Newham is one of the most diverse boroughs in London. The majority of its residents are under 25 years old. Yet, at the same time, it is one of the most deprived areas in England, with 25% of its residents earning below London's Living wage; inequality is also one of Newham's issues.
With the aim to build a brighter future for the borough, the council implemented the Towards a Better Newham strategy, consisting of eight pillars, each addressing an area of the borough’s development goal. The pillars helped us become aware of the council’s vision. However, a disconnect between the council and the residents regarding the communication of these pillars was observed. As a result, the community has been having difficulty understanding and utilising the offered opportunities and was unclear about their impacts.
This project was realised in collaboration with my fellow MA Design Management peers: Anjana Narayana, Jenny Kin, Minos Liu, and Trinidad Quito. The goals of the project were aligned with the brief provided and the requirements set by our client from the Newham Council.
Double diamond framework
Scenario Planning Cone
The scenario planning cone has been used as a visual tool to aid in the prediction of four potential scenarios for the borough of Newham: Possible, Preferable, Plausible, and Probable.
By analyzing municipal government trends and existing policies in the borough of Newham, as well as future strategies the council plans to implement, we focused on two main axes for scenario-building: community participation and the environment. We selected representative democracy and participatory democracy for the first axis, as they are currently used governing methods in the UK and other cities worldwide respectively. For the second axis, we chose increasing carbon footprint, which reflects the current state of the world, and net-zero by 2050, which is a goal set by many cities and countries to combat the climate crisis.
Storytelling as our outcome
Storytelling is an effective strategic tool to communicate with your audience. It allows one to emotionally engage with the story’s protagonist and project themselves in its scenario. Through this tool, we can help the community weave their narratives and visualise the future possibilities of the borough.
Newham has many policies to help the community in place. However, with our research on municipal trends, we were able to identify areas
of opportunities to introduce new strategies that strengthen or complement the current ones.
By presenting the policies that other cities are exploring or implementing, we hope to inspire the council to take their strategies a step further in the future. We refer to some of these new policies in our persona’s story of the preferable scenario to show the council the prospects of implementing these new initiatives in the future.
Way Forward
Here are some examples of how Newham can utilise storytelling to better inform and connect with its residents. Our outcomes revolve around physical interactions and emotional engagement because they help people learn new concepts.
