people away from telling us names of people because that was out of scope, and more towards understanding the kind of local stories, language and themes running through the qualities of the place that inspired them and that they would feel comfortable around. We wanted to embed some kind of future thinking, a more aspirational, ‘dreaming’ aspect that captured what they desired in the future. To look at what they aspire to as well as what already exists.

· We structured a set of questions that could be used across all of the different formats of engagement with different groups to help us get a consistent set of information from people, be able to look at the information holistically and from this, draw common and bigger perspectives.

· We asked about their past experiences of naming, for example what they had seen in the news or what they would consider a wrong approach. This question produced lots of examples of names people hated but pointed to a process they wanted. Their answers gave us a set of principles that we could build on for the naming process.

· We explored what people felt was special about the area and why they stayed. This simple question allowed people to tell us about the small and the large things that they appreciate and value.

Their answers revealed a set of qualities, stories and language that we could build on for the naming process.

· We then explored the future and asked the participants to consider people who are not yet in the area: children not yet born or people who will move into the area, putting the participants in the role of stewards of the future, asking them what they would like to see. This question tapped into dreams and aspirations about the future for them and their families and in many instances tapped into a sense of generosity for others in the future.

We designed a simple research method that was portable across different kinds of engagement formats: a set of straightforward questions and methods to capture responses across different types of engagement interventions (anything from an online survey or an in-depth workshop) to be easily compiled for later analysis. We made a set of simple, portable, lightweight research props — boards, postcards and a word game — that would work with all kinds of engagements.

Engagement formats

The client had asked us to run a series of workshops with the community and this formed the basis of our work. We ran 22 workshops in 14 different locations at various times across the peninsula. We also ran a number of small conversations, online workshops, an online survey, small group meetings and mini workshops, and larger workshops in community settings. We followed this with two full days on Canada Water and Thrive Market stalls to engage with people at the weekend as they went shopping. Our research structure helped us to scale up and down as required.

Talking with locals on a rainy market Sunday in Canada Water Market

Bizzie Bodies, an after school technology project for children get to grips with our questions.

Connecting with community groups

Our aim was to reach as diverse a range of community groups as possible — we worked with intermediaries who helped us reach specific target community and business groups and with the help of the client we connected with a range of different community groups, and sought out others.

With a group of elders in their Arts Club with Artist, Rob Kitson

We ran workshops in a range of different community locations across the peninsula including the Docklands Settlements, Finnish Church, Bacon’s College and Time & Talent’s community venue in the shopping mall. We added to these with additional contact with the multiple communities that live in this area. Two different youth groups at Global Generation at Paper Garden, Bizzie Bodies at Docklands Settlements, a group at RJ4All, Men’s Pub Club with Time & Talents, and Hatch business showcase event.

Running our workshop in a pub with Time and Talents mens group

Connecting with schools

We were introduced to local schools and three of them took us up on our offer to participate. Redriff School had the capacity to work with us to explore what would be of value to them and also possible within our timeframe. The timing was perfect for the geography department, and we built a research methods programme for their upcoming new term. We ran two workshops with Year Five: the first on why and how we research, and the second on how to analyse research. The children were shown how to and then designed their own research methods and tools in response to the same questions that we used across the wider project. This produced some fantastic results. The children tuned into precisely how they would ask each other questions about appreciating where you live and why, and considering what you want in the future. They conducted their research with their handmade design tools across the whole of Year Five. They brought their findings back to the second workshop and shared their unique perspectives on the area with thoughtfulness. We invited them to present their findings to the Findings Workshop with the wider community.

Illustrations by the thoughtful and talented children from Albion school

Albion School invited us to run an assembly, we invited them to add their thoughts on a postcard. They returned more than 100 completed ideas and beautiful drawings. Bacon’s College joined us for an online workshop with their School Council, who steered away from trying to engage the whole school, suggesting not many school students would be interested.

Analysing the findings.

Collating the material from workshops, surveys and interviews

Taking a design research approach we compiled all of the findings on a very large wall in our studio in order to see all of the work at once. Every piece of input from people was placed in sections across the walls showing the sheer quantity of descriptions of the qualities of the place. The responses to good and bad naming experiences were so clear that we could turn them into a set of principles for naming that were specific to this place.

Responses to the qualities of place gave us tone and emotional resonance, the stories we collected provided lots of detail and material to work with. They all helped us to tune in tonally to what people value and how they speak about the values that they feel in the place. What is known as ‘genius loci’ — ‘the spirit of the place’, located their language and transferred into themes and guidance in our framework.

With the team from CityId exploring the material coming out of the variety of workshops and surveys

It allowed us to keep everything place-specific, grounding the language in local inspiration and not in generic placelessness. The responses to what makes the place special showed such clear patterns, with nuances based on perspectives, and all of this gave us enough material to come up with a set of themes. The responses to questions around the future provided a similarly rich and varied set of insights into people’s aspirations, hopes and fears.

Presenting back the findings to a room full of the local community

Taking it back: The findings workshops

We needed to take these themes back to the communities to check if we had captured them accurately and if we were looking in the right place. Learning from the mistakes of others’ engagement processes it was clear that we needed to show, not just say that, the responses were genuinely being listened to and actually used in the process. We made the findings and themes ready for discussion and to share with the public.

Findings workshop materials — designed to explore themes from the research

They were designed to serve 2 functions:

1. To show how we had started the process, what we heard in the themes, and to check that we were on the right lines.

2. To build on the work with those who were involved in the original process and also catch new people who had not.

The first workshop included a presentation of findings from the children of Redriff School. They stunned everybody with their confidence and clarity of their messages for what the developer should take into account in the naming processes. The evidence of these children grasping a complex method, making it their own, achieving very subtle insights and playing them back to a room full of adults was so compelling for everybody. Both workshops provided lots to talk about and lots to take away.

Redriff School children present back their findings, and suggestions of what we should bear in mind on the project

One of our research props: a set of qualities to use in our conversations with people

Our method for sharing the themes, and inviting people to explore their reactions, and suggestions for names

Outputs

We handed over the framework to the client, including the rich sources of language and thematic work by the people at City ID. The engagement of the local communities made for a much better and authentic result, and we could see that the language we had to hand was rich with layers of local meaning.

Impacts

There were a range of impacts for those involved. Individuals in the community had the chance to make their mark in the work, the framework for naming. We kept them informed about what was happening and structured the process to be clear and not over promise. In return for their time they felt the satisfaction of being part of the process rather than on the outside, having had it done to them. School children participated in a big community project that will have a real, tangible effect on their environment. They gained skills that are valuable for future work and for connecting in their community, should they want to. For the client we connected with 400+ people and listened hard on their behalf and helped them to deliver on their processes and promises.

Conclusion

· Each community works at its own pace — you need to tune into that pace to get anywhere near hitting a timing that suits them, and start connecting with them as early as possible

· People do things differently. Design for multiple inputs, styles and times. Make your methods flexible. Be as flexible as you possibly can.

· Make your capture method consistent, so that input can be collated and compared across engagement formats and groups.

· Make space for a diversity of feedback and a consistency of content.

· Always check back in with a community before proceeding. Ask if you heard what they said accurately and ask them what they think as a result.

· Not everyone feels comfortable coming to an event. Host your own events and invited people in, but also go out to the places where they are.

Engagement

Engagement Strategies

Design In Community

Designing Engagement

So much of business world (The Apprentice) and startup world (Dragons Den) is about being sure, confident, convinced and knowing precisely what to do. But we don’t always, and there is a way around this. We can use methods and tools to understand them better, earlier.

There’s a difference, sometimes a huge difference between what we think we know about what customers want — the hunch that we have, or the intuition that we’re working with — and what’s really the case. Yet we simply can’t read their minds before we put our ideas in front of them. We just don’t know how people are going to react to our ideas, even if we like them. People may genuinely tell us things that matter to them, and then act differently. They may say they love your product, and then go and buy someone else’s. The gap between what they say and what they do can sometimes be really significant, enough that we can end up doing the wrong thing, or the right thing in a way that does not work for them.

As a startup founder of social entrepreneur you may understand the issues that led to your business deeply. But you don’t necessarily know how your product/service/offer/business idea fits in their life, until you have done all of the work to make it happen.

A common misdirection for designers is that we have all we need to be able to make decisions about how something looks and works. It was the same for me as a young designer. As if my experience back then at 28 would’ve been enough to know enough about things outside of my experience — like what would attract recently homeless people to a new service, or support Neurodivergent people filling in forms under pressure. The longer I’ve been a Designer, the more I am comfortable about knowing the limits to my understanding. I engage design research methods that gently and thoughtfully discover what people prefer, are attracted to, repelled by, intrigued by, or inspired to follow up. Connecting with how people consider ideas, what resonates with them underpins my consultancy work and continues to used in the business work that I do now. I have engaged these methods during the processes of developing ideas with large corporate teams and tiny startups: they are essential to how I and Upstarter work. With Upstarter we have tested everything from the get-go to understand both if and how we might offer our way of doing business development that is not business as usual. That’s how we approach our work at Upstarter, and that’s why we test, everything.

Over the past few years I noticed most startup and business programs did not show people how to do this explicitly. Now we’re bringing my version of these methods to understand how people think and what resonates with them into testing business ideas. Upstarter has always been about giving away tools and methods as fast as possible to those who don’t get business training as a given. That includes most creatives, and many social entrepreneurs. So it seems really obvious to bring Upstarter’s way of doing this as an essential part of our mix of how we do what we do.

Test This is for anyone interested in applying this kind of research into the testing of new business ideas. Its point is to reduce the risk of launching something that doesn’t quite hit the mark or isn’t the way that people expect it to arrive, as well as identify new opportunities. It’s a three session program for people that want to explore methods of testing business ideas before you go all out on them. If we are putting our eggs into one basket we need to make sure it’s the right kind of eggs the right kind of basket turning up at the right kind of time for people, right?

If you want to dip your toe into this kind of thinking, our preview event Why Do We Test Business Ideas is on 17th June at 6.30pm. If you want to be clearer about what they might want from you, do this. It works.

You can see more of our Foundations programmes here.

Why would you go deeper? Why give yourself extra work, open up to challenge, tricksy criticism or show your workings? Because it matters, and you need to hear it. That prompted me to try something this year. Last week, to be specific: here’s how it went.

For context, our stakeholders are very varied. From commissioning clients and their collaborators and funders. Or our creative & social entrepreneurs, their staff, our trainers, experts and founder storytellers. Or the regional movers and shakers, the national research councils who fund them. The multi-threaded web of people who have a stake in our work is highly interconnected.

We started in 2013, unfunded, with a not for profit model of finding who might pay for us to do this work. We knew the people who need this work could never afford to pay for it. Its not been straightforward, but we productised our work, prototype by prototype. Our brilliant clients commission us to deliver our work tailored to groups of creative, R&D projects or social enterprises. This approach means we have worked with many creative and purpose driven companies.

I booked an accessible space and identified a budget for materials and time. Work started reflecting on the 11 years of work so far, moving from intention to impact and back again. Piecing the events together, I produced a story journey. Using an open studio format, it was a space to drift by, explore and consider. It featured a timeline of events, our starting points, our projects. Adding these to the impact data, combined into a clear new position for our future years, with a set of scenarios. I gathered burning questions about the nature of this work; who does and doesn’t get to start a business; and how me might be use our profits to best serve them. Our visiting intern, Christopher Gerhart put them into an imaginative space for reflection. I made a mirror Miro board for those who could not come to the live space.

The stage is set, then the doubts creep in — who is going to turn up for something like this? Why should they spend time with us? It truly felt like we were sticking our necks out.

We had 30 visitors, with 5 online. We found that people had not met before, and got to introduce them. When most people only know us from our particular encounter, we got to show the wider work. We got support by people showing up, and encouragement for what we do. We got to show them how they have played a critical part in this work, that we could not have done without them. We thanked people with chocolate and souvenirs and heartfelt thanks. Doing this was so worthwhile, and we gained so much, simply by opening up.

Thanks to Watershed for the space, our intern Christopher Gerhart for working with us, Tony’s for the chocolate, Newspaper Club for the souvenir paper and of course everone who came from everywhere and contributed in small and large ways.

If you need someone to help you explore and tell your story, please contact us at Plot.Studio.

On the morning of Friday 9th June, a group of creative businesses, developers, councillors, gathered at 92 Main Yard. 92 is a big warehouse bar space in Hackney Wick, in Tower Hamlets. It is one of the few spaces surviving the last 13 years.

We celebrated the Hackney Wick and Fish Island Cultural Interest Group. The CIG, now in its 13th year, has held conversations between creative business (artists, immersive designers, graphic designers, film makers, fashion designers, animators and every kind of creative) with local professionals, institutions and organisations, in a monthly meeting.

Before and after the Olympic magic, Hackney Wick attracted creatives to live somewhere with a creative vibe. Developers, arts institutions, and universities followed them into the area to be closer to the creative scene. Some came to develop new business forms that engaged community benefits in their approach.

I arrived there in 2013 with my co founder and strategic design agency Plot. Here was a space of possibility when coming back to London was expensive and prohibitive. I discovered that my Nan had many years earlier worked at sweet factory Clarnico. Other family members had been in the area before new roads removed their homes. Our wonderful warehouse studio space became a home for work, social events, projects and the space to bring people together. Lucky us.

Back in 2013 Hackney Wick was — and might still be for some — a place to try out new ideas, to prototype new initiatives. We got to hear from Bobby Kasanga as he started Hackney Wick FC — his inspiring and life-saving football team. Or Juliet Can’s work for affordable space through Stour Trust, building on her work at Stour Space. So many of us came there with tiny emergent ideas, and are now reaping the rewards. The Wick game us a space and community for that. This creative scene is what continues to be so special.

In this inspiring place, in our studio, we prototyped our creative incubator Upstarter. We took the time to get it ready to work with clients and startups. Our local projects explored fair financial products, or made new initiatives.

In 2023, new buildings outweigh the older landmarks — Queens Yard, Main Yard, Crate Brewery, 92 White Post Lane and The Lord Napier: all connect the present to the past. New people arrive with new ideas to make great things happen are there, many in the meeting. So much of Hackney Wick is made up of minoritised people, who do not get to play a part in these discussions. Our Hackney Wick Town Hall project responded to that. This Town Hall is not a building. Its a conversation space for minoritised people in the area, facilitated by young people from Hackney Quest and now run by local people.

In the meeting we heard talks from new businesses, those who have grown whilst there, and new ones. University groups now study the impact of the creative industries and the CIG have had in this area. As I told my story I celebrated the role of the CIG in bringing all these forces together. How special it is. We needed it then, and as we face even more uncertainty about creative business funding, we sure need it for the future. Happy birthday CIG!

I’ve been working on public funded R&D projects with creative people for some time. Many projects start with lots of enthusiasm, energy, ambition and, as the funding runs out the project ends.

Increasingly these kinds of projects involve more social elements, such as building a community or a network or connecting people that may have not been connected before. As the project ends, the funding for any continued work ends too, and so these groups networks or communities are left hanging. Increasingly this has disturbed me. So I started a project to explore how we currently end projects like these, and how it might we design those endings in better ways.

Of course, this work is not new and the first starting point was to look at who else has been working in this area. Notably Louise, Cassie and Illona’s work is a key inspiration and Joseph Macleod, whose And Ends work takes consumer endings embedded in a business context.

Bristol and Bath, Creative R&D gave me some funding to explore this issue on a live project with both project teams and participants. Starting with research from participants and team members — to understand the nature of endings from both of their perspectives. Reviewing and modelling these findings, sharing them with the project team, we explored possible initiatives.

We based these on what initial research on people on our programs had talked about as problematic for them, and also for people on the delivery teams. Each initiative idea needed to connect with the issues they were raising: to reduce shock or create continuance.

For people on the programs experience and talk about a very keen sense of feeling dropped as the program ended, with nothing in place for them to continue, nothing to pick up themselves or not knowing about alternative local services or groups to be connected to.

For example, team members on projects face a challenge: as the work comes to an end, they need to look at new opportunities so that they don’t fall off the end of a project contract without the next job, or somewhere to land.

In both instances, these sensations are highly emotional to talk about as well as being difficult experiences at the time. So much care was needed to gently explore what endings felt like for these two different perspectives. Collectively the project team made a timeline of the next few months, the imminent ending, giving us all a new view on the project: to see the sequence of deadlines, deliveries and when people were due to leave, and who remained to pick up the pieces and wrap things up as the project came to a close.

Together we evolved a language to talk about different types of actions and initiatives that can come out of projects as we drew to an end. We explored how they can be anticipated in advance as areas of activity and actively designed into new projects. For example, thinking about understanding and knowledge generated that could be turned into methods or descriptions, and given to other projects or handed over to organisations involved. We may also have different kinds of outputs that are partial, incomplete, but may be useful materials for others to consider in their work. Within GDPR compliance naturally, we could share some of this information with other organisations who may pick it up. We can also design the ending to slow down to a conclusion, so that people can share the reflective qualities of coming to a close and draw out the lessons they have learnt, the experiences they have gained so that it may be less of a hard bump.

Earlier on in the process of a project budget forming we can consider how we can give networks or groups a little additional finance so that they may continue until they can support themselves. This short, sweet project allowed us to think about how we might create a more satisfying ending; how we might find new uses for insights and learning; how we might continue social connections and how we might leave just a little more after we pack up our things and move on.

If you would like any more information about this project, please contact gill@plot.studio

Photo credits Gill Wildman, Illustration Lucy J Turner https://www.lucyjturner.co.uk

The OG: Methods Lab

The original collection of design methods happened in a research project. The Prescence Project was a key step in gathering design methods that were already in the public domain, but not yet considered a suite led by the Netherlands Design Institute. This project focused on new media for the older generation, designed with and not for and gathered a fascinating group of designers to explore this space. They produced tools, methods, scenarios and prototypes, as a more open way of exploring as designers. At the end of it was a compilation of these tools & methods — what Coleman called 12 ‘proper’ methods and a number of experiencial ones. They also published a small booklet. I remember seeing a copy of the booklet in the Design Council library, but it sadly disappeared. It features early work by Bill Gaver on Cultural Probes, and Tony Dunne’s pseudo-documentary method, a precursor to his Speculative Design methods.
http://emmti.wikispaces.asu.edu/file/view/design_methodslab.pdf

http://www.hookerandkitchen.com/presence/

IDEO Method Deck

The cards are divided into four categories: Learn, Look, Ask, and Try, making it easy to reference, browse, sort, and share the cards.

IDEO’s Method Deck was originally supplied only to internal IDEO teams — their own designers and human factors folk. When I first saw a pack, a treasured one owned by Matt Marsh (then head of Human Factors at IDEO SF, now Firsthand) I experienced my first real tool-envy. How could I get one? Only for employees? Really? Of course, we can now buy a copy easily, but it was a brilliant way of generating mystique and interest. Of course I have a couple of packs — and my first was a photocopy of an original set (Matt’s).

https://www.ideo.com/post/method-cards

Eno’s Oblique Cards 1975

Now, I know that these are not strictly design tools, but this classic set are particularly valuable when it comes to creative processes. They also demonstrate how tools do not have to do everything, in fact they can just provoke a mood or a thought. These are a perfect collection of stimuli — things to provoke you when you are struggling to think, by getting your to think in a more oblique way.
http://oblicard.com

Dan Lockton’s design with intent cards

Contents: 101 Cards

In 8 Categories ( Architectural, Error Proofing, Interaction, Ludic, Perceptual,Cognitive, Machiavellian, Security )

Dan Lockton produced this deck in 2010 which “aims to give practitioners a more nuanced and critical approach to design and behaviour, working with people, people’s understanding, and the complexities of everyday human experience. It’s a collection of design patterns — and a design and research approach — for exploring the interactions between design and people’s behaviour, across products, services and environments, both digital and physical.”

http://designwithintent.co.uk/downloads/

Design Council Methods Bank 2003

Bear with me while I have a little weep: sadly I lent my precious set of this deck to a student when giving a talk about tools and it was not given back to me.

This set was produced by a team of us at the Design Council, and compiled from new work by Chris Vanstone and Anna White (Humpherson). What’s really good about it is that they not only built on existing design methods, but also extended the kit by reviewing the work being produced on our demonstration projects at the time in national technology and manufacturing projects. So they codified all of this new work into tools as a part of the process that was producing the Double Diamond thinking. Some of these things are key parts of the history of design in the past years.

IDEO Human Centred Design Toolkit 2011

Human centered design, but not for commercial clients, aimed towards those who would be making social innovation. It’s broken down into Hear, Create and Deliver. The case studies are based in the kinds of emerging nations and issues, but the methods are good IDEO methods. 2011

Interesting article that unpacks design thinking and that work https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/02/09/1067821/design-thinking-retrospective-what-went-wrong/

Community Toolbox
http://ctb.ku.edu/en/toolkits

Nesta Creative Business Toolkit

This set of design-inspired tools for thinking about creative businesses was crafted by Nesta. Using a design approach it was used as the basis for lots of creative business training rolled out around the world.

• Explore values and how they align with business idea
• Identify customers and the relationships you need to build
• Use blueprint modelling to visually map how your business will function
• Develop your marketing messages
• Learn financial tools to ensure you are in control of your business finances

Creative Enterprise Toolkit

Upstarter’s Business Models cards

Our 50 Business Model Cards cards are the result of years researching innovative ways that people are making new businesses, and social enterprise in cities in the UK, the US and in Europe. We were looking for evidence of a whole new level of experimentation in how people create businesses.

The point of them is to help you to think through alternative models for your business idea — you can start with one, or use them to think with.

https://upstarterincubator.com

Hyper Island toolkit

This set of online collaboration and design process tools demonstrates Hyper Island’s core ethos — of brilliant collaboration and change making. Some of these are tools that exist in other forms, but they have made them theirs, and a useful selection to work with. https://toolbox.hyperisland.com/

Drivers of Change

Arup Foresight Team

The Drivers of Change deck is a planning tool that helps the user to ask the right questions in order to plan effectively for the future. It investigates key global issues and trends driving change in the built environment, but also has value for other sectors.

5 sets of cards: demographics, water, climate change, urbanisation, waste, energy, each set examines the top 25 drivers of change impacting our societies and markets.

http://www.driversofchange.com/.

Luma Innovating for People 2012

36 Human Centred Design methods cards in 3 sets: Looking, Understanding & Making. Booklet.

This set of cards and handbook takes 36 traditional human centred design methods and makes them available for non designers, and this is a good thing. Whilst DSchool was busy promoting design thinking as a live programme, toolkits like this were being produced by companies like Luma to be able to bring innovative design processes into the hands of more and more companies. Their approach is highly pragmatic, and each card gives clear instructions on techniques such as Walk a Mile Immersion, or Stakeholder mapping, or interviewing.

https://www.luma-institute.com/about-luma/luma-system-explore-methods/

Near future Labs TBD Catalog

TBD Catalog

http://shop.nearfuturelaboratory.com/collections/frontpage/products/design-fiction-product-design-work-kit

Design Fiction Design Brief Creation Playing Cards
DF_DBCPC 0–7

54 card deck

3 sets of product prompt cards for those playing with and designing future fictions. It has there types of cards: Object Attributes, and Design actions.

The Thing from the future

This delightful set of cards are for for telling the future — well, at least making scenarios of multiple futures. Produced by Stuart Candy and Jeff Watson of the Situation Lab in 2015, it has 4 sets — Terrain, object, mood and — most importantly — the arc of the future — pointing up, or sloping down, or all kinds of trajectories. The time horizon is left to the decision of the players — from soon to 100 years time. There is a lot packed into this simple deck, no wonder it has won awards.
www.situationslab.org/projects/the-thing-from-the-future/

Design Fictions Work kit from Julian Bleeker

126 total cards, to help imagine possible near futures.

Categories: Archetype, Tone, Object, Attribute, Action and 70/20/10 Jokers

This kit is intended to be used for imagining material cultural artifacts representing the symptoms & implications of all kinds of futures, including Solarpunk futures, autonomous vehicle futures, VTOL futures, breakfast futures for example.

Defunct: No longer available

Service Design Network Toolkit

No longer available

Design thinking for educators toolkit
ideo.com/work/toolkit-for-educators

Inclusive Design Toolkit

Inclusivedesigntoolkit.com

Matchbox
Design Council packaged a methodology for developing business by design.

Books

Bootleg Bootcamp
This comprehensive set of design methods has been well used by me in teaching about design methods. Its digital form means its highly probable, and comes out of the School, so it has a strong provenance. Its an introductory kit in my opinon, and a good one at that.

Designing for Growth 2011
This is a design thinking toolkit in book form for designers and managers. It has many of the essential tools and methods…(more here)

Universal methods of design book
Bruce Hannington’s book is here, simply because it’s a comprehensive gathering of methods by someone who took great care to do so. It’s not in a kit form, but it has so many methods that it should be included here.

I had arranged some Reverse Mentoring with Rising Arts — this is a process of a young person mentoring a more senior one. I had pestered them for a long time after they mentioned that they were thinking about doing it for professionals. They were going to train up some of the diverse young people they work with — just as they do for board membership — to mentor older people.

“Gifts make room, Clear Space.” Malizah

I see her in the zoom square and she is all smiling warmth, and this starts well. I arrived at our first meeting with a question that had been forming in my head for a little time: how can I be a good elder? As a veteran, a senior and highly experienced strategic designer/facilitator/creative how might I act and focus on this next stage of my life, especially if I want to add something? This first session was the unpacking of that question.

As a friend recently said: anything you do is your twenties is cool and if its not cool, then its easily ironic. At later years what you do can so easily be only dull…

So, meet Malizah, the poet, millennial specialist, writer and deliverer of thrilling rhythms, and hypnotic precision workings that open up emotions you never knew you had. If you see her work, you can see and feel just how much emotional and life intelligence she brings to her work and performance.

Starting with what we thought an elder is or does, she told me her version — of the person in church who passes you a treat, or opens up new things. I had only a tiny inkling of what I meant, and with a much clear image of myself in the past — passionate, challenging, tricksterish, and now and the future with less clarity. In my mind, elders are much older than me, frail or wise, receiving care, or handing out treasures, usually still and highly ponderous. All of the great cultures treat their elders with respect, and have clear roles for them. What version of this would work for me, and what relationship to the sense of future responsibility I have? In or conversation together we walked through how an elder acts with care, and guidance where appropriate — a presence to that supports younger people to be seen, and to open up how they might make the value they bring tangible.

Our second meeting focused on a new sub-question: How can I make space for others, and when should I get out of the way? We moved through my role now to challenge and stand for those not represented (yet) in spaces where I operate. We spoke about building and setting up new opportunities. By session three we dug into authenticity and genuineness in how I conduct myself, clarifying the internal indicators we all have through self-sensing when it is and is not genuine. And we do know the difference if we stop for a moment. We shared how to be mindful of how we might come across, and to check for that. We discussed how accessibility for others not like us is directly connected to their expectations ( from our instructions and communications) as to what is going to happen, what they need to do to be a part of something, and what they feel they can and can’t do.

We ended these four sessions by landing the idea of an elder as supporting others’ sense of self and their worthiness. By making opportunities for them and finding new ways to support them with small and accessible ways of sharing hard-won experiences in stories and sharing in spaces where they are.

Just a little time with the Poet. She opened up a space for me, just as I do for others in my work and so rarely get a chance to do for my self. This was a precious gift, that I am very grateful for and has catalysed lots of small changes and new thinking. Our Upstarter micro fund (below) is the first of these.

Please check out Malizah the Poet and more here and here.

Here is our recent micro fund to support business development for young creatives .Upstarter x Rising Creative Business Boost Fund

Rising Arts Agency — please support them

Whose Future — Rising’s flagship city wide arts project

As October approaches I am looking forward to speaking about a project. This is one my company did for a major broadcaster five years ago. I’m sure you are very excited to hear about a project I did five years ago. You’re not? Hmmm, I thought so.

In contrast, I have been able to speak out about a project I have recently finished. Launched online this month, I can see who is reacting to it. I can pick up on all kinds of conversations and opportunities around the work. Fellow travellers are connecting our thinking. Its such a delight.

This is so unusual for me that I almost don’t know how to join in with it.

Its Glimmers, a wonderful project for the The National Lottery Community Fund. I have been able to work with the brilliant Rachel Coldicutt, and that has been a total pleasure. Together we have been able to evolve the work in a satisfying way, learning as we go. I have been able to have conversations with some amazing people from across the Civil Society. The work is here, Rachel’s writing about it is here and the toolkit here, and the timely conversation is ongoing.

Strategic design — what I do — is often so backgrounded that it its effects are difficult to isolate. It does not have a thing to point to. My work informs a company’s strategy, or product range, or internal culture. I’ve been writing about how it works, what we do and how it works for my PhD by practice at RMIT. Part of this has been to consider the role of the NDA and its effects on telling good accounts of design.

But, you say, don’t we get to speak about it once the company launches it? Well, no, as (unlike a product launch as in this case) with strategy we are talking longer term time frames. I cannot speak about one project until October, as the Non Disclosure Agreement lasts for for five years. In another I am not even able to speak about the actual existence of the NDA.

There are other longer term effects. The fact that the NDA exists affects your behaviour — you don’t talk about it! Of course if you can’t speak about it, no one knows about the kind of work you do. They don’t see the quality of that work and engagement, or the brilliance of the interventions. It becomes invisible. Researching a PhD has highlighted this behaviour. It is now down to me to make sure it does not continue.

Confidentiality is essential in my work — otherwise I would not have any business at all. But the gagging effect of NDA’s has a bigger impact on my voice and I imagine right across the design industry.