Process > Design

Stakeholder and Community Consultation

Handled well, architecture projects can make a real difference to the community around them - reinvigorating neighbourhoods and empowering individuals. We’re passionate about this and know that it’s never just the design team or project team that makes a building a success. The people who use it will truly bring a building to life, care for it, and make it their own. With that in mind, we'll always take great care to involve communities and engage other stakeholders at every project stage.

Stakeholder mapping

Using a stakeholder mapping exercise, we’ll work with you to identify who will be impacted by the project. We’ll then develop the right consultation strategy to gather and understand their needs. This strategy might be as simple as notices and letters to keep neighbours in the loop or a small meeting with community members to ensure everyone is aligned on the project’s aims.

Accessible community consultations

A wider, fully accessible community consultation could be held at a venue near your site over a few days to reach the widest number of people. Alongside this, we’ll usually run a digital consultation and circulate it to local groups. This means that those unable to attend in person can still make their voice heard.    

We’re careful to communicate fully and clearly; giving plenty of time for attendees to contribute ideas and feedback.  

Get in touch to learn more about community consultations.

Community consultation feedback

Once we’ve heard from the relevant stakeholders, we’ll record all feedback and share it with everyone so there’s another opportunity to clarify any important ideas or issues. We’ll then take the information, interpret it and weave it into the design. There may also be second and third rounds of community consultation on larger projects.

The community co-design process

The co-design process brings local residents, staff and neighbours together for a more interactive and intensive workshopping process. 

These workshops can be used for a variety of exercises such as defining the brief, brainstorming initial layouts, creating interior schemes, defining signage and branding and much more. 

This often leads to better design solutions and buildings that truly work for the people that work and live in them. For example, bringing people together and giving them a voice has been vital in our social prescribing projects.


Get in touch to learn more about community consultations.

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