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Updated: Thursday 24th September 2026
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Neighbourhood Public Square site, Ladywood, Birmingham, UK (2026)
So many of us are organising around how to interact with the system as is, whilst reimagining and moving it forward everywhere we can, and share as we go; not as a ‘right’ answer, but to show how we're trying to honour the technical, relational, tangible and intangible at every turn.
What We’re Building with Hood Futures Studio (2026)
Over the past few years we’ve been working to share as much of the learning and process to here as we can, alongside creating the conditions to take the next steps of tangible demonstration for Neighbourhood Public Square as a physical site here in Ladywood.
Whilst rooted here, as a practicing system demonstrator we are actively working across many layers of regenerative (re)design around land stewardship, finance, governance, as well as building design, construction and retrofit. Our focus remains the discovery of the capacities and capabilities required for neighbourhood transitions in an ambitious, emergent, participatory way, with application and shifts far beyond the land beneath our feet here in our beloved B16.
Co-build Share & Learn at Neighbourhood Public Square (2025)
This Neighbourhood Public Square OS zone is one way of trying to make the parts visible; how we’ve positioned and amalgamated vision, dreams, climate science, decolonial thinking, neighbourhood voices, demonstrator postures; and how we synthesise that into a pathway forward that starts to make plural future possibilities a reality in the here and now, starting from where we are.
Our heartfelt thanks to Shared Assets, Atmos for Totnes, Human Nature, Global Generation, Onion Collective, Brightbox, Social Designs, House of Annetta and so many others who share not just the shiny, glossy stuff, but the detailed documents and inner workings that are being reimagined, reassembled and remade live, for each other to build on.
Retrofit Reimagined Ecosystem Precedent Visit to Kitty’s Launderette, Liverpool (2026)
We acknowledge that this takes a lot, and it can’t just be outsourced to someone else; it has to be shared and opened up by those stewarding the work, at the same time as actually doing it in practice, on the ground, in an ever-changing and ever-adapting context.
Openly sharing helps to make the known things easier and makes it possible to embed our design principles into even the most structural and bureaucratic work, rather than as a nice add on to the parts we simply couldn’t crack at their root, due to being too hidden, and too difficult to decipher.
We extend our gratitude to all those who played a role along the journey to here so far, including all layers and chapters of the Neighbourhood Public Square proposal, including CIVIC SQUARE team past and present, partners, peers and neighbours; those who shared with generosity and honesty; those who encouraged us to work out loud, and those who resourced us to embody this practice as fully as we humanly could, in a range of ways.