Imagine a city where the services, amenities, and programmes that people rely on are shaped not just in meeting rooms but in the heart of its communities—where voices from every corner of the city help define what matters most. This is the spirit behind community planning: a belief that improving everyone’s quality of life and wellbeing requires not only collaboration among local agencies and those with decision making powers, but also the active involvement of the people who call that city their home.
This ambition was at the heart of Belfast’s first community plan known as the Belfast Agenda. This vision for the city was created after engagement with residents and partners and focuses on what matters most to the city and people of Belfast. But it’s not just about plans—it’s about action.
In June 2023, the Belfast Community Planning Partnership (CPP) embarked on a journey to elevate this work from ambition to reality. Recognising that genuine co-design could transform how the city engages with its communities, the CPP assembled a diverse, cross-sectoral Steering Group. This group, including vital contributions from voluntary, community, and social enterprise (VCSE) organisations, decided that the city needed a practical framework to ensure that real co-design was at the heart of Community Planning in the city.
To bring this vision to life, the CPP partnered with independent experts, Involve and Community Places to develop a co-design framework. True to the principles of co-design, we invited residents and partners to join interactive workshops that shaped and informed the development of this new co-design framework. These sessions were more than discussions—they were a collaborative journey, uncovering best practices and clarifying how co-design can make a meaningful difference in community planning.
From the very beginning, one thing was clear:
Belfast’s communities are eager to be more involved.
Yet, as we dug deeper, we uncovered a critical gap— the absence of a shared understanding of what co-design truly means and what it takes to make it successful. It was clear we needed a practical, straightforward guide to help bridge this gap and make co-design more accessible and allow better engagement by defining what it is, what it is not, and how to do it.
That leads us to now — we are proud to present the Belfast Co-Design Framework—a tool designed to help the CPP and its partner organisations integrate co-design into their work. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to refine your approach, this framework provides the principles, processes, and resources needed to make co-design both impactful and effective.
While co-design won’t always be the right fit (it’s just one of many options for involving communities in policy and service design), when it's used thoughtfully, it can deepen community involvement and ensure that public services reflect the diverse needs of Belfast’s residents. Beyond the framework, this journey has underscored the importance of a broader commitment to civic participation.
This framework is just the beginning. It’s a practical step toward a more joined-up approach to community involvement—one that strengthens participation and ensures Belfast continues to thrive as a city shaped by its people.
We believe that involving diverse voices leads to better, more responsive, and more efficient decision making and impacts on our lives.
What’s next?
This project represents the first time something like this has been commissioned by a local government in NI, and as we head towards ten years of community planning in Northern Ireland, it’s timely to take stock of how its core principle of collaboration is implemented in reality.
You can view the framework here.
In addition to the co-design toolkit, we also developed a set of recommendations (see below) for how the Belfast Community Planning Partnership can embed co-design and continually support it as a practice.