“Moving to a lower-carbon future is not going to be a great, dramatic transformation – it will be slow and chronic….I hope what comes next is a more focused, locally rooted and inclusive politics based around asking people what they actually need in their lives, and working out how to fit those things within an environmental framework.”
Aditya Chakrabortty, The Guardian
After COP26 we have a destination: huge cuts in carbon emissions.
What we don’t have is a path. How do we integrate millions of EVs into our neighbourhoods? Sensibly install hundreds of thousands of heat pumps into leaky, poorly prepared homes? Adjust our appetites for fast fashion, carbon heavy diets and impulsive travel? And do all that in a way that is fair, thoughtful and even fun?
The Design For Planet Lab aims to help map this path. Through live projects conducted by students and staff and in partnership with NGOs, companies and government, we apply these 4 core elements of service design to the urgency of the climate challenge:
Empathy: Through understanding the habits, dreams, desires and fears of people, we design solutions that people actually want and use.
Systems Thinking: helps us identify how sustainable solutions need to fit into complex social, cultural and economic systems and helps us anticipate the potential unintended consequences of our designs.
Bias To Action: We create prototypes to allow people to experience and react to/against possible sustainable futures.
Fail safely: Rapid prototyping and speculative design allow us to test future scenarios quickly and cheaply. Letting us fail, iterate, improve with the urgency the crisis demands.
WHAT WE DO
The social impact challenge lab is a place for collaboration, research and change.
These three areas develop a symbiotic relationship in how we see neighbourhoods thrive.
Collaboration with students & staff across the school of design, alumni, partners and most importantly neighbourhoods. At the heart of the Social Impact Challenge Lab is an abundant and co-creative approach. Working together as we see neighbourhoods providing answers to the challenges they may face. Collaboration as we see our partners become employers for our students and collaboration as we join forces with national and international validators and authenticators of social change.
Pioneering research undertaken across legacy projects to explore the complexities of networks and neighbourhoods shared with associate institutions, student project outcomes shared with partners to affect policy and systemic change and the learnings shared by and with neighbourhoods as we focus on what’s strong, not what’s wrong.
With challenges elected by students, partners & neighbourhoods our role is to consistently and expertly create safe and enabling environments for change to take place. Together we co-create opportunities for choice to be exercised, for agency to be reclaimed and ultimately to find better ways of being human.
Our projects are formed and informed by partners, neighbourhoods and the RCA family of cross disciplined students, staff and alumni. Our current focus explores the criminal justice system and homelessness.
Working with Catch22, commissioned by the Ministry of Justice, provide a service design approach to the pilot programme running from January - December 2022 that seeks to prevent 300 men on probation returning back to prison by engaging with the terms of their licence.
Context
A licence is the non custodial portion of a sentence that is carried out within the community.
The purpose of a licence is to: Protect the public, Prevent Re-offending, Reintegrate back into society.
Non-compliance with licence conditions are the primary reason for recall, with most Prison Leavers re-entering custody for breaches unrelated to increased risk of harm. 59% of recalled prison leavers surveyed by Catch22 said that their reasons for being recalled had not been addressed and 63% felt they would benefit from additional support upon release, to prevent being recalled again.
Figures from September-2020 show that 11.7% of UK Prison Population (10,000 people) were in custody due to recall, but only 40% (4,000) of them had committed a further offence. Every year 6000 people are recalled for a breach of their licence that is unrelated to an increased risk of harm or committing an offence.
How might we innovate & better articulate The Big Issue's 30 year street sales value exchange into a digital proposition aimed at both existing and new audiences?
Context
The Big Issue is a street newspaper founded by John Bird and Gordon Roddick in September 1991 and published in four continents. The Big Issue is one of the UK's leading social businesses and exists to offer those caught in the most challenging circumstances, often individuals at risk of homelessness or experiencing homelessness, the opportunity to earn a legitimate income, thereby helping them to reintegrate into mainstream society. It is the world's most widely circulated street newspaper. The Big Issue’s famous maxim is a mantra for many social enterprises “offering a hand up, not a hand out”
Catch22, working with a consortium of partners, on behalf of the Ministry of Justice are delivering a programme seeking to provide enriched support to male persons on probation
The programme focuses on the personal wellbeing of the people on probation by delivering an integrated way of supporting those with identified needs in the following areas; Family & Significant Others, Emotional Wellbeing, Lifestyle and Associates and Social inclusion.
Design a service that captures the experiences and knowledge of the service users and maximises outcomes for those with protected characteristics.
WHO WE ARE
At the heart of the Social Impact Challenge Lab is an abundant and co-creative approach. We recognise the inherent (and often latent) power within neighbourhoods - To that end, we are fostering a new neighbourhood, from associates to alumni and from creatives to communities. For this new neighbourhood to function, we strive to maintain a welcoming, safe and enabling environment where innovation can be nurtured together.
Our partners are like-minded organisations who are keen to see the role of service design applied to finding better ways of being human.
Catch 22
With its roots dating back to 1788, Catch22 brings a legacy of genuine transformation across the criminal justice system, delivering life changing experiences. We are delighted to be working with Catch22 on a range of projects that we hope will affect policy.
The BIG ISSUE
The Big Issue is one of the UK's leading social businesses and the world's most widely circulated street newspaper. We are thrilled to be partnering with The Big issue on a student led collaborative project.
Rhode Island School of Design
The Center for Complexity at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) is a platform for transdisciplinary collaboration and innovation, informed by global events and creative practises, founded to benefit scholars, practitioners, and a diverse range of partners.
Nurture Development
Nurture Development is Europe’s leading strategic partner in Asset Based Community Development, they support the proliferation of inclusive, bottom up, community driven change, through supporting local communities to identify, connect and mobilise its assets to the benefit of the whole community.
The Ministry of Justice
The New Futures Network is a specialist part of Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service. Brokering partnerships between prisons and employers in England and Wales. Partnerships that help businesses fill skills gaps and prison leavers find employment.
Andrew Nurse
Visiting Associate
InHouse Records
Baron John Bird MBE
Knowledge Partner
Founder of The Big Issue
Carl Corbin
Visiting Associate
InHouse Records
Cormac Russell
Visiting Associate
Director at Nurture Development / ABCD
Emilia D'orazio
Visiting Fellow
Service Designer at London Borough of Barking and Dagenham
Fran Sanderson
Visiting Associate
Director of Arts Programmes and Investments at NESTA
Judah Armani
Head of Social Impact Challenge Lab
Leonside
Visiting Associate
InHouse Records
Matt Randle
Project Partner
Assistant Director at Catch22
Micah Sherer
Visiting Associate
Economist & Coffee Social Entrepreuner
Naomi McGrath
Project Partner
Senior Operations Manager at Catch22
Neil Sartorio
Visiting Associate
Partner at EY
Paul Cheal
Project Partner
CEO of The Big Issue
Tobin Shadlyn
Visiting Associate
Center for Complexity - RISD
Work With Us
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