How to co-design in a project with a local council

“Should this be a business? Could - and should - it be a programme instead?”

Someone posed this question to me in a conversation last week, prompting me to reflect (again) on whether Telescope should exist as a separate entity or instead become integrated into public institutions - perhaps the civil service learning + development body, or somewhere else, as a training programme for new policymakers.

It is true that our ultimate goal is to embed the principles of empathy, innovation, and frontline-policy connection across all the government teams we work with, so that this practice becomes habit - and we don’t have to exist any more. That’s the ideal scenario.

So having our work be part of a regular training programme could be very impactful. But on the other hand, is there something valuable about being an “external”? Does that bring a neutrality and improve our ability to create spaces for difficult, personal, powerful conversations? Can our consultancy model be sustained over the longer term?

We’re now a few months on from finishing our work with the Royal Borough of Greenwich, and this question is at the heart of many of our key reflections. We wrote about the project itself in a recent blog, sharing our high-level learnings about systems change at a local authority level. Now, we’ve also taken the time to reflect on our own process, and how we might do things differently next time.

We’ve put together a resource for other organisations working with local authorities, particularly those operating on a consultancy or project-based model - a “how-to” for co-designing with Councils - in the hope it can help others in the future too. Have a read of our guide here, and please do let us know what you think!