We first partnered with Westminster City Council in 2024, delivering an introduction to design thinking for their strategic change and delivery leads. As we’ve learned more about the team’s context we’ve adapted our training to help them better tackle some of the specific challenges they face.

This has included more detailed framing around complex systems and the role of research and prototyping in working with this complexity. We’ve also introduced more case studies to help them explore how the capabilities they’re developing are being applied in related sectors and projects.

Through the training the participants learned how to apply human-centred design principles, tools and mindsets to enable more meaningful engagements with local communities and the people they’re designing services for.

Local authorities face a range of complex issues, needs and opportunities. For WCC this includes things like transforming local communities, housing, tackling inequality, digital innovation and achieving Net Zero but these themes will be common across many other councils.

After our most recent engagement Thomas Pooley at WCC provided us with this feedback, which also talks a little about how the people we worked with have gone on to apply their learning:

“Our PMO team at Westminster self-identified a learning gap in the form of design thinking, and Redfront stepped into the breach perfectly. At the time our role was expanding into supporting the transformation and redesign of services, so we needed to build up our knowledge and understanding of thinking critically and ‘outside the box’, while putting residents at the centre of what we do.

Lena and Simon provided the team with the tools and confidence to do this, and upon completing the training the team were able to apply their learning across many different projects, ranging from community engagement initiatives where responding to residents was the priority, to more technical digital programmes. We would thoroughly recommend the design thinking course to any team or organisation going through a transformation process, or who just want to do things a bit differently.”