Common Good Design

Common Good Design (CGD) brought researchers from Chelsea, Camberwell and Wimbledon (CCW) together with their sector partners to explore how universities and community organisations can design together for collective welfare, sustainability and social equity. Run through the UAL DESIS Lab, it set out to help five emerging academic–sector partnerships build practical roadmaps towards funded collaboration.

The project ran from 5 January 2026 to 1 June 2026 and centred on an in-person event on 1 May 2026. The project created outputs which included pre-event interviews, a tabletop showcase, post-event interviews, a film, and this report. In the morning, four UAL keynote speakers – Francesco Mazzarella, Professor Nick Bryan-Kinns, Professor Silvia Grimaldi and Sanne Visser – shared work spanning fashion activism, cross-cultural craft and AI, family services and commons-based material innovation. They were followed by the five partnerships who shared their CGD work – BLOQS London, Colèchi, Rachel Hutchison, The Fixing Factory and Thread Republic – each with their CCW academic partner. 111 tickets were released via Eventbrite, 93 audience members were registered in person on the day, and the survey found that attendees’ understanding of CGD rose from 6.17 to 8.41 out of 10 (36% increase).

In the afternoon workshop, 25 UAL staff and funding experts worked with the partnerships to generate, discuss and refine project ideas. Participants’ knowledge of UAL funding rose from 5.85 to 8.62 out of 10 (47% increase). Every partnership left with concrete next steps, most often a seed fund application to scope a larger bid during the next academic year.

These insights are distilled into a Common Good Design (Mini) Manifesto: a five-part model – People & Power, Projects & Place, Provision & Patronage, Politics & Policy, Problems & Potential – offered to the wider CCW Design School community as a guide to doing this kind of design research and knowledge exchange work well.