CONNECT

Young people are the decision-makers and clients of the future, and they have a critically important stake in the creation of buildings and spaces.

Today professionals involved in the planning, design and development of our neighbourhoods are starting to recognise the importance of youth participation and community engagement, in order to deliver sustainable, accessible and inclusive places.

The MATT+FIONA CONNECT strand brings the organisation’s expertise to support local authorities, developers and placemakers to ensure communities, and particularly young people, are meaningfully involved in the shaping of their neighbourhoods and other spaces through constructive engagement.

We facilitate knowledge exchange and relationship-building through informal but trusted processes and tools that bring together professionals and local communities.

Our CONNECT strand involves engagement programmes and methods, carefully tailored to client requirements, including:

Workshops, public events, resources and other activities that seek to build constructive dialogue around placemaking.
Facilitating co design workshops between building design teams and local young people, leading to a temporary or meanwhile BUILD that can act as a springboard for other placemaking ideas.
Embedding young people’s design ideas into planning and design processes, leading to permanent positive outcomes in development.
Enabling joint working between developing consortia and local young people to create a permanent space within the strategic development that gives the young people long-term agency and a place they want to use.

Find examples of previous MATT+FIONA CONNECT initiatives in our Project Archive, including: