Earlier this week, DTNI designer Jane Kyle attended the World Design Congress in London, getting the chance to explore a dynamic global dialogue on how design can shape a sustainable, just, and community-centred future. Themed “Design for Planet”, the congress brought together designers, researchers, and policymakers to explore the role of design in climate action, economic transformation, and social equity.
The poster, designed by Jane and built on work and research done over the past 10 years by DTNI and Lough Neagh Development Trust, showcased how community-led design and stewardship can support environmental resilience and community wealth building around the largest freshwater lake in Ireland and the UK.
From keynote speeches to thought-provoking panels, the event highlighted the transformative power of design, positioning it as a strategic tool for systems change, community empowerment, and policy innovation.
From Design Thinking to Design Stewardship
One of the standout moments was Indy Johar’s keynote (Dark Matter Labs), which reframed design not as a process for making products, but as a practice of stewardship. Johar challenged delegates to consider how design can shape post-growth, regenerative economies rooted in care, community, and interdependence with nature – themes closely aligned with DTNI’s community wealth building approach.
Our Lough Neagh work, which centres on empowering communities to reimagine their relationship with place, speaks directly to this shift from extraction to stewardship. By investing in community-owned assets and supporting local leadership, we believe design can become a force for long-term systemic change.
Designing the Economy We Need
One of the most compelling sessions of the World Design Congress featured Mariana Mazzucato (Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value), Kate Raworth (Donut Economics), and Danny Sriskandarajah (New Economics Foundation), whose discussion centred on how we can (and must) radically redesign the economy to serve both people and planet.
Their message was clear: we need a shift from short-term, profit-driven systems to mission-led, regenerative models that prioritise public and community value. This includes not only reimagining products and services, but rethinking the very foundations of economic policy, public investment, and business incentives.
The central provocation from the panel: we currently operate in a system where risk is socialised, but profit is privatised. Public funds and community assets often underpin innovation, yet the benefits are too often extracted away from the places and people who contributed to their creation. This is not just economically inefficient, it’s socially unjust.
For DTNI, this presents both a challenge and an opportunity.
The session offered a vital entry point to make the case for the third sector as a core actor in economic transformation. Community organisations, co-operatives, and development trusts are not just delivery vehicles for services – they are sites of innovation, generators of value, and centres of place-based knowledge.
Real innovation happens on the ground – when a community trust transforms a vacant building into a shared workspace; when local groups steward natural assets like Lough Neagh for both ecological and economic benefit; when social enterprises provide vital services where markets and states have withdrawn.
These are not fringe activities. They are the infrastructure of a future economy – one that is inclusive, circular, and resilient.
Yet the third sector remains under-recognised in economic policy and under-resourced in public investment. If we are serious about missions to tackle climate change, health inequality, or social disconnection, we must centre the third sector in the design and delivery of those missions – not just consult with it at the margins.
This means designing investment mechanisms that retain wealth locally, valuing social infrastructure as economic infrastructure, and ensuring that communities share in the rewards of the risks they take.
DTNI continues to advocate for a new policy settlement in Northern Ireland that recognises the role of community anchor organisations not just in delivery, but in shaping the mission, owning the means of change, and building community wealth from the ground up.
As Mariana Mazzucato reminded the Congress: missions only succeed when they are co-created, not imposed. That’s not just good design – that’s good economics.
Lessons in Hope, Placemaking, and Practice
Further highlights included:
- Justin McGuirk (Future Observatory) on the need for mission-driven research with clear success metrics and a strong narrative that can reframe the climate crisis.
- Norman Foster reflecting on large-scale co-design and the importance of nature and user comfort in placemaking.
- The British Council’s panel on Cultivating Community Champions, with inspiring examples of how community-led design can influence global systems, transform high streets, and empower young people through spatial agency.
These sessions reinforced the idea that community-led regeneration is not just possible, it’s essential. As communities across Northern Ireland face intersecting challenges of environmental degradation, economic uncertainty, and social inequality, design offers a hopeful path forward, grounded in co-creation, inclusion, and long-term stewardship.
DTNI’s Ongoing Commitment
If we are to design for the planet, we must also design with and for communities. The World Design Congress was a reminder that radical collaboration and community-led innovation are essential if we are to meet the scale of today’s challenges.
We remain firmly committed to advancing community-led interventions for place-shaping, ensuring that communities are not only involved in regeneration – but leading it. Regeneration must deliver more than physical renewal; it must deliver social and economic justice, rooted in the lived experience and leadership of local people.
This includes addressing structural issues around land ownership, legislative gaps, and investment flows. As our work on Lough Neagh shows, we cannot talk about a just transition without confronting questions of land use, environmental governance, and community control of natural assets. The absence of coherent land reform in Northern Ireland continues to hinder meaningful progress – and we will continue to challenge policy weaknesses that perpetuate exclusion and environmental decline.
DTNI also looks outwards and draws insight and inspiration from international models such as the Design Council’s systems-led approach, and initiatives like the Samsø Energy Academy in Denmark, which place communities at the centre of the net zero transition through participatory ownership and democratic governance.
This outward learning informs our ongoing exploration of financial democracy, examining how we can rethink the financing of major infrastructure and regeneration projects to embed community ownership and long-term local benefit. The future of Lough Neagh, for example, demands a new model of stewardship – one that puts the public good before private gain.
To achieve this, we need a coherent, cross-departmental response from the Northern Ireland Executive. The challenges of climate, inequality, and regional imbalance do not sit neatly within departmental silos. Addressing them will require coordinated leadership across Economy, Health, Communities, and Infrastructure, working together with the third sector and local communities.
DTNI will continue to push for this change – placing community ownership, land reform, and system stewardship at the heart of how we design a collective future.
Learn more about our work on Lough Neagh here and read about the research poster here
Interested in collaboration? Explore our services here or contact us!