Reanimate Place
Large organisations and local communities often different languages and have different priorities. And it’s all too easy for meaningful change outcomes to get lost in tick-box exercises, generic consultation forms, and reporting mechanisms.
I help organisations bridge the gap between institutional impact reporting and lived experience through the co-design of equitable social value, community, and regeneration projects that leave a lasting community legacy.
The Placemakers’ Forge
Bridge the gap between reporting and the living experience of a place.
A targeted session to reanimate civic strategy. We go beyond dry impact narratives and compliance reporting to designing strategies that are rooted in meaningful and sustained partner and stakeholder engagement.
Who it’s for: Engagement directors, regeneration and civic leaders, and regional partnership boards designing knowledge exchange or social value strategies.
The Focus: Designing sustained and co-designed social value and impact strategies that deliver outcomes that are clear, creative, and meaningful.
The Deliverable: A reanimated regional impact strategy that satisfies reporting and audit requirements while remaining deeply authentic and responsive to local communities.
Breakwater Sessions
Equitable design frameworks rooted in collaboration.
The Breakwater Sessions are intensive, highly active design interventions that bring stakeholders together to co-create place-based projects from the ground up. We bypass traditional power structures to unlock genuine community-led innovation.
Who it’s for: Multi-agency partnerships, regeneration teams, and research groups needing to build deep, equitable co-design frameworks with local residents.
The Focus: Shifting from consulting the public to actively co-producing interventions with them. We support the design of programmes that ensure mutual benefit and shared ownership.
The Deliverable: A clear, co-designed project blueprint backed by an actionable roadmap that all partners understand, trust, and own.
The Civic Residency
Reanimating place is a long-term commitment. For anchor and place-based organisations ready to move from consultation to permanent co-design, I offer a residency programmes where I work alongside your regional partnerships and/or engagement teams to develop and implement equitable frameworks that ensure that your social value and impact projects remain authentic and agile.
About One Little Spark Training and Consultancy
Bringing 20 years of expertise in research management, knowledge exchange, and place-based impact, I’ve partnered with universities, charities, businesses and public sector bodies across the UK to deliver imaginative interventions that cut through the red tape and drive real alignment.
My perspective is shaped by the North Sea and the salt-weathered steel of the Teesside coast. As an LGBTQ+ man and a father living in Redcar, I understand that Social Value isn’t an abstract metric. It is the act of reanimating hidden histories and preserving a community’s spark.
Ready to reanimate your connection to place?
Let’s discuss your current civic goals and design a collaborative space that turns organisational insight and expertise into real, living community impact.
