Co-designing the future: from youth hack to innovation studio

Theme: Co-design

Discover how a local council and a university built a youth‑led design programme that’s now growing into a community‑powered innovation studio.

You’ll hear how young people worked on real‑world public challenges, what support and methods helped them succeed, and how research was turned into ideas that could be tested in local neighbourhoods.

This session aims to give you practical tools and inspiration to try similar approaches in your own area, whether you’re building community partnerships, developing young people’s capabilities, or looking for new ways to connect research with everyday experience.

Participant takeaways:

• see how involving young people in design can help shape public services, and learn easy ways to find, support and encourage them to help solve real community problems
• find out how to create and keep partnerships between communities, universities and local government by bringing together local knowledge, research methods and decision-making
• discover simple design and work practices that turned university research into real projects tested with local residents
• learn about the changes needed inside public organisations to help innovation led by the community
• get ideas for setting up an innovation studio where people can work together to create new solutions