We inspire and engage the citizens of Glasgow to create a better future for everybody.

Over the past two and a half years The Centre for Civic Innovation have been a part of the URBACT ROOF Network, a group of 9 cities working together to eradicate homelessness across Europe. Click here to read more about our work with the network.

As we work to eradicate homelessness The Centre for Civic Innovation have been working with the Queens Cross Housing Association to understand how they have implemented the innovative Housing First practice across Glasgow. Through this series of stories we heard all about Housing first from those who use this service and those who provide it.

The Centre for Civic Innovation was asked to support the re-design of G53 Together post COVID-19 crisis, so that it works at its best for and with the local communities and partners.

The Centre for Civic Innovation has participated in the Bloomberg Philanthropies Mayors Challenge, a global innovation competition uncovering the most transformative urban solutions to emerge in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Click below to look at our ambitious plan for Glasgow.

We have collaborated with the Village Storytelling Centre to something together with the citizens of Greater Pollok detailing their tales from throughout the pandemic. We listened to stories of those living in the G53 area and beyond. The stories were compiled into a book entitled "Silver Linings" stories of happiness, hope, friendship and a sense of community in Greater Pollok during the pandemic.

Poverty and climate change are worldwide challenges. In Glasgow, COVID 19 has amplified these challenges for our citizens. Our citizens are disconnected from the design of the solutions that could transform their lives. This and lack of power are a major cause of health inequalities. We are building a citywide design-led ecosystem, using data to innovate and co-design for the common good. We aim to become a socially innovative city of tomorrow where design and innovation skills are the cornerstone of our local and global communities.

Glasgow has been selected as one of fifty Champion Cities in the final of Bloomberg Philanthropies 2021 Global Mayors Challenge. Cities were asked how their ideas could change the world after COVID19 and from 631 entries across the globe Glasgow’s idea has made it into the last 50! We are proposing to upskill our residents—especially those in impoverished areas—with design and innovation skills and link them with industry, business, and academia to launch enterprising solutions to eradicate poverty and address the climate emergency.

Citizens are at the heart of everything we do. CCI want all areas of the city to work together for the common social good. By embedding design skills at  the epicentre of neighbourhoods we can tackle our societal issues and empower all levels of the city.

The CCI has been working to better understand Child Poverty in Glasgow on behalf of the council’s Child Poverty Governance Board.
Our combination of design thinking, data science and research methodologies in partnership with the client is a new way of working in local government and is delivering unprecedented results.

For those in our neighbourhoods with existing health conditions, this year has presented additional worries.
We were approached by the council with the aim of helping them to better understand who they needed to support through these difficult times.
Through our design-led approach to solving problems our data scientists worked with a range of colleagues and data sets to identify our most vulnerable people and allow the city to respond in a more targeted way to meet the needs of those individuals.

Led by the City of Ghent, @URBACTROOF is a network of nine cities across Europe, collaborating to find solutions to the challenge of homelessness. Their aim is to eradicate homelessness through better use of data and using the model of Housing First.
Crucial in making the shift towards Housing First ending homelessness is a much needed changing of mindsets on all levels. The CCI team is working across the project sharing their storytelling, data and design thinking expertise.

A joint team from CCI and Glasgow School of Art’s Innovation School worked on a futures-focused collaborative exploration of people-centred and place-based stories and experiences. It was set in an imagined Glasgow of 2030, and grounded within the contexts of participatory democracy and citizen engagement. “Collaborative Futures not only shapes communities, (it) shapes the city as a whole”, Councillor David McDonald.

The analogue to digital switch has meant that the current telecare model is unfit for purpose.
We have designed an Open Innovation programme of work to develop new innovative solutions for Glasgow Health and Social Care Partnership. Working collaboratively with Scottish Enterprise’s Can Do Innovation Challenge Fund to support open innovation we are currently co-designing new solutions with SMEs.

We designed a problem solving toolbox for GCC’s Centre of Excellence for Data Visualisation which broke down our process into easy-to-follow steps, and provided guides and templates.
This reflected our design thinking methodology providing solution-based approaches to solving problems. This toolbox doesn’t define design thinking. We simply shared our experience of how we used the principles to help us solve problems and develop innovative solutions here in Glasgow.
You can view the toolbox here: designfordata.org

We’re working in collaboration with the Scottish Government @civtechscotland Technology Accelerator Programme, bringing the public sector together with SMEs to co-design and co-develop solutions to city wide challenges.
The accelerator has introduced us to some exciting teams and this year we have teamed up with SME “Reshape Technology” to develop an app that will help citizens understand the impact our daily lives are having on Climate Change.