Ebbsfleet Design Group builds on our pioneering three-year creative placemaking programme This Must Be The Place to continue our work collaborating with local young people on the development of the new Ebbsfleet Garden City, supported by artists, academics and designers.
For the 24/25 programme researcher Rana Khazbak and interdisciplinary design studio RESOLVE Collective led a series of sessions, including a one week lab, with young people aged 15-21 living in or near Ebbsfleet. These explorative workshops asked the group to consider creative and novel ways of responding to their environment, and facilitated them becoming ‘community researchers’ – working to re-imagine the built environment as it’s being developed in Ebbsfleet.
“A primary goal of RESOLVE’s is to work in ways that value and celebrate local knowledge. Co-creating with young people as community designers and researchers is an integral part of how design can speak to power; radically affecting the environments in which they often have the largest stake but the most suppressed voice.” – RESOLVE Collective
As part of this exploration, the Design Group met over the course of three ‘labs’ in the October half term, the February half term, and April Easter holidays. Sessions were free to attend, with refreshments and travel costs provided.
Learn about the 25/26 Ebbsfleet Design Group programme here.
Ebbsfleet Design Group is delivered in partnership with the Ebbsfleet Development Corporation.
If you’re aged 15–21 and live in or near Ebbsfleet (including Dartford, Greenhithe, Swanscombe, Northfleet & Gravesend), you can join Ebbsfleet Design Group. As part of the group, you will:
- Learn new design and practical skills using recycled and re-purposed materials.
- Take part in creative workshops with professional artists and designers who put sustainability at the heart of their practice.
- Meet and collaborate with other young people interested in sustainable art and design.
- Help design the new garden city in Ebbsfleet.
The programme was free to attend, with travel expenses paid at £10 per session.
Sign up for the 25/26 programme here – no experience necessary! We will continue to accept new sign ups after sessions have begun.
Rana Khazbak
Rana’s research focuses on understanding young people’s experiences of inequalities and the policy, social, place, and institutional factors that produce these inequalities. She uses youth-centred participatory methodologies aimed at amplifying youth voices in research and policymaking. She is particularly interested in collaborating with community groups and using research findings to advocate for policy and practice changes.
Rana is a Departmental Lecturer in Comparative Social Policy at the University of Oxford and hold a PhD in Social Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). They also hold an MSc in Public Policy from UCL and an MSc in Social Policy Research from LSE.
Find out more here.
RESOLVE Collective
RESOLVE work between architecture, engineering, technology and art, using interactive community programmes and the creation of public works as a means of addressing social challenges. They’re behind numerous projects, workshops, publications, exhibitions and panels that have taken place in the UK and across the world, all seeking to realise more just and equitable futures for the built environments we live in.
Find out more here.