Glasgow’s innovative approach to addressing societal challenges by fostering neighborhood-level participation, aligning with our submission for the BloombergDotOrg Global Mayors Challenge. This initiative aimed to consolidate our findings and methodologies into a compelling marketing campaign and video presentation crafted by the Centre for Civic Innovation.
Glasgow Bloomberg’s Submission
Date
25 June 2022
My Role
Art director, Designer, Editor
Client
Project Type
Multimedia Campaign
Glasgow A Champion City 2021 - Bloomberg's Submission Video 2021
The problem
The Centre for Civic innovation needed to create a marketing campaign and produce a video based on the work that we have achieved with the Bloomberg report to consolidate all of your findings and to present our method and idea in a concise way.
What I did
- Facilitated comprehensive workshops within local communities, recognizing the pivotal authority vested within community members.
- Empowering these individuals to spearhead decisions for their own communities emerged as a critical success factor for this project.
- Led pivotal discovery sessions involving storyboarding and conceptual simplification, aimed at shaping the core idea for discussion within a video format. The focus was on delineating key elements and visualizing their execution through a storyboard, ensuring effective representation in the video.
- Produced an extensive repertoire of over 100 assets tailored for the video, strategically designed to communicate the concept of neighborhood-level participation across the entirety of Glasgow.
- Orchestrated the artistic direction and meticulous editing of the video content.
- Procured a voice-over artist whose narration complemented the synchronized graphical elements, ensuring a cohesive and impactful presentation.
Research and insights
- A notable trend emerged as more families expressed a keen interest in active involvement, attributing their participation to the perceived acknowledgment of their voices in these intimate yet successful workshops. This formed the cornerstone for an evolving concept: emphasizing the imperative for empowering individuals to exert influence and contribute to decision-making within their immediate communities.
- Our aim was to challenge existing presumptions, particularly the notion that individuals possess the capacity for design-driven, creative problem-solving within their own neighborhoods. We sought to highlight the unifying potential of design in fostering collaborative problem-solving endeavors.
- Insights revealed a resounding desire among individuals to engage in decision-making processes, albeit under personalized terms, specifically addressing issues impacting their daily lives.
- Community members voiced their reluctance to adhere to predetermined agendas imposed upon their neighborhoods, expressing a strong preference for voluntary involvement in decision-making processes.
The impact
- Initial prototypes revealed the efficacy of integrating design skills directly within the citizenry. This discovery underscored the necessity of devising scalable solutions aligned with this approach.
- Building on this insight, we established a framework to convene and facilitate extensive groups, fostering a collaborative environment that nurtured innovative problem-solving.
- Our commitment to a citizen-centric, design-led approach remained steadfast, even upon the submission of our idea to Bloomberg. Our unwavering focus continues to prioritize people, empowering citizens to partake in decision-making processes.
- A significant impact of our initiative was the establishment of our department as a crucial intermediary between policymakers and citizens, bridging a gap that had been previously overlooked.
- The marketing campaign yielded significant success, evidenced by an extensive reach of over a 50,000 views on Twitter alone, as per comprehensive analytics encompassing our collective social media presence during this event.
Lessons learned
- Recognizing the significance of garnering support for substantial change, our understanding underscores the necessity of collective engagement. The latent agreement with the idea, yet the inability of many to vocalize their alignment, highlights the imperative for individuals to articulate their beliefs openly. This observation underscores the importance of voicing personal convictions rather than assuming a lack of shared values among peers, fostering a culture of open dialogue and proactive participation.
My Approach - Design-Led Problem Solving
Discover
Understanding the ask, building an knowledge library around what we already know.
Define
Doing research and identify opportunities.
Ideate and Test
Develop and design new ideas to solutions.
Develop and Deliver
Share the outcomes and results of the new outcome.