OCA Studio have extensive experience in carrying out community and stakeholder consultation exercises, including leading several community co-design ‘charettes’ as part of the Scottish Government Making Places Initiative.

Our ‘Re-Think the Link’ four day community and stakeholder design event for Scottish Canals and Argyll and Bute Council focused on settlements along the Crinan Canal. The lively programme, which included a Pecha Kucha event, walking tours, and a variety of group workshops, attracted a high level of participation from across the local area.

These events bring together members of the local community, and local policy and decision makers, landowners, and design and industry professionals, giving local people a voice and empowering them to shape their communities.

At our ‘Go Forth Kincardine!’ series of community design events held for local charity the Coalfields Regeneration Trust we used a variety of media to portray opinion and generate consensus, including the Place Standard Toolkit, which effectively highlights key benefits, issues and opportunities within the local area.

‘Design Dunfermline’ was a series of workshops, discussions, and activities funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and the Scottish Government which we led for the Dunfermline Heritage Partnership. We brought together members of the local community and key stakeholders and professionals to discuss options for the future of the historic town centre, and to implement pathways for how these could be taken forward. This included engaging with ‘harder-to-reach’ demographics through innovative events such as the ‘Dunfermline Belongings’ exhibition and ‘Giant Dunfermline’ place mapping with local high school pupils.

We fully understand the importance of clear presentation and visual portrayals to benefit from maximum engagement from participants. We engage via a variety of mediums to provide a loose and stimulating platform for engagement – including physical and digital modelling, diagrams and drawings – to focus minds on what is possible and to help new groupings of people identify with a common cause.