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Dartington Service Design Lab has teamed up with UK Youth, a leading youth charity working across the UK with a vision that ‘all young people are equipped to thrive and are empowered to contribute at every stage of their lives’. Together we’re using learning and insight to guide the strategic development of the Thriving Minds Fund over a three-and-a-half-year period.
Read MoreWe are delighted to announce that we are partnering with leading cancer charities, Young Lives vs Cancer, the Children’s Cancer and Leukaemia Group, the Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust and Teenage Cancer Trust to codesign research and evidence measures, and apply an Integrated Approach to research and systems change with children and young people who have lived experience of cancer.
Read MoreWhen I first entered the Inclusion As Prevention project, I thought I would approach it as I would working with any client seeking animation support. The brief was an exciting one, working with an innovative, community-driven project that seeks to support young voices through co-design and produce an animation to educate young people and their families on the topic of domestic abuse and gender-based violence.
Read MoreService Design is a discipline that's yet finding its feet within the charity sector and developing in itself as a whole. The job of a Service Designer is to help organisations understand needs, solve problems and adapt to an ever-changing world. This is only possible in an environment that has its eyes open to learning and its heart ready to act on change based initiatives. Here, Vridhi reflects on this and particularly on the role that culture plays in allowing the practice of Design to grow and mature.
Read MoreComic Relief’s Rise and Shine programme funds organisations supporting early childhood development for vulnerable families in the UK and globally. Earlier this year, grantees came together for a day of reflection and learning, facilitated by Dartington Service Design Lab, the Learning Partners for the fund.
The goal of the learning event was to create a space where UK Rise and Shine grantees could reflect on what they’ve learnt to date, to inform their planning for the future as the funding programme nears its conclusion.
Read MoreThis year, World Mental Health Day's leading campaign is to ‘make mental health and wellbeing a global priority’. Wellbeing and mental health is a key feature of the work here at the Lab to improve outcomes for children and young people. NHS digital estimate that 1 in 6 young people have a diagnosable mental illness, with many 5 – 16 year olds reporting experiencing low mood, anxiety and eating disorders.
Last year, we joined forces with the Mental Health Foundation, Black Thrive and Colourful Minds on the “Becoming a Man” (BAM) project, a US-born programme developed by Youth Guidance, aimed at exploring and supporting young men to learn and practice impulse control and emotional regulation, among other social skills. Our job as the evaluators is to establish whether and how BAM might be feasible to deliver in Lambeth, South London.
Read MoreFrom training packs for teachers on how to respond to disclosures of abusive relationships, to resources for young people on how to recognise the signs of coercive control, there’s something for everyone to feel better educated on both topics and empowered to take action so that young people and families have their needs met. We’ll be celebrating and sharing the exciting work these young changemakers have been designing – in person – at the #ChangeUp Exhibition in Paisley. This exhibition, open to everyone in Renfrewshire and beyond, is packed with the innovations designed by and for young people and system leaders, to inspire all of us to educate, empower and equalise systems to tackle coercive control and take early action on mental wellbeing.
Read MoreThis blog reflects on parents’ experiences of services during the pandemic and staff’s hopes and concerns for future delivery. We also share how evaluation has helped organisations understand these, and how it can be used to shape delivery in the future.
Read MoreDartington has formed an exciting partnership to develop, test and refine an ambitious approach to help young people and local areas develop locally produced and evidence-informed approaches to improve adolescent mental health. The team is led by Research Director, Professor Peter Fonagy OBE (UCL Psychology and Language Sciences) and Professor Tim Hobbs (Dartington Service Design Lab). Their partnership has been awarded a UK Prevention Research Partnership (UKPRP) Consortium award of £5.3 million over five years.
Read MoreAs we’ve explored and reflected on Learning Partner contracts, we’ve identified three roles that a Learning Partner takes; The mirror, the mentor and the midwife. Each role blends the “learning for” and “learning with” elements that we described previously, and in our experience, Learning Partners need to be confident shifting between the three as learning needs and capacity changes.
Read MoreThis is a blog about anti-racism, and the actions and commitments we are taking at Dartington Service Design Lab to address it.
Read MoreIn January 2021, we were funded by Catalyst and The National Lottery Community Fund COVID-19 Digital Reponse to run a 12-week research and design project focused on reaching families remotely, in partnership with five charity partners from across the country. The whole research and design process culminated in the ‘9 steps for reaching families remotely’ - services and practitioners struggling to reach and engage with digitally excluded people.
Read MoreIn our last blog, we looked at the motivations behind Learning Partnerships. In this one we examine some of the conditions we think are necessary for success – building on our experience, and that of our partners at Renaisi, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, and Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. In particular, we look at taking time to set the project up, develop consensus about aims and being explicit about creating the conditions for learning to happen and be acted upon.
Read MoreNature is an important and well-evidenced mechanism for supporting mental health for both children and for adults (WHO, 2014). We’ve explored this in our work on potential interventions for enhancing the mental health and wellbeing of children and young adults in the Midlothian area of Scotland.
Read MoreIt’s perhaps unsurprising that we have been drawn to the concept of the Learning Partner and all the term suggests; that is, working with organisations to enable learning and improvement, and doing so collaboratively. Having carried out several roles badged in this way, we wanted to reflect, as a team and with peers, on what the role can look like, what skills it requires, and what it can contribute to organisations, and to the sector more broadly.
Read MoreDuring the Connecting Families project - Funded by Catalyst and The National Lottery Community Fund COVID-19 Digital Reponse, and supported by Design agency Shift - we’ll be following a specific Design Process. This is broken into five key phases. These sprint notes will reflect on our learning from each phase. This blog is all about the sprint 'Wrap-Up' phase.
Read MoreDuring the Connecting Families project - Funded by Catalyst and The National Lottery Community Fund COVID-19 Digital Reponse, and supported by Design agency Shift - we’ll be following a specific Design Process. This is broken into five key phases. These sprint notes will reflect on our learning from each phase. This blog is all about the sprint 'Develop' phase.
Read MoreDuring the Connecting Families project - Funded by Catalyst and The National Lottery Community Fund COVID-19 Digital Reponse, and supported by Design agency Shift - we’ll be following a specific Design Process. This is broken into five key phases. These sprint notes will reflect on our learning from each phase. This blog is all about the mid-sprint 'Develop' phase.
Read MoreDuring the Connecting Families project - Funded by Catalyst and The National Lottery Community Fund COVID-19 Digital Reponse, and supported by Design agency Shift - we’ll be following a specific Design Process. This is broken into five key phases. These sprint notes will reflect on our learning from each phase. This blog is all about the 'Define' phase.
Read MoreDuring the Connecting Families project - Funded by Catalyst and The National Lottery Community Fund COVID-19 Digital Reponse, and supported by Design agency Shift - we’ll be following a specific Design Process. This is broken into five key phases. These sprint notes will reflect on our learning from each phase. This blog is all about the 'Discover' phase.
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