Cohere.

Glorious day to be kicking off a new project today. Will be seeing more of Glasgow in coming weeks/months

Cracking time last week spending a whole day with leaders from across the public sector system in Essex, exploring how approaches/methods of can help scope and lead better work

Crazily inspiring afternoon visiting the very good folk —getting a thorough potted history on the project and dreaming up ways to take their impressive community empowerment model to the masses.

Their story is quite something to behold—frustrated by the state of his local park, local resident single-handedly picked up litter and dog sh** every morning at 5.30am for SIX MONTHS before getting a volunteer group together to plant some flowers.

The plants got pulled up almost instantly by local youths, but that didn’t deter them. They kept planting them—each time they’d last a bit longer until finally the offenders gave up and left them be.

With that, the park went from strength to strength - the presence and community care that the flowers embodied bringing people back to the once disused grounds.

A definite theme of ‘doing now and asking for forgiveness later’—the vigilante plant growing soon evolved into acquiring & installing a prefab building on the site (planning permission, what now?) to become a community café & hub, bring in a modest income to keep things running.

The hub is now open SEVEN👏DAMN👏DAYS👏A👏WEEK providing the local community with a place to gather and all important loos, that invites longer stays.

A hugely successful calendar of community events brings in more revenue to keep the doors open, and the park building has become a hub for a slew of community vents and a hub for various service providers.

A truly inspiring example of what communities can achieve when ownership is taken (and not asked for) and no is not taken for an answer

Excited to kick-off a challenging, new UX Writing project this week. Still not sure what a UX (copy)writer does? – here's a great primer:

What is a UX Writer? On writing for design

🚨 WORK-WE-CAN-ACTUALLY-TALK
-ABOUT KLAXON!! 🚨
Delighted to announce we have been selected by to support the UK-wide Rethinking Parks innovation programme on design and learning.

The Rethinking Parks programme is a fantastic Lottery-funded initiative empowering communities to explore new operating models for treasured parks and green spaces in the face of ongoing cuts to government budgets. Lots to read on the Nesta website: https://www.nesta.org.uk/project/rethinking-parks/?offset=36

As Learning Design partners, we'll have our Service Design and Communications hats on to assist a number of community-run parks around the country to codify and communicate the models they've created, as well as building toolkits to help others replicate these models elsewhere.

Cohere turns 5 this year, but we still often get asked...
Introducing – each week we'll be giving a glimpse into the breadth of creative and strategic projects we've been working on over the last few years

Wednesday word of the week 🤓 –
Delightful British colloquialism capturing an all-important mindset that underpins much of design and innovation work.