Telling your story: people and the Aylesbury Estate

One of the largest housing estates in the UK, The Aylesbury, South London, is undergoing transformation as part of a £2.4 billion regeneration project. The scheme aims to provide a ‘blueprint for a new neighbourhood’ and in the process, ‘create a strong and vibrant community’.

As the demolition of the Estate began in October 2009, the Kaleidoscope Project was launched to share the memories, experiences and images of the people who lived there. This paper focuses on one aspect of Kaleidoscope – ‘Telling Your Story’, which had two main aims: The first was to capture the life stories of the Estate at this moment of change and the second was pedagogical, to use notions of transformational learning to enhance the skill base of some of the Estate’s long-term residents. This was achieved through a series of innovative workshops focusing on dialogues around the cultural aspects of food, craft and a sense of history and place. At the same time, the ‘people-centered’ workshops provided the opportunity to share aspirations for the future through a resident-led blog. These processes and methods can lead to social innovation: social engagement through building a community of learners and knowledge exchange between residents and academia.

See also: ‘People and the Aylesbury: An Estate in South London
Julia Honess and Teal Triggs (editors). This publication was produced for the residents of the Estate by the project partners, which collected the work they had done over the series of workshops as part of the funded outcomes for the Government of Business, Innovation and Skills – ‘Kaleidoscope: Transformational Learning on the Ayelsbury Estate.'

The Helen Hamlyn Centre at the Royal College of Art was pleased to announce the sixth International conference on Inclusive Design. Include 2011 took place at the Royal College of Art, London, UK on 18-20 April 2011. The theme for Include 2011 was: The Role of Inclusive Design in Making Social Innovation Happen. As a concept, social innovation has growing currency in society, government, academia and business. It manifests itself in many different ways in different contexts. Its meanings extend from public service and policy innovation to initiatives in assistive technology and to aspects of civic participation and creative entrepreneurship. In all of these areas, design has a key role to play. It can make policy visible and participation possible. In particular, inclusive design can deliver innovations of social value to communities and markets. The Include 2011 international conference at the Royal College of Art sought papers on all design aspects that catalyse social innovation, in particular: Organisation - what design tools, techniques, frameworks and networks support and enhance social innovation? Origins - how has social innovation emerged as a design construct and in what ways does it manifest itself? Outputs - research studies and design exemplars of social innovation, drawn from public space, health, transport and other key domains. Include 2011 was particularly interested in papers that explored the direct relationship between inclusive design and social innovation.

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