Company number: 05435630 Charity Number: 1112094 

## The Glass-House Community Led Design 

**Report and financial statements For the year ended 31 March 2023** 




**The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2023** 

|Reference and administrative information|1|
|---|---|
|Directors’ report|2|
|Independent examiner's report|41|
|Statement of financial activities (incorporating an income and expenditure account)|42|
|Balance sheet|43|
|Notes to the financial statements|44|





**The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2023** 

|**Company number**|05435630||
|---|---|---|
|**Charity number**|1112094||
|**Registered office**|Mainyard Studios||
|**and operational**|35 Bow Road||
|**address**|London E3 2AD||
|**Country of**|United Kingdom||
|**incorporation**|||
|**Directors**|Prue Chiles|Chair|
||Susannah Davis||
||Robert Johnson||
||Alexander Sainsbury||
|**Key management**|Sophia de Sousa|Chief Executive|
|**personnel**|||
|**Secretary**|Sophia de Sousa||
|**Bankers**|CAF Bank Ltd||
||25 Kings Hill Avenue||
||Kings Hill||
||West Malling ME19 4JQ||
|**Solicitors**|Portrait Solicitors||
||1 Chancery Lane||
||London WC2A 1LF||
|**Independent**|Noelia Serrano||
|**Examiner**|Sayer Vincent LLP||
||Chartered Accountants||
||Invicta House||
||108-114 Golden Lane||
||London EC1Y 0TL||



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**The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2023** 

The Directors, who also act as Trustees for charity law purposes, submit their annual report and the financial statements of The Glass-House Community Led Design for the year ended 31 March 2023. The Directors confirm that the annual report and financial statements of the Charity comply with current statutory requirements, the requirements of the Charity's governing document and the provisions of the Statement of Recommended Practice (SORP) 'Accounting and Reporting by Charities'. 

## **Structure, governance and management** 

The Glass-House Community Led Design, which is a Registered Charity (1112094) and a Company Limited by Guarantee (05435630), is constituted through its Memorandum and Articles of Association. 

The Board of Directors currently has four appointed members, who give their time to the Charity on a voluntary basis. The Directors of the Company during the year are set out in the legal and administrative information on page 1. The current Directors are Prue Chiles (Chair), Susannah Davis, Robert Johnson (Chair of Finance Committee) and Alex Sainsbury. 

Either existing Directors or senior staff members may propose potential new Directors. The Chair and at least one other member interview each potential Director.  If approved, potential Directors attend a meeting of the Board of Directors as an observer. Directors may subsequently be appointed by a unanimous vote on an ordinary resolution at a quorate meeting of the Charity’s Board of Directors.  There is an established process for the induction of Directors.  All new Directors are provided with an induction pack containing relevant documentation as recommended by the Charity Commission. The Board carries out regular governance reviews of the Board and its functions. 

The Directors appoint a Chief Executive to manage the day-to-day activities of the Charity. 

## **Risk management** 

The Charity has assessed the governance, operational, financial, and external risks, as well as those related to compliance with law and regulation. Where appropriate, the Charity has consulted external experts to ensure that the systems and structures in place meet standards and regulations. The Charity has established a clear set of Financial Policies and Procedures adhering to guidance from the Charity Commission, as well as a Financial Reserves Policy appropriate to the risks of the Charity.  A comprehensive review of the risks is carried out on an annual basis. 

## **Related parties** 

One of the Charity’s Directors (Alex Sainsbury) is also on the board of the Charity’s main core funder, The Glass-House Trust. See note 8 for further information. 

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**The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2023** 

## **Objectives and activities** 

The Principal objects of the Charity are: 

- the advancement of education in matters relating to urban design, including by offering advice, information, training and project support to community, tenants and residents groups throughout the UK in matters relating to urban design. 

- the maintenance, improvement or provision of public amenities in areas of social and economic deprivation, in the interests of urban and rural regeneration, through the support and promotion of public participation in the design of the built environment and public spaces. 

## **Mission and approach** 

We want to make great places a reality for everyone. 

We connect people with the design of their places, and connect design with people. Our work is focused on supporting communities, organisations and networks to work collaboratively on the design of buildings, open spaces, homes and neighbourhoods. 

We see design not only as a tool for creating great places, but also as a way to connect people and to empower them with enhanced confidence, skills, and a greater sense of agency. 

We work openly and collaboratively across disciplines and sectors to develop research, projects, events and practical resources. We are committed to sharing the learning from our work to help affect change for people, places and practice. 

## **What we do** 

**Champion:** We are an independent advocate for the value of empowering design practices and for the importance of design quality and its effect on people’s quality of life. 

- **Empower:** We empower people and organisations through design by building new skills and confidence that give people the agency to contribute to and lead inclusive local change. 

**Connect:** We use design to bring people together to work collaboratively to improve their places and support local relationships and networks that help build community. 

- **Innovate:** We test new ideas and methodologies with partners, projects, and places and share what we learn to inform and innovate design practice. 

## **Areas of work** 

## **Improving places** 

We enable a wide range of people and organisations to work together to shape places, such as the design of new housing, revitalising a green space or transforming a community building. 

Our independent, hands-on support helps to build confidence and capacity, to inspire, and to give people the agency to improve the quality of their neighbourhoods. 

## **Innovating practice** 

We inject new approaches and processes that enhance the social and economic impact of designing places and inform policy and practice. 

Our support empowers organisations to rethink their culture and practice to support a more open and collaborative approach to shaping places. 

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**The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2023** 

## **Action research** 

We undertake action research with partners across sectors and disciplines to explore the value and impact of empowering design practices in supporting people and places. 

Through our collaborations with partners and the communities engaged with our research, we develop and share new knowledge, tools and resources. 

## **Supporting dialogue** 

We create and facilitate interactive events and activities that help people from different backgrounds and professions work together and learn from each other. 

We also share our work on empowering design practices at conferences, workshops, lectures and other events that explore the connections between people and places. 

When planning our activities for the year, the Directors have considered the Charity Commission’s guidance on public benefit. The Glass-House works to ensure that our programmes are inclusive, accessible and responsive to the needs of our beneficiaries. We also aim to ensure that any support that we offer brings benefit not only to the direct participants, but also to a broad crosssection of the communities in which their projects are based. We are also committed to ensuring that our work supports innovation, and the production and sharing of learning. 

## **Allocation of resources to beneficiaries** 

The Glass-House offers free or subsidised enabling and support to community groups and organisations through a number of different programmes. 

The Glass-House delivers a programme of free events, which includes our national Glass-House WEdesign Series and other workshops, seminars and events. We generally offer open registration to these on a first come, first served basis. 

The Glass-House also offers some free or subsidised project-based support and training to selected communities, which is sometimes made possible through theme-based funded programmes. All this support is accessed through a both rigorous and responsive process to assess eligibility of groups and projects, managed by the Charity’s staff and relevant partners. Applicants are interviewed and/or visited by one or more members of staff, and information assessed by at least two members of staff. The staff team reports regularly to the Chief Executive and the Board of Directors on both projects being considered and resource allocations made. All support given has clear terms and conditions attached and is subject to rigorous monitoring and evaluation. Above all, there is the expectation that we will capture and share learning from each of these projects, and that those we support will work with us to help ensure that the work we do with them can benefit others as well. 

In some cases, our free support to communities is linked to the collaborative action research programmes we deliver with higher education and third sector partners. This allows us to both provide practical support on the ground in communities, and to extract and disseminate learning to contribute to the growing evidence base and movement of community-led, participatory and collaborative design of place. 

We also offer training and enabling support to communities through commissioned services. We choose only those commissioned projects that contribute to our mission. All funds generated through commissioned work are invested back into meeting our charitable objectives. 

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**The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2023** 

## **Report on activities 2022/23** 

## **Adapting to shifting landscapes** 

This was the first year since the Covid-19 pandemic hit the UK in 2020 in which we returned to operating with some sense of normalcy. However, the year was not without its challenges in terms of the political and economic landscape, with several changes to political leadership in central government and a cost of living crisis that hit the country, local governments and communities hard. This meant that timescales for some of commissioned work shifted drastically, and some was simply cancelled. Many communities and funders were simply focused on simply helping families survive in this challenging landscape. Some of our long-term partners had to simply shut up shop. 

Whilst this was logistically difficult at times, our small nimble charity was well placed to work flexibly and to find ways to make things work and to continue to champion and enable community leadership and cross-sector collaboration in design and placemaking. Despite the challenges, The Glass-House was well positioned at a time of growing interest in empowering communities in placemaking and raising standards of design in development and regeneration. Over two decades of work and the reputation as a leader in this space has helped us play an important role as champion, enabler and disruptor through our work this year. We have continued to deliver a broad spectrum of work, and to be a sought-after partner and collaborator. 

## **Being ambitious about the future of The Glass-House** 

Our strategic plan set five key strategic objectives for 2021-2024: 

1. Be catalytic to affect change (Choose and make opportunities for targeted action that has a significant impact) 

2. Champion, challenge, provoke and inspire (Constantly ask people to reflect, reconsider and imagine) 

3. Maximise impact through collaboration (Build on existing partnerships to create new opportunities and to extend our impact and reach) 

4. Widen practice and build legacy (Further develop, articulate and share our stories, practice and tools to develop our shareable resources and archive) 

5. Nurture Glass-House team & champions Ensure that working for and with The Glass-House helps people to build the confidence and skills to support and enable The Glass-House mission 

This year saw us deliver a rich programme of activities, grounded in our ongoing commitment to innovation, capturing and sharing learning and to partnership working. The general shift in perceptions and enthusiasm around community engagement in design and placemaking has been encouraging, however, there is still an enormous skills gap in design engagement within local government, in practice and industry, and our experience and reputation have positioned us well to help address it through our work. There is still much support needed to help build skills and confidence in this space. 

As always, it is clear to us that there is too much for us to achieve on our own and that one of our key objectives must be to continue to empower as many other people as possible to do what we do, and to give others the confidence to experiment and innovate in this field. 

What follows is a snapshot of our work in 2022/23. 

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**The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2023** 

## **Innovating Practice** 

There is clearly a growing interest in more engaged design and placemaking. However, there is still a broad spectrum of what people and organisations understand design engagement to be, and the language of community-led, participatory and collaborative design, as well as co-production, is interpreted and plays out differently across sectors and organisations. There is more interest and intent in developing more inclusive and engaged processes, but still a huge skills gap within the public and private sectors required to move from a space of consultation to true empowerment and meaningful involvement in decision-making. 

As a key champion and enabler in this field for over two decades, The Glass-House sees the space of innovating, sharing learning and helping others to do what we do as a key part of our work. Here is a snapshot of some key work in helping to inform, inspire and innovate practice: 

## **ExploreStation** 

The Glass-House was invited into a partnership led by Design Council, alongside Commonplace and Digital Urban, to deliver a series of engagement activities across the UK to facilitate a conversation with the British public about a new design standard being developed for small to medium-sized stations for Network Rail. This station design framework is being designed by 7N Architects, an Edinburgh-based practice that won the 2020 RIBA international design competition, Reimagining Railway Stations, in collaboration with ARUP. The brief for this competition was informed and shaped by a passenger and stakeholder engagement project, ThinkStation, commissioned by Network Rail and delivered by Design Council in 2019 and early 2020 through a series of workshops across the UK. 

The Glass-House delivered a series of online and face-to-face workshops to engage the British public in shaping the final stages of this new design standard, called HUB Stations. 

Our role in ExploreStation was to deliver two rounds of engagement activities. The first round, in November 2021, saw us deliver a series of interactive exhibitions and workshops in Sheffield, Bristol, Cardiff and online to help the Great British public explore the design proposals from 7N Architects. The workshops created spaces for discussion and debate, and for participants to both ask questions and consider how the design could be further adapted and improved. The opinions, ideas and reflections that we gathered fed into the final stages of design. 



_Left: Design Champions Elly and Jake talk about the design of the HUB station. Right: Workshop participants in Brighton get creative about potential activities at a HUB station_ 

With the design process nearing an end, the second round of the engagement activities in May 2022 focused on how this framework could help meet Network Rail’s ambition for stations to take 

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**The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2023** 

on a new role as community hubs. In these workshops, we explored how the new station design could help create opportunities for community benefit, as well as activate local communities to play a role in informing and delivering what happens there. 

We delivered our workshops, open to the general public, in the Bluecoat Chambers in Liverpool, The Science and Industry Museum in Manchester, The Grand Parade in Brighton and hosted our online workshop via Zoom. Through our second round of workshops, which took place throughout May 2022, we invited participants to have creative conversations about how the HUB station could land in local places and communities, and how local people could be involved in the planning, delivery and future of HUB stations to ensure they are activated as successful points of connection between local communities and the British rail network. 

We produced an updated booklet, which helped provide background information as well as link to the Commonplace platform, where participants could access more information and share further views on the station design. - - - https://theglasshouse.org.uk/resources/explorestation guide may 2022/ 


We were conscious of the need to ensure children and young people’s voices were also represented through ExploreStation, so we also collaborated with High Trees, an adventure playground and youth organisation in South London, to deliver a closed workshop with their children and young people. 



_Our young participants getting stuck in at the High Trees workshop._ 

_Images Eddie Macdonald_ 



Following the delivery of the workshops, the project team produced a report. https://theglasshouse.org.uk/resources/explorestation-finalreport/ 

The Glass-House also produced a publication, _ExploreStation: Convening a National Conversation_ , focusing on our tools and methods used in the ExploreStation project. https://theglasshouse.org.uk/resources/explorestation-theglass-house-journey/ 

Participant Voices: 

_I was really impressed by The Glass-House’s overall approach, and do feel sure that they are asking these questions of themselves and their collaborators too._ 

Brighton  workshop participant Emma Charleston on her blog https://theglasshouse.org.uk/events/explorestation-brighton-workshop-emma-charleston/ 

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**The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2023** 

## **People Powered Places with Metropolitan Workshop** 

_People Powered Places_ is Metropolitan Workshop‘s second annual practice-based research project. It aims to explore innovative methods of community participation in planning and housing design in order to enrich their approach to working with new and existing communities. As part of their project, Metropolitan Workshop (Met Work) asked The Glass-House to act as a critical friend to reflect on their research on the topic of community engagement in design, and on their emerging guidance and tools, both for embedding participatory approaches in their work, and for championing participatory design within communities and with their clients. 

What made this request particularly interesting to us was that Met Work wanted us to bring community representatives into this space, and to facilitate a conversation that would empower these community champions as critical friends and experts in this process alongside The GlassHouse team. We invited two of our community champions, Angela Moore and Toni Dyer-Miller, into this conversation to work alongside The Glass-House in this space as experts. 

The first workshop sought to introduce The Glass-House team and our community champions to the context of the research project so far and the initial draft of a resource pack Met Work had been developing in response to the research findings. The pack consisted of a Practice Guide and a graphic poster designed to communicate Met Work’s key principles and methods for engagement across a design journey, mapping their methods against the stages of a typical architecture or planning project. Our working group provided in-depth feedback on the content, format and functionality of the resources in development, offering thoughts on how they could be best integrated into Met Work’s approach and methodology, while becoming useful and accessible resources for the communities with which they were working. 



_Left: Angela and Toni lending their critical eye on the emerging resources.  Right: The People Powered Places launch event_ 

The second workshop brought our critical friend team back together to review the updated graphic poster and graphic guide. One great update to the resources was the addition of a set of postcards which set out the project stages for community members participating in design engagement sessions. The aim of these, alongside the graphic poster, is to clearly map out the stages of design and the role community engagement can play in informing each of them. Being able to see how our community champions’ involvement, advice and opinions had shaped how the resources had been further evolved by Met Work was a fantastic experience for our champions, as well as our team. There was a consensus from all involved that the role of the community champions had enriched Met Work’s approach, work and outputs. 

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**The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2023** 

In September 2022, Met Work celebrated the end of their _People Powered Places_ research project and the subsequent publication of their suite of resources, at an evening event in their studio and exhibition space in Central London. Practitioners, community members and friends gathered to celebrate alongside the Met Work team, who invited their research collaborators to speak about the project. Glass-House Design Champions Elly and Jake joined our community champion Toni in speaking about our workshop experience. 


Participant voices: 

_I like the idea of the guide being a resource for the community from the very start of a project._ 

_Allowing people to understand the full process and being transparent about the things that are outside the architect’s or community’s control can manage expectations and avoid surprises later down the line._ 

Toni Dyer Miller, community champion 

_After the project is handed over to the community, ask the people that are living and moving in this new space: how does it feel? A year on, ask: do you still feel the same way? That reinforces the commitment to community engagement, because it doesn’t end when you hand over the keys._ 

Angela Moore, Community Champion 

## **Supporting Practice through CPD** 

This year we delivered CPD workshops directly to design practices. Following two workshops for Hawkins\Brown Architects in London last year on setting design engagement strategies, and on designing with and for diverse users, we ran another CPD workshop this year for the Hawkins\Brown London team on making the case for community engagement to commissioning clients. We also headed up to Edinburgh to provide a full-day workshop on design engagement to their team based in Scotland. We also did a talk for Sheppard Robson Architects on community engagement and social value. 

## **Supporting Higher Education** 

The Glass-House enjoys working with universities and where possible, we inject some of our experience and learning into degree programmes for emerging design and regeneration 

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**The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2023** 

professionals. This year, we continued to build on our WEdesign programme (see below in the Supporting Dialogue section), and also supported a number of universities with a range of activities. 

These included: helping the Design Group at The Open University test a new model for an online “designathon”; delivering our Design by Consensus workshop for UCL Bartlett School of Planning; our Design Champion Jake giving a careers talk to students at the Manchester School of Architecture; our Design Champion Elly contributing to a Design Review at the Manchester School of Architecture; and our Chief Executive Sophia sitting as an External Examiner on the University of Sheffield’s MA in Urban Design and Newcastle University’s BA in Architecture and Urban Planning. 

## **The Glass-House on Panels and Advisory Groups** 

## The Design Code Pathfinders Programme Expert Panel 

As part of the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill, Local Planning Authorities will have a duty to produce Design Codes. The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) wants to provide all local authorities across England with the necessary skills and resources to do this confidently. Following an initial pilot, 25 local authorities and neighbourhood groups were selected to participate in a national Pathfinder programme for design coding. 

Chief Executive Sophia sat on the Design Code Pathfinders Programme Expert Panel, convened by Design Council, which worked with DLUHC to support the Pathfinder teams. This meant working with both local authorities and neighbourhood planning groups as a critical friend at key strategic points in their journey. She is now also contributing to guidance being produced to support the development of Design Codes in the future. 

## Historic England Advisory Committee 

Sophia also sits on the Historic England Advisory Committee, which offers expert advice to staff and the Commission on Historic England's functions under the National Heritage Act 1983, and other relevant legislation, in particular, on policy matters and casework (excluding London) where it is novel, contentious or sets a precedent. 

## High Streets Task Force Expert Panel 

Sophia sits on this register of Experts, Mentors and Facilitators, which was a recommendation of the High Street 2030 Review, which called for additional capacity to support local authorities in transforming their high streets. Experts, Mentors and Facilitators support high streets directly by providing a range of support services that form part of the wider Task Force programme. 

## Community Engagement Code of Conduct Development with the Quality of Life Foundation 

Our Design Champion Elly also sat on a working group led by the Quality of Life Foundation to develop a code of conduct for community consultation and engagement in planning and the built environment, as part of their major research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council to develop a new, map-based model of community engagement. 

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**The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2023** 

## **Supporting Dialogue** 

The Glass-House is unusually positioned to bring together a range of voices and perspectives from communities, practice, policy, research and education to explore ideas, to bring experiences and ideas together through discussion and debate, and to challenge the status quo. We create a range of safe and accessible, as well as playful spaces, to foster and support dialogue, and contribute to events organised by others. 

## **A New Collaboration with Ove Arup Foundation** 

In 2022, we began a new collaboration with the Ove Arup Foundation on our WEdesign programme. 

With their support, we welcomed our new Wedesign Programme Manager, Louise Dennison, in August. We are continuing to develop co-designed and co-facilitated events with higher education partners and students, creating safe places for interdisciplinary and cross-sector conversations about design and placemaking. 

## **WEdesign series 2022/23: Relearning Place** 

Through a series of online and in-person events, the 2022/23 WEdesign series _Relearning Place_ explored the role of communities and cross-sector collaboration in design and placemaking, and how the recent changes in political, economic, socio-cultural and environmental influences are altering how we respond, relate to and adapt the places where we live, work and play. 

We asked what we need to _unlearn_ in order to _relearn_ and do things better. 

Online, we invited participants to join us from around the country and further afield to explore relearning place through an online debate, an informal Glass-House Chat, and through a series of Think Pieces from contributors working across sectors and disciplines. 

Working with our higher education partners, we returned to hosting fully in-person co-design events in Glasgow, Sheffield, London, and Newcastle, all of which were co-designed and cofacilitated with our university partner tutors and students. 

All our events were captured and shared with our networks through blogs written by both The Glass-House team and by our participating student facilitators. 



We have created a publication that brings together the voices from across the series from all four in-person events alongside our online Debate and Glass-House Chat, and features excerpts from this series’ Think Pieces and student blogs capturing the events. 

https://theglasshouse.org.uk/resources/relearning-place-reflections-on-2022-23-wedesign-event-series/ 

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**The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2023** 

## The Debate 

This year, we reintroduced the debate format into our national events programme. Using the theme of _Relearning Place_ as our starting point, we invited four diverse speakers to offer their provocations and thoughts as part of a series of five-minute presentations. This was followed by a stimulating and thought-provoking discussion with generous contributions and opinions from the event attendees. 



Our speakers included: 

- David Ubaka: an architect and urban designer based in London, who has delivered projects across industries and sectors over the last 30 years. In 2012, he founded D.U.P Limited, an independent placemaking and development consultancy. 

- Erika Rushton: an artist and economist from the North-West. She founded Creative Economist, an organisation that specialises in creative and community entrepreneurship and our collective capacity to transform places through building locally-based economies. 

- Johanna Gibbons: a London-based landscape architect and founding partner of the landscape architecture studio J & L Gibbons, and Landscape Learn, a social enterprise which aims to create a wider understanding and appreciation about the landscapes we design, inhabit and influence. 

- Shankari Raj: an architect, educator and agitator based in Bristol, who set up her practice Nudge to try to make the world a better place through architectural design. 

The overarching themes that emerged are a good way to give a flavour of this event. The Debate did throw up some important questions, which we are sure will provoke further conversations and reactions in the future, including: 

- What is the right balance between formal placemaking, through development or regeneration, and organic, incremental change though local action? 

- How can we work more collaboratively with our natural environment and ecosystems to improve the quality of our places and in turn our physical and mental wellbeing? 

- What role can education, be it in primary school or built environment professional qualification, play in helping us shape our places better? 

- Where is the right interface between practitioners and communities in shaping places, and how do we bring together the best expertise, actions and general contribution from all involved? 

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**The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2023** 

In-person co-design events 





WEdesign in-person events are interactive spaces with co-design activities where students, practitioners, policymakers and citizens work together with The Glass-House, and students and tutors from our partner universities, to explore and co-design propositions to innovate design and placemaking. 


_A packed room at our Glasgow event_ 

For _Relearning Place_ , we continued our collaboration with partners at The University of Sheffield’s School of Architecture, the Bartlett School of Planning at UCL and Mackintosh School of Architecture at Glasgow School of Art. We also welcomed a new partner, Newcastle University’s School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, through which we worked with students in Architecture and Urban Planning. 

The Glass-House provided a programme of sessions to support the students’ participation in the events, and to introduce them to methods and tools for both co-design and facilitation. Each of our partners collaborated with us on our in-person events, where the theme was linked into the students’ work and studies. 

In Newcastle _, REvalue_ explored the value we attribute to our places (be it financial, cultural, historical or environmental) and how this affects our relationship with the built and natural worlds around us. In Sheffield _, REdistribute_ invited participants to explore what role redistribution has in decolonising our contemporary places. In Glasgow, _REdefine_ explored the principles and theories behind creating a feminist urban realm. And finally, in London, _REpurpose_ explored how we can reduce our collective footprint on the world around us by rethinking the ways in which we use our cities and places. 

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**The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2023** 

## REvalue 

With Newcastle University’s School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape 



_Left: the students leading their activity as warm-up for those arriving. Right: A participant’s doodles during the main co-design task_ 

On Wednesday 22 February, we continued our WEdesign event series with our first in-person event at the Civic Centre in Newcastle, in partnership with Course Leader Armelle Tardiveau and her 3[rd] year students from Newcastle University’s school of Architecture, Landscape and Planning. The students from the university’s innovative Architecture and Urban Planning degree course were taking a module called _Co-producing Space_ . 

Our theme for the evening was _REvalue_ . We were interested in exploring the value we attribute to places (be it financial, cultural, historical, environmental) and the role it plays in our relationship with the built and natural world around us. How is this informed by our shared values and value systems? Do we need to look at place through a new lens and both re-evaluate and revalue the elements that make it up? Through co-design activities and much discussion, we set out to challenge the status quo and to revalue places, people and collaborative design and placemaking. 

When participants arrived, they were encouraged to take part in an interactive activity which was devised by the students. Based on Clayton Street in Newcastle, the students created an interactive map and asked participants to give their thoughts and opinions about what this location meant to them, through adding comments and creating elements from pipe cleaners to add to the map. This was an excellent way to warm up. It got the participants thinking and gave them a good introduction to the students’ work. 

Some key themes and common threads emerged throughout the event: 

- We should avoid putting people and ourselves in boxes. We need both more transparency and blurring of lines and to start breaking down the existing barriers. 

- Let’s value the unfinished and the experimental, and remember that we are always learning and evolving. This will benefit us all and help us learn from each other. 

- We need to find the time to switch perspectives and look through the eyes of someone else or of nature. This is both about building empathy and about recognising the value that each of us, and nature, has to offer. 

- We need to come away from screens and take some time to look up and around us. We should not only value, but be in awe of nature, and find joy in connecting and collaborating with it. 

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**The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2023** 

## REdistribute: 

With University of Sheffield’s School of Architecture 



On 1 March, we welcomed people to the University of Sheffield’s Arts Tower for our second event in this year’s WEdesign event series, _Relearning Place: Redistribute_ . At this event in collaboration with tutors and students from the Sheffield School of Architecture, we explored the redistribution of assets, products, crafts, skills, and services at global and local scale through collaborative placemaking. 

Before we launched into our co-design task, Leo kicked of our discussion by introducing the theme of _Redistribute_ in the context of work that the students were doing in their degree course around trade, migration and how the distribution of goods and people over the centuries has influenced how we have shaped our settlements, and how our towns and cities provide for the diverse people who populate and pass through them. 

We then moved into the co-design task, which invited our event participants and student facilitators to work together to explore the theme of redistribution through the lenses of community, education, practice and ecology. Each student facilitation team brought their own perspective to their chosen lens, prompting discussion with carefully thought-out questions and props to guide the participants through the discussion. Each table not only had its own lens, but also a distinctly different feel that had been curated by each student facilitation team and the questions they chose to lead with _._ 

Key themes that emerged through the evening’s activities included: 

- The importance of generosity, in how we live, work, learn and play together, and how this could be aided by stepping back and exploring what we could redistribute to help support this. Creating more inclusive and equitable places starts with a willingness to explore how we might redistribute space, time, resources and power. 

- What can rredistributing time and resources within the context of placemaking do to help us redistribute power? We explored, for example, the proportion of budgets allocated to engaging with the community, and the limited time for developing mutually beneficial relationships and partnerships to shape places more collaboratively. Many in the room felt that taking a good look at this was the first step towards shifting the current power structures. 

- We need to value listening and create more space to listen to others. There is a power in stories to help us find one another and allow us to look both inwards and outwards. We also need to create those spaces for connection both in our physical landscapes and in our processes, where we can share our stories with each other. 

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**The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2023** 

## REdefine: 

With the Glasgow School of Art’s Mackintosh School of Architecture 



_Left: Illustrator Jules Scheele captured the evening through her illustration Right: Participants deep in conversation and making_ 

On Wednesday 8 March, we held our third in-person event, _Redefine,_ with students and tutors Miranda Webster and Isabel Deakin from Glasgow School of Art’s Mackintosh School of Architecture and Missing in Architecture (MiA). Hosted at the beautiful Civic House, we were joined by students, academics, practitioners and community members from across the city on International Women’s Day 2023 to explore how feminist spaces, theories and practices can make a more inclusive and equitable built environment for us all. This theme was inspired by Glasgow City Council backing a proposal in October 2022 which will see the city become the first in the UK to make women central to all aspects of planning, public realm design, policy development and budgets. 

Jules Scheele, a Glasgow-based illustrator, also joined us to create a live illustration which captured the emerging ideas and themes from the evening’s discussion and activities. 

At this event, the students set the scene for the evening’s discussion by introducing an interactive exhibition into the Wedesign event space. They created a series of provocative photo prompts and activities, including images of non-feminist or inequitable built environment realities such as raised curbs at crossing points, stair-only options at thresholds to public transport spaces, religious propaganda posters and uneven street surfaces. 



_The interactive exhibition created by the students_ 

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**The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2023** 

The students also wanted to create a live capture of our participants, using a life-size outline of the ‘average’ man and woman (taken from the Architect’s Handbook – an industry guide containing technical information that many designers use to inform the size, volume and shape of the spaces they create). These were printed life size and pinned to one of the walls. Arriving participants were then invited to stand in front of the images and add their own outline to create a live map of the people in the room. 

Some of the key themes that emerged through the co-design task and discussion exploring what needs to change to create a more feminist built environment now and in the future included: 

- Inclusivity, a key feminist principle, is key to the success of designing, building, managing and maintaining our cities through all phases of its (and our) lives. 

- Connection, vital and important not only in how we create and manage cities, but also in how we operate as individuals within society. The theme of connection emerged strongly from within each of our groups, from connecting through community fairs and to creating a city-wide ecological network. 

- The need for each of us to do our part in cascading these ideas outside of our immediate community of interest. 

- The need the create spaces for hopeful, creative conversations about the future which don’t shy away from our collective problems in the here and now. 

Finally, coming back to the theme of _Redefine_ , we agreed that through communication, we need to redefine what works in our shared spaces, and even re-examine what (and who) cities are for, and how we connect the built reality back to these ideas and hopes. 


_One of the co-design groups shares the model they have created and the ideas it represents._ 

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**The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2023** 

## REvalue: 

With University College London’s Bartlett School of Planning 



_Left: The Ecology group’s proposition exploring the intersection of different ecologies Right: The Community group building their model illustrating the desire to disrupt exist models of community engagement_ 

On Tuesday 28 March, we concluded our 2022/23 Wedesign series of public events in London with _Repurpose_ , in partnership with and hosted by UCL’s Bartlett School of Planning. The final inperson event in our Relearning Place series, this was an opportunity to challenge the status quo and to consider how to build on our collective wisdom and learning over centuries, but also to have the courage to challenge existing practice, policy and culture, to _unlearn_ in order to _relearn_ and to explore what and how we might _repurpose_ in placemaking. 

_Repurpose_ was co-designed and co-facilitated with our longstanding collaborator Dr Lucy Natarajan, Associate Professor and Director of MSc Sustainable Urbanism at the Bartlett, and a small group of her MA and PhD students. We were also joined by two student facilitators from last year’s Wedesign programme who are now graduates working in practice. Will Mckinney, from last year’s University of Sheffield cohort stepped into the space as a Glass-House Enabler supporting the Glass-House team, while one of Lucy’s former students, who facilitated at our session in London last year, returned for this year’s event as a participant. It was wonderful to have Wedesign alumni in the room. 

Here are some of the key themes that emerged: 

- The power of repurposing as a disruptive tool – All the groups in some way illustrated the power of repurposing not simply as a remedy, but as a disruptive tool to explore and drive change. It is a way to challenge existing systems and mindsets,  while also building on and selectively reusing and iterating what is already there. 

- The power of organic growth and adaptation – There is something powerful about a process that can adapt and change to the situation and people involved, and provide space for being responsive and therefore more inclusive. Sometimes unscripted and messy can lead to positive outcomes. 

- Building bridges – We need better bridges between practice and communities, between education and communities, across and within both communities and institutions, and across systems. We also need better connectivity between our built and natural environments, and the many ecologies in any given place. We need to create the space and infrastructure for more positive interaction. 

- Creating space to reflect – We are all so busy _doing,_ that too often we do not find the time to stop, reflect and to listen to others. This is vital to us creating that space to unlearn, to relearn and to repurpose. 

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**The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2023** 

## **Wedesign Student Programme** 

For students, collaboration with The Glass-House through Wedesign creates important opportunities to benefit from interaction with a diverse, cross-sector and interdisciplinary audience. It provides space to further develop their learning and to test and progress their thinking on their live student work. 

It is also an opportunity for them to demonstrate what they can contribute to such spaces. Our event participants enjoy connecting with students as facilitators, educators in their own right, and as provocateurs in the placemaking conversations. They enjoy tapping into the students’ growing technical expertise through an exploratory and thematic co-design space, and practitioners and policy-makers in the field are challenged to look at new ways of working and the themes explored through fresh eyes. 

To help students step into our event spaces with confidence, and to ensure that their participation in Wedesign contributes to their learning journey, we have created a student programme to support their participation in our events. 

## **Student Sessions** 

Prior to each event we worked with our partner tutors and students in a series of introduction and planning sessions, where students discussed the theme, co-created prompt questions and props, and gained an understanding of the basic facilitation tools they needed to use during the event. 

## **Student Resources** 

We created a pack of resources for the students to support them as facilitators and to give them further details about what to expect from the event. We also included references and signposting so these resources can also be used as part of their course and beyond. 

## **Student-led Activities** 

A new element in this year’s programme stemmed from the students’ desire to enhance the Wedesign format with their own additional interactive activities, transforming the space with images and words, and also by including props and stylising their tables. It has been a welcome development and we have enjoyed the students taking ownership of the events and really putting their stamp on them, making each of our events unique. 

## **Emerging Partnership Projects** 

In addition to our key university partnerships, we have also collaborated with The London College of Communications and The Open University to experiment with what we do with the ideas, provocations and data which come from each event. This is just the first step in exploring how we can test and apply the ideas in practice, and we will look to build on this for next year’s season. 

## **Student Voices** 

After each public co-design event, we invited students to write a blog about their experience, which was shared on our website, social media and through our networks. 

_Overall it was a really invaluable experience to work collaboratively with staff and practitioners in a non-hierarchical manner – which is quite rare for the student experience! I felt like our ideas were heard and taken seriously which is refreshing – as students we have gained skills that will stay with us and prepare us for the future as design practitioners, in order to more ethically include users in the design of their places and spaces._ 

- Abby Hopes from Mackintosh School of Architecture, offered her personal reflections on working with The Glass-House to co-design and deliver the _REdefine_ event in Glasgow. 

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**The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2023** 

## **WEdesign Think Pieces** 

This year, we introduced a series of Think Pieces into the WEdesign programme, a series of online blogs where we invited an external contributor to take one of our event themes as a starting point for provocation and discussion. This series of Think Pieces offered a space for a range of external voices from communities, practice and education to explore our WEdesign event themes and produced a series of thought provoking, engaging and quite personal blogs. 


## **REvalue** - Rowena Hay 

Research Director at Shortwork, a social enterprise based in Liverpool. 

Rowena shared her thoughts and ideas about the event theme REvalue, through the lens of the city of Liverpool, her adoptive home. 

https://theglasshouse.org.uk/blog-series/event-think-pieces/relearning-place-think- piece revalue/ 


## **REdistribute** – Jenny Dunn 

Multidisciplinary designer & Principal Regeneration Officer LB Camden 

Jenny explored the idea of redistribution, prompting a reconsideration of how power and space can be distributed to create a more equitable built environment for us all. 

https://theglasshouse.org.uk/blog-series/event-think-pieces/relearning-placeredistribute-think-piece-by-jenny-dunn/ 


## **REdefine** - David Rudlin 

Director of Urban Design at BDP and previously Director of URBED (Urbanism, Environment and Design). 

David re-examined the role of the architect and urban designer in placemaking. 

https://theglasshouse.org.uk/blog-series/event-think-pieces/relearning-place-redefinethink-piece-by-david-rudlin/ 


## **REpurpose** - Nick Malyan 

CEO of Redhills: Durham Miners Hall. 

Nick offered his personal journey of repurposing spaces and places for arts and culture in County Durham. 

https://theglasshouse.org.uk/blog-series/event-think-pieces/relearning-place-repurposethink-piece-by-nick-malyan/ 

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**The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2023** 

## **Glass-House Chats** 


The Glass-House Chats have become a much appreciated part of our public events calendar. These free online sessions were designed to create a safe space to ask questions, explore ideas, approaches and methods, share learning and make connections. They are open to and attract a wide range of participants who are interested in how we can collectively build confidence and capacity in the sectors to engage communities in design and placemaking. 

These monthly sessions are chaired by members of The Glass-House team, who briefly introduce the theme and then open the floor for an informal and open discussion among participants. To ensure space for meaningful discussion, places are limited to a small group. 

The financial year of 2022/23 crossed over two seasons of Chats: 

## **Glass-House Chats – Season 2** 

Glass-House Season 2 ran from September 2021 to July 2022. The themes covered in this season included: 

10 September 2021 - Future-proofing the design of places 

- 8 October 2021 - Bringing children into the design process 

- 12 November 2021 - Connecting students and community-led design projects 

- 10 December 2021 - Designing equitable spaces for all 

- 14 January 2022 - Inclusive and open design engagement 

- 4 February 2022 - Making the case for investment in inclusive design 

- 11 March 2022 - Building relationships through design and placemaking 

- 8 April 2022 - Breaking down jargon in design and placemaking 

- 6 May 2022 – Making as a design engagement tool 

- 10 June 2022 – Challenging stereotypes through co-design 

- 14 July – Guerrilla urbanism – an approach to consider? 

We kept these sessions informal, with no set agenda, only a theme as a starting point, and allowed the conversation to go where the mix of participants on the day took us. Every Chat was rich with questions, reflections, ideas and above all, with sharing. 

Some golden threads emerged across the series, including the importance of creating time for effective community engagement in design in placemaking as well as the trust and relationships required to enable truly inclusive, open and collaborative design processes. We found ourselves coming back again and again to the benefits of interdisciplinarity, of creating multi-generational 

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**The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2023** 

dialogue and safe spaces for connection. We spoke of experimentation, of prototyping, learning and iterating, and of the importance of then sharing what we through these processes. 

The key themes that emerged from the Chats, along with a participants’ perspective on the taking part, were captured, in blogs which were then compiled in a series publication. https://theglasshouse.org.uk/resources/glass-house-chats-2123/ 


## Participant voice 

_“I always look forward to the Chats, and invariably come away having learned something, or with new insights.”_ 

## **Glass-House Chats – Season 3** 





Glass-House Season 3 runs from October 2022 to July 2023. The themes covered in this season include: 

- 20 October 2022 – What is Placemaking Now? 

- 24 November 2022 – How Can We Use Stories to Change Places? 

- 15 December 2022 – Co-design Legacies: What Happens Next? 

- 19 January 2023 – How Can We Co-design With Nature? 

- 23 February 2023– How Can We Relearn Our Places? 

- 23 March 2023– Arts-led Regeneration or Gentrification? 

- 20 April 2023– Co-creating Circular Cities 

- 18 May 2023– Building Equitable Green Futures 

- 15 June 2023– What is A Resilient City? 

- 25 July 2023 – GH Chat Roundtable: Resilient Places 


This year, GH Chats crossed over with our WEdesign event series, with a special WEdesign Chat in February. This created a different kind of space for people to explore the event series theme, _Relearning Place_ , and help connect audiences from the two series. 

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**The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2023** 

## **Other events to inform, provoke discussion and inspire** 

The Glass-House has an approach to developing and participating in events that engage audiences in thinking, exploring and doing. We have embedded this interactive approach and created spaces to inform and inspire at the following events organised by others: 

- _Design Code Pathfinder Workshop: Community Engagement_ , Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities, April 2022 

- _Historic England Spring Conference_ , Historic England, April 2022 

- _Inspiring The Future_ , Selwyn Primary School, July 2022 

- _Transform/Activate/SHAPE: Towards a place-based student knowledge exchange_ , University of Sheffield, September 2022 

- _Come Together ExploreStation_ , London Design Festival, September 2022 

- _Working with Residents_ , Urban Design Learning, October 2022 

- _Digital Engagement_ , Urban Design Learning, November 2022 

- _Co-production Seminar_ , Future of London, November 2022 

- _Twilight Session: Design through Gaming_ , National Videogame Museum _,_ January 2023 

## **External events attended included:** 

- _ACD Conversation Lab: Language as a Barrier_ , Association of Collaborative Design, April 2022 

- _Research Excellence Awards,_ The Open University, June 2022 

- _The number 1 priority for Local Government should be..._ , Public Practice, September 2022 

- _Diversity and Inclusion_ , Future of London, September 2022 

- _Recovering Nature in our Cities,_ Zoological Society of London, September 2022 

- _Urban Green Infrastructure: All London Green Grid and Its Potential_ , New London Architecture, October 2022 

- _Archiboo Awards Party_ , November 2022 

- _Future of London’s City Makers’ Forum: Embedding Social Value in Development,_ Future of London, November 2022 

- _Participative Futures_ , Royal Society of Art, November 2022 

- _AoU Urbanism Hour: Transforming the Urban Fabric,_ Academy of Urbanism, December 2022 

- _Architecture on Stage: Tree Talks_ , Barbican, January 2023 

- _AoU Urbanism Hour: Arts and Culture_ , Academy of Urbanism, January 2023 

- _Heritage and Carbon_ , Grosvenor, March 2023 

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**The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2023** 

## **Supporting dialogue through our website & social media** 

We see our website and social media as a space to share our work and learning, inspiring stories and best practice, and to provoke discussion and debate. New blog series this year included: 


Our blog series _A Place I Love_ invited contributors from all walks of life, and of all ages, to share their stories about their connection to a place that is special to them. 

The image to the left is of a collage produced by Cotty, aged 8, who wrote about her love of her birthplace London. 

https://theglasshouse.org.uk/category/a-place-i-love/ 


Our series of blogs on _Engaging Communities in Design Decision Making_ drew together our experience in supporting communities to play an active role in the design journey, with a series of pieces aimed at helping others create their own engaged and empowering design processes. 

https://theglasshouse.org.uk/tag/designdecisionmaking/ 

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**The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2023** 

## **Action Research** 

The Glass-House has become a respected voice in the field of research on design processes that empower people in and through placemaking. Our action research is rooted in working collaboratively across sectors and both with and within communities to co-design projects that develop new knowledge methodologies and practical resources. 

## **An ongoing strategic partnership with the Open University** 

Since 2013, The Glass-House has had a strategic partnership with the Open University’s Design Group. Our partnership innovates, supports and promotes community-led, participatory and codesign practice and research for the benefit of better places for all. 

In September 2022, our Empowering Design Practices research project was awarded The Open University Research Excellence Award for the category of _Outstanding Impact on Society and Prosperity_ . We are grateful to all our partners and to the communities around the country who engaged with us in this research and contributed their time, expertise and creativity. 

## **Cross-pollination: Growing cross-sector design collaboration in placemaking** 

(Jan 2022-April 2023) 

_Cross-pollination: Growing cross-sector design collaboration in placemaking,_ was a knowledge exchange project in partnership with The Open University that took our asset-based crosspollination approach into communities in England, Scotland and Wales, aiming to help empower organisations and networks to work together to shape their local places. The project was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council under their Place programme. 

Cross-pollination brings people together to identify shared goals and objectives, identify and connect local projects and initiatives, and work together to unearth and mobilise local assets (skills, networks, physical spaces, tools and resources, funding pots etc.) as a basis for forming partnerships and collaborations. The approach aims to break down barriers between those working in the community and voluntary sector, local businesses and/or local government, and to create a space where all ideas and assets, and projects of different size and focus are brought together and valued equally. In simple terms, the approach explores how you can bring your projects, initiatives and assets together through collaboration to make what you do together more powerful and effective than what you could do separately. 

## **Kick-starting our conversation with locally based partners** 

In order to explore how we might take the approach into communities, we worked with three partners with whom we had collaborated on other initiatives to explore the right mechanism to get people involved. These initial partners were The Glasgow Urban Lab in Scotland, Merthyr Tydfil Council in Wales, and the Clapham Junction BID in London. Initial conversations revealed that though a simple concept, cross-pollination as an approach was hard for some people to grasp or to see as relevant and useful to their community. With this in mind, we decided to experiment with different ways to get people involved. 

## **Online seeding session** 

Our first activity to do this was a free online event, which we promoted as a space to learn more about the approach and to do a taster session of a cross-pollinations workshop. This was attended by people from different parts of the country, but with a clear cluster group emerging from the Glasgow area. This would become the basis of a group with which we would collaborate, alongside our emerging group in Merthyr Tydfil. 

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**The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2023** 

## **Initial cross-pollination activities** 

Our initial activities saw us supporting a Design Day in Merthyr to help several groups come together to co-design an open day for the community of Gurnos. The open day was then held later in the summer and created a fun-filled day for the community with all sorts of free creative activities, as well as a cross-pollination wall which aimed to share information about local projects and initiatives and encourage collaborations across sectors in the area. 



_Left: Design Day in Merthyr, mapping connections and ideas for their open day Right: Mapping, and clustering their shared assets at Share, Connect, Create: Glasgow_ 

In Glasgow, in collaboration with those who had attended the online seeding session, we convened a _Share, Connect, Create: Glasgow_ , an open workshop at Many Studios in the East End of Glasgow to explore the potential of cross-pollination to help activate underused and unloved spaces in the city. This then led to further conversations, connections and an event to explore the role of food growing in revitalising underused spaces, which was organised by two of the attendees of _Share, Connect, Create: Glasgow_ , the Community Ownership Support Service (COSS) and Many Studios, working with the Glasgow Community Food Network’s Food & Climate Action Project. 

## **An open call to interested groups** 

In May 2022, we put an open call out to groups interested in learning more about the crosspollination approach and in delivering a cross-pollination workshop in their local area. We selected two groups to support and following an initial online workshop to introduce them to the approach, worked with them to plan workshops for their areas. 

Through the call-out, we connected with Becky Lyon, who had recently been appointed as a London National Park City Ranger for Barnet. With the support of the research team, she convened a workshop that used the cross-pollination approach to explore and activate a network of grassroots ecological projects and initiatives. 



_Becky Lyons’ images from her cross-pollination workshop showed the personal stamp she put on the approach_ 

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**The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2023** 

We also connected with Sheffield City Council, who were supporting a locally based network in the Gleadless Valley which had lost some momentum due to the impact of the Covid pandemic on local groups and organisations. With the help of the research team and an external facilitator, they organised a full-day workshop which brought the various members of this group back together to reconnect and to identify some shared objectives for collaborative action. This workshop helped inform the brief and role description for a new post to help manage and support the network. 

## **Sharing learning** 

Next, we brought these groups together for an online sharing event, which was a space to share their experiences and reflect on how the cross-pollination approach had worked in their areas. There was much discussion on the importance of creating a safe, playful space in which everyone stepped into the conversation as equal. As the participating groups were varied in their experience, sector and indeed objectives for using cross-pollination, we explored the role that cross-pollination could play in different contexts, and how who convened and facilitated the crosspollination activities could influence how the activities were shaped, and their impact on further collaboration. 

One of the key recommendations that emerged from the group discussion was that whilst it was important that this approach remained flexible and able to adapt to the context in which it was being used, it would be useful to create some kind of cross-pollination resource to help people take up the approach. 

## **- Developing an open source resource pack** 

Empowering others to take up and use the cross-pollination approach was the primary objective of this research project, so we followed the advice of our pilot groups, and developed an opensource Resource Pack which includes: information on the background of the approach, values and principles of the approach; case studies of how it has been used in different contexts; practical guidance on the key stages of cross-pollination; a flexible model for a cross-pollination workshop, and printable props to use in the workshop. 



- - https://theglasshouse.org.uk/resources/cross pollination resource/ 

We have also created a series of films, capturing different groups’ experience of using the crosspollination approach, and an explainer video which illustrates the various stages of a crosspollination workshop. 

https://theglasshouse.org.uk/resources/cross-pollination-films-landing-page/ 

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**The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2023** 

## **Growing more strategic partnerships** 

We were keen to test this resource pack, and to further explore the role of networks as convenors of cross-pollination workshops, and also as champions who could introduce it to others and help empower them to use it. 



_Introducing the Cross-pollination approach to London National Park City Rangers_ 

The London National Park City management team expressed an interest in introducing crosspollination as an approach across their network of Rangers, both as a tool to connect the various Rangers working across the city, and as a tool that each could use with their local networks. The research team and LNPC organised a workshop to introduce cross-pollination approach and Resource Pack to their Rangers, and LNPC are now using it as part of their induction for new Rangers. 



_Scenes from the Cross-pollination workshop Share, Connect and Create: Liberton & Glilmerton in Edinburgh_ 

We also had the opportunity to test the cross-pollination workshop model and Resource Pack as an evolution of an event, Portobello Connects, which had been run by The Glass-House in Edinburgh back in 2019. Portobello Connects was the first time we had used cross-pollination to support a place-based conversation, and working with the Edinburgh Voluntary Organisations 

Council (EVOC), we both reconnected with participants of Portobello Connects, and organised a cross-pollination workshop for the area of Liberton and Gilmerton. This journey of both looking back and forward has been captured in a film by our project filmmaker, Emma Crouch (who has also captured our collaborations in Merthyr and London). 

https://theglasshouse.org.uk/resources/cross-pollination-liberton-and-gilmerton-journey-film/ 

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**The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2023** 

## **Activating Knowledge Exchange through the TAP Internship Programme** 

From June through August of 2022, we worked alongside two interns from The University of Sheffield who were enrolled on an internship programme called TAP (Transforming and Activating Places). TAP aims to partner students with organisations and businesses across the UK that focus on place and/or placemaking. The student programme, funded by Research England and the Office for Students aims to facilitate mutually beneficial internships between University of Sheffield students and organisations already involved in transforming and activating places. 

The TAP internships create professional development opportunities for under-represented groups and encourage students from a broad range of disciplines to apply their studies and life skills in the context of placemaking. We were pleased to invite students from TAP into our work as we think this programme is creating an important space for collaboration. 

An important part of The Glass-House practice is introducing students to our work and approach, to help them explore more engaged design and placemaking in safe spaces where they can learn, experiment and be nurtured. We also know that students have a lot to offer us, bringing creativity, skills and different experiences into our mix. 

We were keen to create a clear area of focus for our interns, and to use this space to further develop some of our own approaches and methodologies. With this in mind, we invited our TAP students to work with us to develop an outline proposal for a new educational programme based on The Glass-House workshop model Empowering Children through Design in Gaming using the online gaming platform Roblox, and in particular Roblox Studio. 


_Left: Graphic identities used by our interns Enrico and Vince_ (graphic: Vince Doyo). Right: Vince and Enrico in action at the State of Play workshop 


The challenge we set to our interns, Vince and Rico, was to help us explore how we might move from using this approach opportunistically, as one-off workshops, to creating a more structured educational programme around this workshop model. Throughout the summer we zoomed in and out of the big picture of a formal programme and individual workshops, and considered how we could prototype some new aspects of this approach through delivering a workshop together over the summer. Through this, we identified two key innovations we would like to test: delivering the workshops outside the school environment and bringing parents into the workshop as participants alongside the children. 

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**The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2023** 

## **The State of Play** 


To provide a space to test a new prototype of the gaming workshop model, we teamed up with the _National Videogame Museum_ (NVGM) in Sheffield to deliver _The State of Play_ workshop to local families. The National Videogame Museum is committed to using video games as a way to inspire communities, champion collaboration and transform lives. Their own theme for their summer programme was _Playing Together,_ which seemed fitting considering our own focus on play. Through this collaboration, we were able to offer a free workshop to 12 children, aged 10 and 11, and their accompanying parents and guardians. The workshop was both co-designed and co-facilitated by The Glass-House team, our summer interns Vince and Enrico, and our young collaborator Dexter (aged 14). 



_Left: Children and adults working together on their team builds. Right: Our young facilitator Dexter helping two of the workshop participants_ 

_The State of Play_ workshop explored how the world of play has evolved through the lens of both children and adults. Following an introduction to some of the basics of design, and an exploration of designing for play around the world, we introduced our participants to the design tools within Roblox Studio. The children then had a go at designing and building their ideal play spaces, using their newly acquired Roblox Studio skills, exploring the architectural concepts of form, function and feeling through play. While they did this, the parents looked back on the places where they used to play as children, using crafts and making to recreate their own play spaces reminiscent of their past. In the afternoon, we brought the visions of both adults and children together to codesign and build playable places and landscapes within different contexts of a ‘city or town’ (beach, forest, city park, and roof-tops). 

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**The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2023** 



Participant Voices: 

_“I really liked the team building because you could see the different views from people.”_ 

Participating child 

_“It was lovely to see all the children creating and building positive play ideas that can easily be adapted to real life.”_ 

Participating parent/guardian 

## **State of Play publication** 


We were keen to capture our experience and learning from _The State of Play_ workshop, and have produced a publication which sets out the journey through the day’s activities, captures the wonderful creations of the participating children and their guardians, and reflects on what we learned through this iteration of our gaming workshop model. 

https://theglasshouse.org.uk/resources/state-of-play-workshoppublication/ 

## **TAP Symposium** 

Our final collaboration with our interns was co-presenting at the _TAP Symposium: Transform / Activate / SHAPE_ . The event was a culmination of the 2-year TAP programme and the various knowledge exchange projects that have been brought to fruition through it. The Symposium brought together and celebrated the many collaborations and a wide range of initiatives supported and delivered through TAP, their students and the many participating partners. 

The day itself was a space to champion place-based knowledge exchange, sharing the insightful stories, projects and approaches in order to explore and showcase the potential of knowledge exchange to catalyse change. This considered impact within local contexts, working with and for communities, but also the innovative ways student-based knowledge exchange projects could begin to transform higher educational institutions. 

## **TAP Twilight Talk at The National Videogame Museum** 

In January, Design Champion Jake spoke at a _Twilight Talk_ , an event organised through a collaboration with the University of Sheffield and the National Videogame Museum. In this online session, we shared our experience of the State of Play workshop and spoke with participating teachers about the potential for introducing design into their curriculum through play and gaming. 

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**The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2023** 

## **Celebrating our Gaming Workshop Model at the Archiboo Awards** 

We were also pleased to be shortlisted for this year’s _Archiboo Awards_ , in the category of _Best Digital Community Engagement_ for a previous iteration of our gaming workshop at The Willow on Broadwater Primary School in summer 2021, which used the online gaming platform Roblox Studio to introduce children to design and placemaking. 

This workshop was part a wider programme of regeneration on the Broadwater Farm Estate led by Haringey Council and Karakusevic Carson Architects (KCA). We were joined by our young Enabler Dexter, who co-designed this workshop model with us as well as providing invaluable guidance for this iteration. We were also assisted by a facilitator from the KCA team, Lois Innes, who offered the students design advice and an insight into built environment professions. 

## **Research publications** 

This year, we published two papers relating to our research project _Fostering creative citizens through co-design and public makerspaces,_ a collaboration between The Glass-House, Brunel University and Tongji University in China (October 2018 – September 2021). 

This project sought to develop a novel and inclusive means of fostering creative citizens in China in a bottom-up manner through strategic use of co-design and public makerspaces. The project looked at creative community centres and makerspaces in both the UK and China, and produced bilingual resources that share experience and learning to help inspire makerspaces of the future. The project was funded by The Arts and Humanities Research Council and Newton Fund 

## **Co-Design Visions of Public Makerspaces in China** 

The paper, co-authored paper spoke about using our Design by Consensus workshop to explore the co-design of Makerspaces with potential users in the UK and China. 

Lam, B., Choi, Y., Chen, X. (Brunel University, London), de Sousa, S. (The Glass-House Community Led Design), Liu, L. and Ni, M (Tongi University, Shanghai, China). 

International Journal of Design Creativity and Innovation 2022, VOL. 10, NO. 3, 179–192 

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21650349.2022.2048696 

## **Making and Makerspaces: Exploring Community Centres as Creative Hubs in China,** 

This paper looks at the potential for community centres to take on the role of makerspaces and looks into the perceptions, experiences and requirements of people toward making/makerspaces, with an in-depth study of Chinese cases. 

Lam, B., Choi, Y., Chen, X. (Brunel University, London), de Sousa, S. (The Glass-House Community Led Design), Liu, L. and Ni, M (Tongi University, Shanghai, China), The Design Journal (RFDJ) 2022, VOL. 25, NO. 4, 636–656 

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14606925.2022.2081305 

32 



**The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2023** 

## **Improving Places** 

Our approach to supporting projects has always been rooted in helping people to develop the skills, tools and confidence to lead their local project and to connect with potential partners and beneficiaries. Our enabling and empowerment model aims to support better collaboration and more sustainable approaches to transforming places and spaces. We respond to communities, local authorities, housing associations, developers and design teams that approach us for support. 

This year, the majority of our place-based work with communities happened through our Action Research, but here are some of the other activities we did to help improve places: 

## **Exploring Young People’s Relationship with Place at The Baytree Centre** 

Over the summer of 2022, The Glass-House collaborated with The Baytree Centre, an educational charity and centre for women and girls in Brixton, South London. We worked with a group of young girls at the centre as part of The Baytree’s summer programme of activities to deliver two workshops across July and August. Through these two sessions, we invited our young participants to explore their relationships with the places and spaces around them, as well as introducing them to the world of design and built environment careers. 

## **Workshop 1: Exploring Design** 

In July, we welcomed a group of young girls and women aged 11 – 20 years old into our first workshop. We planned an ambitious programme that aimed to get the girls excited about placemaking and design, explore how we can all fit into and relate to our built spaces and introduce the range of built environment careers. We were joined by architects Angela Brady OBE of Brady Mallalieu Architects and Tosin Oshinowo of CmDesign Atelier, who lent their time, expertise and knowledge to inspire the girls during our session. 



_Left: Angela Brady talking about her practice’s project, Phoenix Heights Right: Design Champion Elly explores our sensory relationship with the places around us_ 

We kicked off our first session by introducing design thinking through the exploration of form, function and feeling. Using local places and buildings as examples, we then dug into how the girls relate to spaces, and how the design of places can affect the way they feel. We challenged the girls to work together to design their own cities using building blocks and craft materials. We split them into two groups, and tasked the first with designing a city for everyone, and the second to design a city just for young girls their age to get each group to think about what the most important parts of cities are for each of them, and what amenities, services and buildings others need too. 

33 



**The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2023** 


Some great parallels and key differences emerged between the two cities, perhaps most noticeably in the city for young girls which featured no cars or roads, because as the girls articulated so well ‘ _Why would we include roads? We can’t drive!’._ We used this light touch design task to stimulate the girls creative problem-solving skills, and to provide insight into how design teams work together to co-design places and spaces. 

We explored how we feel about different spaces and how our senses influence how we perceive and therefore feel about our urban environment. We talked about how architecture and places are usually captured in photos, and how we can use artistic photography to express our emotions, feelings and connections to place. We then set the girls off on a series of creative photography tasks, which asked them to experiment with cropping and framing photos, as well as taking their own around the Baytree Centre, to highlight or focus on particular aspects or feelings, before coming back together for a discussion. 

## **Returning to Create and Share** 

We returned to The Baytree Centre in August for our second creative workshop. At the end of the first workshop, we had challenged the girls to think about places that were special to them and why. The girls shared photos they had taken and texts that they had written about places that were special to them, which ranged from their own bedrooms to The Oval cricket ground and Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital. 

We then explored how place is captured and conveyed in art, looking at a diverse range of examples of place-based art, by a range of artists such as John Constable and David Hockney, to help the girls to think about how they can use their creative licence in both photography and graphic art. We facilitated a group discussion about how artwork can evoke emotions and convey strong feelings, and how these qualities can be used to communicate our connection to places. 



34 



**The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2023** 

Using pens, coloured paper and craft materials, we then asked the girls to draw or collage a place which is special to them, drawing inspiration from our previous discussions about design and art. We had some wonderful results, and interesting conversations about how we relate to places, how we can capture a place and most commonly, how difficult it is to draw places without being in them, or having exactly the right photograph. We pushed the girls to recreate their places from their memories, which is no easy feat, but it meant that the aspects of each place that were important to them stood out strongest in the drawings and collages produced. 


Two of the artworks produced. On the left, our participant used layers of coloured card to build up depth in this image of the path leading up to her Nan’s house. On the right, our participant wanted to convey how huge and open the field is in her special place, using pencil to convey the weightlessness of the clouds. 

We had a wonderful time at The Baytree Centre introducing our young participants to design and placemaking, and to the variety of career paths in architecture and urban design. 

## **Homes & Neighbourhoods by Design** 

In November, we ran a free, one-day introductory version of our Homes & Neighbourhoods by Design Training, open to London residents of housing areas undergoing large-scale regeneration or renewal throughout the city. The full-day session explored how cities are pieced together, as well as housing and estate design in the London context. 

We partnered with long standing Glass-House Enablers URBED, an urbanism, environment and architecture cooperative based in Manchester to co-design and co-facilitate the session. URBED member Helen Berg brought her design and architectural expertise and experience of working in practice, in addition to her facilitation skills, to support the journey through shared learning and playful activities. We were hosted by Allan Baxter and The Gallery. 

This one-day workshop was a new take on our well-established _Homes & Neighbourhoods by Design_ , with a few variations from our usual Design Training model. Firstly, we usually run Homes & Neighbourhoods by Design over two full days, or over four to five shorter sessions. We were aware that we could not compress all of the activities into one day, so we were keen to experiment with what could be achieved in only one full day, and how far it could go in helping to build confidence among the participants on the principles and language of urban design and housing renewal. 

35 



**The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2023** 

The other significant departure was that traditionally, we have offered this training to community design groups with a focus on their own neighbourhood while on this occasion, we opened up the training to individuals, and chose to use a range of different sites to explore and apply the principles through group tasks. This allowed us to shift the focus and narrative of the day away from place-specific dialogue, to exploring principles of city-making more generally across the UK. 

## **Introducing Urban Design** 

We began the session by unpicking the fundamental principles of design ( _form, feeling and function)_ before moving into the language of urban design, such as massing, density and street hierarchy. 

To help embed the learning, we asked the participants to map street hierarchies and public/green spaces onto maps of 

neighbourhoods in both London and in Brandon, in the East of England. This task differed from those in our usual Design Training workshops because the participants were not familiar with the locations, relying on their more general lived and professional experience of navigating cities and maps to inform their opinion on street hierarchy. 


## **Homes and House Design** 

For the second activity of the morning, we looked at homes and house design in more detail, unpacking the various components of housing estates, considerations for designing quality homes, responding to the climate emergency and reflecting on how the pieces of a neighbourhood are put together. 


Participants were then asked to work together to co-design a neighbourhood using collaged elements of buildings, open space, and other community facilities. The participants were given the challenge to quickly co-design a neighbourhood which accommodated 200 dwellings over 2 hectares, while responding to pre-existing site constraints, which were a river to the south of the site and roads to the north, east and west. Each participant drew on many facets of the earlier presentations and learning together, talked through the many considerations that go into designing neighbourhoods and housing areas. 

_._ 

## **Housing Renewal & Growth in London** 

Another topic in this Design Training model that we felt was important to touch on when exploring how cities are built, was the context of what affects decision-making in neighbourhoods and housing renewal across London in particular. There are a great number of elements that affect how a particular area may or may not be regenerated, including Local Authority budgets, national and 

36 



**The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2023** 

regional housing targets, the climate emergency, and both national and local planning policy. We thought it important to shed light on the many contributing factors that can affect the evolution of a place. We wanted to give a view into the complexity of the various factors that affect and influence how places change, and that the evolution of place does not lie fully within the control of any one player or commissioning client. 

Helen gave an example of an options appraisal study carried out in the Gleadless Valley in Sheffield, to illustrate the many nuances of architectural design and planning journeys. She also shared a number of examples of housing projects which she thought illustrated the themes that had emerged throughout the day, with a particular focus on exploring both new build and retrofit, and what might influence which approach is taken when revitalising an existing housing area. Presentation: What affects decision-making in neighbourhoods and housing renewal across London 

**Values and principles for a 21st Century estate** 

We finished the day with a playful activity which aimed to capture our existing and emerging values and principles for 21st Century housing. Drawing on the culmination of the learning and discussion throughout the day, each participant collaged and modelled their own personal vision. 

Each participant shared their lived, learnt and professional experience with generosity and reciprocity, which made for a rich session of learning, reflection, and of building the shared confidence to be aspirational about where we live and the processes to shape our neighbourhoods. 


## **Working with Local Authority Led Regeneration** 

This year, we also worked with local authorities leading challenging projects to regenerate housing areas. Whilst we were able to play an advisory role and do some workshops with residents, due to shifting project budgets, objectives and leadership within council team, this proved to be a difficult space that was enormously affected by shifts in the political and economic landscape. Due to the sensitivity of the projects, we would rather not name them in this report, but thought it important to note that this is a sector facing enormous challenges at the moment, and note that we will continue to do our best to support it while remaining true to our mission and values. 

37 



**The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2023** 

## **Business development and financial review of 2022/23** 

2022/23 was another busy and productive year for The Glass-House, with a mix of income through core funding, project grant funding, research funding and commissioned services.  At the close of 2022/23 we find ourselves in a strong position, closing the financial year with £71.8k in unrestricted funds and restricted funds of £83.7k, with total funds of £155.5k. 

As the preceding pages have demonstrated, our mix of income has allowed us to offer a diverse programme of activities, while also taking important steps towards making the organisation more robust and improving internal systems and infrastructure. 

Our 3-year grant of £60k per annum from the Ove Arup Foundation allowed us to appoint a new member of the team on a 3-year contract, and her presence has made a significant difference to The Glass-House WEdesign series of public events and associated student programme. 

The grant from The Glass-House Trust to support the development of a Glass-House archive has also allowed us to commission an archivist to help us consolidate several print and digital datasets (which include text, photographs, video and audio recordings) into one searchable system that will serve both as the organisation’s live workspace and as a digital archive. As well as supporting the day-to-day working practice of the organisation, this process to consolidate our data and systems is a crucial step towards our goal of creating an open-source online resource hub or “living archive”. This will serve as a resource to both communities and professionals engaging in participatory design processes, as well as to students and academia. 

## **Looking forward** 

We embark on the new financial year with a secure financial position for the immediate future, however, there is no doubt that the socio-political and financial upheaval of the past year will have some impact on our organisation in 2023/24. We took the decision to a apply a cost-of-living increment to staff wages for 2023/24 which was appropriately responsive to the financial landscape, and above the rate we usually apply. Many of our commissioning clients, particularly local authorities, have had to pause or cancel projects, which has had a knock-on effect on our immediate pipeline of commissioned work. Whilst we are financially secure and able to continue with a broad spectrum of activities into the new year, we do expect to dedicate substantial time and resources in 2023/24 to working with partners to develop projects that can attract 3 to 5-year grant and research funding. This will be crucial to addressing the difficult landscape around us and to ensuring that we can continue to provide free support to communities and to work with and innovate practice, policy and education to help empower communities in design and placemaking. 

We will continue to provide practical support on the ground, and to use our experience and learning to champion and enable best policy and practice, and increasingly to educate and empower others to do what we do.  The coming year will see us continuing to develop a wide range of resources to support communities and professionals to help connect design, people, and place, and to build capacity to support community-led and participatory design processes. 

We will further explore how we can best work with others to support a cross-sector and interdisciplinary network, our “collaborative economy”, of those supporting community leadership in design and placemaking. Our core strategic partnership with The Open University continues, with now a rich legacy of collaborative projects, and new ones in development. Through this we will continue to explore the feasibility of a joint resource hub and incubator to open source our 

38 



**The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2023** 

learning and resources, and to serve as a catalyst for new collaborations and projects to support community leadership in design and placemaking. We are also collaborating on the development of more digital resources and exploring how we might co-create additional online courses. 

We will continue to work in collaboration with several higher education partners to support the integration of our learning and experience into degree courses, and to support new champions heading into practice. We are also working with students and communities involved in live projects, mentoring students working with their locally based groups in their area, and helping to draw students and communities onto our event series and the national dialogue around design and placemaking. 

It is our aim to continue to play an active and outspoken role in the field of design and placemaking, and to champion the role of community leadership in shaping where we live, work and play. 

## **Reserves policy** 

Our reserves policy, for the purposes of ensuring the robustness of the organisation, is based on three months’ fixed running costs and is calculated at £42k based on our current budget and forecasts for the next three years. 

The desired figure for reserves of £42k compares with our existing general unrestricted funds of approximately £67.8k and restricted funds of £83.7k. In calculating the free reserves, the Directors have excluded the designated fund that represents the net book value of the fixed assets. 

The Glass-House Trust will continue to fund the organisation at the current level of support (£100k per annum), which, combined with other secured funding, provides a high degree of security and the financial viability of the organisation through March 2026. We expect a further 3-year cycle of funding through March 2029 given satisfactory reporting and given that the organisation remains active and viable. 

The Ove Arup Foundation will contribute £60k per annum over three years, with a current commitment through 2025. 

While we have built some risk into the 2023/24 budget to extend contracts for certain staff members, we are confident that our reserves and commitment from The Glass-House Trust and the Ove Arup Foundation, which will fund key members of staff and fixed costs through 2025, places us in a secure financial position. 

Our reserves policy will be reviewed again in the new year, to ensure that we are addressing any new challenges both to the sector and to our organisation, and to plan how we will further build on our reserves to ensure resilience and the ability to respond to opportunity and crisis effectively in the longer term. 

## **Preparation of the report** 

This report of the Directors has been prepared taking advantage of the small companies exemption of section 415A of the Companies Act 2006. 

39 



**The Glass-House Community Led Design Directors’ report For the year ended 31 March 2023** 

This report was approved and authorised for issue by the Directors on 17 October 2023 and signed on its behalf by: 

Prue Chiles Chair 

40 



**The Glass-House Community Led Design Independent examiner’s report For the year ended 31 March 2023** 

I report to the trustees on my examination of the accounts of The Glass-House Community Led Design for the year ended 31 March 2023. 

This report is made solely to the trustees as a body, in accordance with the Charities Act 2011. My examination has been undertaken so that I might state to the trustees those matters I am required to state to them in an independent examiner's report and for no other purpose. To the fullest extent permitted by law, I do not accept or assume responsibility to anyone other than the charity and the trustees as a body, for my examination, for this report, or for the opinions I have formed. 

## **Responsibilities and basis of report** 

As the charity trustees of the Company you are responsible for the preparation of the accounts in accordance with the requirements of the Charities Act 2011 (‘the Act’) and the Companies Act 2006 (‘the 2006 Act’) _._ 

Having satisfied myself that the accounts of the Company are not required to be audited under Part 16 of the 2006 Act and are eligible for independent examination, I report in respect of my examination of the Company’s accounts carried out under section 145 of the 2011 Act and in carrying out my examination I have followed all the applicable Directions given by the Charity Commission under section 145(5)(b) of the Charities Act 2011 (‘the 2011 Act’). 

## **Independent examiner’s statement** 

I have completed my examination. I confirm that no material matters have come to my attention in connection with the examination giving me cause to believe that in any material respect: 

- 1 Accounting records were not kept in respect of the Company as required by section 386 of the 2006 Act or 

- 1 The accounts do not accord with those records; or 

- 2 The accounts do not comply with the accounting requirements of section 396 of the 2006 Act other than any requirement that the accounts give a ‘true and fair view’ which is not a matter considered as part of an independent examination; or 

- 3 The accounts have not been prepared in accordance with the methods and principles of the Statement of Recommended Practice for accounting and reporting by charities; or 

I have no concerns and have come across no other matters in connection with the examination to which attention should be drawn in this report in order to enable a proper understanding of the accounts to be reached. 

Signed: 

Name: Noelia Serrano FCA DChA 

Address: Sayer Vincent LLP, Invicta House, 108-114 Golden Lane, London, EC1Y 0TL Date: 31 October 2023 

41 



The Glass-House Community Led Design
Statement of financial activities (incorporating an income and expenditure account)
For the year ended 31 March 2023
Unrestricted
funds
Total
Restricted
Fund5
Total
2023
Total
2022
Total
Note
Income from:
Donations and legacies
Charitable activities
i 00,000
i 00,000
i 00,000
Improving Places
Action Research
12,743
12,743
31,705
29,465
23,500
52,965
19,633
Supporting Dialogue
477
60,000
60,477
62,513
Innovating Practice
Investments Bank interest
42,799
263
42,799
263
35,840
Total income
185,747
83,500
269,247
249,691
Expenditure on-
Charitable activities
Improving Places
Action Research
44,422
64,974
16,950
53,005
44,422
78,394
62,656
53,005
52,902
37,783
40,655
50,358
13,420
45,706
Supporting Dialogue
Innovating Practice
Total expenditure
179,351
59,126
238,477
181,698
Net income for the year and net
movement in funds
6,396
24,374
30,770
67,993
Reconciliation of funds-
Total funds brought forward
65,417
59,305
124,722
56,729
Total funds carried forward
71,813
83,679
155,492
124,722
The Statement of Financial Activities contains all gains and losses for the year. Activities included under
unrestricted funds relate to continuing operations. Movements in funds are disclosed in Note 14 to the
financial statements.
42

The Glass-House Community Led Design
Balance sheet
Company no. 5435630
As at 31 March 2023
2023
2022
Note
Fixed assets-
Tangible assets
4,033
828
Current assets-
Debtors
Cash at bank and in hand
14,311
151,901
3,753
129,866
166,212
133,619
Liabilities-
Creditors= amounts falling due within one year
114,753)
19,72 5)
Net current assets
SI,4S9
123,894
Total net assets
155,492
124,722
The funds of the charity-
Restricted income funds
83,679
59,305
Unrestricted income funds..
Designated funds
General funds
4,033
67,780
828
64,589
Total unrestricted funds
71,813
65,417
Total charity funds
I S5,492
124,722
The opinion of the director5 15 that the company 15 entitled to the exemptions conferred by Section 477 of
the Companies Act 2006 relating to small companies.
The directors acknowledge the following responsibilities..
lil The members have not required the company to obtain an audit of its accounts for the year in question in
accordance with section 476,
lill The directors acknowledge their responsibilities for complying with the requirements of the Act with
respect to accounting records and the preparation of accounts.
These accounts have been prepared in accordance with the provisions applicable to companies subject to the
small companies, regime.
Approved by the directors on 17 October 2023 and signed on their behalf by
Prue Chiles
Chair
43

The Glass-House Community Led Design
Notes to the financial statements
For the
ear ended 31 March 2023
l Accounting policies
al Statutory information
The Glass-House Community Led Design is a charitable company limired by guarantee and is incorporated in
the Unired Kingdom. The registered office address is Mainyard Studios, 35 Bow Road, London E3 2AD.
bl Basis of preparation
The financial starements have been prepared in accordance with Accounting and Reporting by Charities..
Statement of Recommended Practice applicable to charities preparing rheir accounrs in accordance with the
Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland IFRS 1021- Icharities SORP FRS 1021,
the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland IFRS 1021 and rhe Companies Act
2006.
The directors have taken advantage of the small entity exemption as noted in FRS 102 section l A. The financial
sratemenrs have been prepared on the historical cosr basis.
Assets and liabilities are initially recognised at historical cost or transacrion value unless otherwise stated in rhe
relevant accounting policy or nore.
cl Public benefit entity
The charitable company meers rhe definition of a public benefit enrity under FRS 102.
dl Going concern
The directors consider that rhere are no material uncertainties about the charirable company's ability to
continue as a going concern.
Key judgemenrs that the charirable company has made which have a significant effect on the accounts include a
commitment by The Glass-House Trusr to make a granr of £ 100.000 per annum through March 2026 to the
charitable company and a 3-year grant from rhe Ove Arup Foundation.
The directors do nor consider rhar there are any sources of esrimation uncertainty at the reporting date that
have a significanr risk of causing a material adjusrment ro the carrying amounts of assers and liabilities within
the next reporring period.
el Income
Income is recognised when rhe charity has entitlement to the funds, any performance conditions artached ro
the income have been met, it is probable that rhe income will be received and rhat the amount can be
measured reliably.
Income from governmenr and other grants, whether 'capital' grants or 'revenue' grants. is recognised when the
charity has entitlement to rhe funds, any performance conditions atrached to the grants have been met. ir is
probable that rhe income will be received and rhe amount can be measured reliably and is not deferred.
f) Interest receivable
Inreresr on funds held on deposir is included when receivable and the amount can be measured reliably by the
charity., this is normally upon notification of the interest paid or payable by rhe bank.
gl Fund accounting
Unresrricted funds are donarions and other incoming resources received or generated for the charitable
Designated funds are unresrricted funds earmarked by the direcrors for particular purposes.
Restricred funds can only be used for particular restricted purposes within the objects of rhe charity.
Restricrions arise when specified by rhe donor or when funds are raised for specific resrricted purposes.
h) Expenditure and irrecoverable VAT
Expenditure is recognised once there is a legal or constructive obligarion to make a payment to a third party, it
is probable rhat sertlemenr will be required and rhe amount of rhe obligation can be measured reliably.
Expenditure is classified under rhe following activity headings..
Expendirure on charitable acriviries includes the costs of activiries undertaken to further the purposes of
the chariry and rheir associared support costs.
Orher expendirure represents those items nor falling inro any other heading.
Irrecoverable VAT is charged as a cost againsr the activity for which the expenditure was incurred.
44

The Glass-House Community Led Design
Notes to the financial statements
For the
ear ended 31 March 2023
Accounting policies {continuedl
i) Allocation of support costs
Resources expended are allocared ro the parricular acriviry where the cosr relates directly to rhat activity.
However. rhe cost of overall direcrion and adminisrration of each activiry. comprising rhe salary and overhead
costs of the central function. is apportioned on the following basis which are an esrimate, based on staff time,
of the amounr attributable to each activity.
Where information about the aims. objectives and projects of rhe charity is provided to potential beneficiaries.
the costs associated with this publicity are allocated to charitable expenditure.
Where such information abour the aims, objecrives and projecrs of the chariry is also provided to potential
donors, activity costs are apporrioned between fundraising and charitable activities on the basis of area of
literarure occupied by each activity.
Improving Places
Acrion Research
Supporting Dialogue
Innovating Pracrice
Governance costs
21.47%
23.73%
28.45%
26.31%
0.13%
Support and governance cosrs are re-allocated to each of the acriviries on the fol lowing basis which is an
estimare, based on staff time, of rhe amounr atrributable to each activity
Improving Places
21.47%
Acrion Research
23.73%
Supporting Dialogue
28.45%
Innovating Pracrice
26.31%
Governance cosrs are rhe cosrs associated wirh rhe governance arrangements of the charity. These costs are
associated with consritutional and statutory requiremenrs and include any costs associated with the strategic
management of the charity's activities.
j) Tangible fixed assets
Items of equipment are capitalised where the purchase price exceeds £500. Depreciarion costs are allocared ro
acriviries on the basis of the use of the related assets in rhose activities. Assers are reviewed for impairment if
circumsrances indicate their carrying value may exceed their net realisable value and value in use.
Where fixed assers have been revalued. any excess between the revalued amount and the historic cost of the
asset will be shown as a revaluation reserve in the balance sheer.
Depreciation is provided at rates calculated to write down rhe cosr of each asset to irs estimated residual value
over its expecred useful life. The depreciation rares in use are as follows..
Office equipment
3 years
k) Debtors
Trade and other debtors are recognised at the sertlemenr amount due after any trade discount offered.
Prepayments are valued at rhe amounr prepaid ner of any rrade discounts due.
l) Cash at bank and in hand
Cash at bank and cash in hand includes cash and short term highly liquid invesrments with a short maturity of
three months or less from the date of acquisition or opening of the deposit or similar account. Cash balances
exclude any funds held on behalf of service users.
ml Creditors
Creditors and provisions are recognised where the charity has a present obligation resulring from a past event
that will probably resulr in the transfer of funds to a third party and the amount due to settle rhe obligation can
be measured or esrimated reliably. Credirors and provisions are normally recognised at their settlement
amount after allowing for any trade discounts due.
n) Pensions
The Company contribures to members, stakeholder pension schemes by making contributions of 8% of
gross wages. Contributions are charged to rhe Sratemenr of Financial Activiries as they become
payable in accordance with the rules of the scheme.
45

The Glass-House Community Led Design
Notes to the financial statements
For the
ear ended 31 March 2023
o) Financial instruments:
The charity only has financial assets and financial liabiliries of a kind rhar qualify as basic financial instruments.
Basic financial instruments are inirially recognised at transaction value and subsequently measured at their
settlement value.
2 Income from donations and legacies
2023
2022
Unrestricted Restricred
Total
Total
The Glass-House Trust lunrestricred core funding)
i 00,000
i 00,000
i 00,000
i 00,000
100,000
i 00,000
3 Income from charitable activities
2023
2022
Unrestricted Restricred
Total
Total
Improving Places
Orher income from Improving Places
12.743
12,743
31,705
Action Research Iwas Research & Development)
Open Universiry - Arts & Humanities Research Council
Council
University of Sheffield Arts & Humanities Research
Council
The Glass-House Trust (restricted archive grant)
28,805
28,805
12,633
500
660
660
23,500
23,500
6,500
29,465
23,500
52,965
19,633
3 Income from charitable activities (continued)
2023
Total
2022
Total
Unrestricted Restricred
Supporting Dialogue {was Events)
Ove Arup Foundation (restricted granr for Supporting
Dialogue)
Other income from Supporting Dialogue
60,000
60,000
60,000
477
477
2,513
62,513
477
60,000
60,477
Innovating Practice {was Policy & Advocacy)
Other income from Innovating Practice
Toral income from charitable activities
42,799
42,799
35,840
168984
149691
46

The Glass-House Community Led Design
Notes to the financial statements
For the ear ended 31 March 2023
4a Analysis of expenditure
Charitable activities
Improving
Places
Action
Research
Supporting
Dialogue
Innovating
Practice
Governance
costs
Support
costs
2023
Total
2022
Total
Staff costs (Note 6)
Direct Costs
37,358
245
49,515
21,344
45,794
7,829
41,305
3,347
1,005
2,782
177,759
32,765
27,953
140,113
16,851
24,734
Other Indirect Costs
27,953
37,603
70,859
53,623
44,652
1,005
30,735
238,477
181,698
Support Costs
6,603
7,296
8,747
8,089
130,7351
Governance costs
216
239
286
264
11 ,0051
Total expenditure 2023
44,422
78,394
62,656
53,005
238,477
181,698
Total expenditure 2022
52,902
37,783
40,655
50,358
181,698
The amount of expenditure from restricted funds in the year ending March 2023 was £83,500
47

The Glass-House Community Led Design
Notes to the financial statements
For the ear ended 31 March 2023
4b Analysis of expenditure
Prevlous year12022) comparatlve
Charitable activities
Improving
Places
Action
Research
Supporting
Dialogue
Innovating
Practice
Governance
Costs
Support
Costs
2022 Total
Staff cost5 INote 61
Direct Costs
Other Indirect Costs
39,444
4,846
23,607
9,021
31,077
2,792
41,176
192
914
3,895
140,113
16,851
24,734
24,734
44,290
32,628
33,869
41,368
914
28,629
181,698
Support Costs
8,346
4,996
6,577
8,712
128,629)
Governance costs
266
159
209
278
1914)
Total expenditure 2022
52,902
37,783
40,655
50,358
181,698
The amount of expenditure from restricted funds in the year ending March 2022 was £7,195
48

The Glass-House Community Led Design
Notes to the financial statements
For the ear ended 31 March 2023
Net income for the year
This is stated after charging / Icreditingl..
2023
2022
Depreciation
Accountants, remuneration (excluding VAT)..
Independent Examination
2,224
1,528
2,585
2,350
Analysis of staff costs, director remuneration and expenses, and the cost of key management
personnel
Staff costs were as follows..
2023
2022
Salaries and wages
Social security costs
Employer's contribution to defined contribution pension schemes
Other staff costs
153,166
12,340
12,253
121,169
8,653
9,511
780
177,759
140,113
The following number of employees received employee benefits (excluding employer pension costs and
employer's national insurance during the the year between
2023
2022
£60,000- £69,999
£59,000- £59 ,999
£40,000- £49,999
£30,000- £39,000
The charity directors were not paid or received any other benefits from employment with the charity in
the year1202213.. £nill. No charity director received payment for professional or other services supplied
to the charity12022.. £nill.
Directors, expenses represents the payment or reimbursement of travel and 5ub51Stence costs totalling
£66 12022.. 491 incurred by 1 12022.. 1 I members relating to attendance at meetings of the directors.
49

The Glass-House Community Led Design
Notes to the financial statements
For the ear ended 31 March 2023
Staff numbers
The average number of employees (head count based on number of staff employed) during the year was
as follows..
2023
No.
2022
No.
Improving Places
Action Research
Supporting Dialogue
Innovating Practice
Support
Governance
0.74
0.86
0.82
0.52
0.98
0.68
0.91
0.06
0.90
0.08
0.02
0.02
3.53
3.06
Related party transactions
One of the charity's directors, Alex Sainsbury, is also on the board of the charity's main core funder, The
G1355-House Trust.
The Glass-Hou5e Trust made a grant of £1 00,000 to The Glass-House Led Community Design 1202213..
£1 00,000). There were no amou nt5 Outstanding at the year end.
There are no donations from related parties which are outside the normal course of business and no
restricted donations from related parties.
Taxation
The charitable company is exempt from corporation tax as all its income is charitable and is applied for
charitable purposes.
l O Tangible fixed assets
Office
Equipment
Total
Cost or valuation
At the start of the year
6,680
6,680
Additions
5,429
5N29
At the end of the year
12,109
12,109
Depreciation
At the start of the year
Charge for the year
5,852
2,224
5,852
2,224
At the end of the year
Net book value
At the end of the year
8,076
8,076
4,033
4,033
At the start of the year
828
828
50

The Glass-House Community Led Design
Notes to the financial statements
For the ear ended 31 March 2023
I l Debtors
2023
2022
Trade debtors
10,959
811
Prepayments
3,352
2,942
14,311
3,753
12 Creditors- amounts falling due within one year
2023
2022
Trade creditors
Taxation and social security
Pensions
Other creditors
Accruals
287
443
4,879
(391)
3,476
6,502
3,367
3,095
2,820
14,753
9,725
13a Analysis of net assets between funds {current year)
General
unrestricted
Designated
Restricted Total funds
2023
Tangible fixed assets
Net current assets
4,033
4,033
151,216
67,780
83,436
Net assets at the end of the year
67,780
4,033
83,436
155,249
13b Analysis of net assets between funds {prior year)
General
unrestricted
Designated
Restricted Total funds
2022
Tangible fixed assets
Net current assets
828
828
123,794
64,589
59,205
Net assets at the end of the year
64,589
828
59,205
124,622
51

The Glass-House Community Led Design
Notes to the financial statements
For the ear ended 31 March 2023
14a Movements in funds (current year)
Incoming
Outgoing
resources & resources & At the end
gains
losses
of the year
At the start
of the year
Unrestricted funds
Designated fu nds..
Fixed Assets - Office Equipment
828
5,429
12,224)
4,033
General funds
64,589
180,319
1177,128)
67,780
Total unrestricted funds
65,417
185,747
1179,351)
71,813
Restricted funds
Ove Arup
G1355 House Trust
59,305
60,000
23,500
145,706)
113,420)
73,599
10,080
Total restricted funds
59,305
83,500
159,126)
83,679
Total funds
124,722
269,247
1238,477)
155,492
Ove Arup funding is year one of a three year, £60,000 per annum grant to support staff costs for the
role of Wedesign Programme Manager, which sits Wlthin the Supporting Dialogue area of our work.
Glass House Trust funding is for creating an archive of our work.
52

**The Glass-House Community Led Design** 

## **Notes to the financial statements** 

## **For the year ended 31 March 2023** 

## **14b Movements in funds (prior year)** 

|General funds<br>**Restricted funds**<br>Ove Arup<br>Glass House Trust<br>**Total restricted funds**<br>**Purposes of designated funds**<br>**Total funds**<br>**Total unrestricted funds**<br>**Pension reserve**<br>**Unrestricted funds**<br>Designated funds:<br>Fixed Assets - Office Equipment|At the start<br>of the year<br>£<br>2,356<br>54,373|Incoming<br>resources &<br>gains<br>£<br>-<br>183,191|Outgoing<br>resources &<br>losses<br>**At the end**<br>**of the year**<br>£<br>**£**<br>(1,528)<br>**828**<br>(172,975)<br>**64,589**<br>(174,503)<br>**65,417**<br>(695)<br>**59,305**<br>(6,500)<br>**-**<br>(7,195)<br>**59,305**<br>-<br>**-**<br>(181,698)<br>**124,722**|
|---|---|---|---|
||56,729|183,191||
||-<br>-|60,000<br>6,500||
||-<br>-|66,500<br>-||
|||||
||56,729|249,691||
|||||



Fixed assets - This fund represents the net book value of the Charity's fixed assets. 

53 



**The Glass-House Community Led Design** 

## **Notes to the financial statements** 

## **For the year ended 31 March 2023** 

## **15 Comparatives for the Statement of Financial Activities for 31 March 2022** 

|**Income from:**<br>Donations and Legacies<br>Charitable Activities<br>Improving Places<br>Action Research<br>Supporting Dialogue<br>Innovating Practice<br>Investments - Bank interest<br>**Total income**<br>**Expenditure on:**<br>Charitable activities<br>Improving Places<br>Action Research<br>Supporting Dialogue<br>Innovating Practice<br>**Total expenditure**<br>**Net income for the year and net movement in funds**<br>**Reconciliation of funds:**<br>Total funds brought forward<br>**Total funds carried forward**|Unrestricted<br>Funds<br>Total<br>£<br>100,000<br>31,705<br>13,133<br>2,513<br>35,840<br>-|Restricted<br>Funds<br>**2022**<br>Total<br>**Total**<br>£<br>**£**<br>-<br>**100,000**<br>-<br>**31,705**<br>6,500<br>**19,633**<br>60,000<br>**62,513**<br>-<br>**35,840**<br>-<br>**-**<br>66,500<br>**249,691**<br>-<br>**52,902**<br>6,500<br>**37,783**<br>695<br>**40,655**<br>-<br>**50,358**<br>7,195<br>**181,698**<br>59,305<br>**67,993**<br>-<br>**56,729**<br>59,305<br>**124,722**|
|---|---|---|
||183,191||
||52,902<br>31,283<br>39,960<br>50,358||
||174,503||
||8,688<br>56,729||
||65,417||



## **16 Legal status of the charity** 

The charity is a company limited by guarantee and has no share capital. The liability of each member in the event of winding up is limited to £1. 

54