Manchester’s participation in the EU-funded CommuniCity programme has sparked a new approach to digital inclusion, one rooted in trust, lived experience and local collaboration. By embedding co-creation into service design, the city is piloting tech-enabled solutions that respond to real-world challenges, strengthen community networks and deliver meaningful social impact.
Engaging communities in the development of new technologies enables local authorities to build better public services that strengthen neighbourhoods, respond to social challenges and meet the needs of local people.
CommuniCity
In 2024, Manchester joined the EU Horizon-funded CommuniCity programme, a transformative citizen-centred initiative that engaged local people, business and organisations to develop solutions to challenges faced by marginalised communities. Across three Open Calls, 60 technology pilots were launched in 19 European cities to inspire practically rooted innovations with the potential to break down barriers and uplift underserved communities. Through embedding participatory decision-making in service design, CommuniCity aimed to create positive social impact through inclusive, community-led responses to urban and societal challenges that could be scaled up and replicated across Europe.
Manchester
Manchester’s pioneering spirit has long shaped the city’s identity. From powering the industrial revolution to catalysing the Suffragette movement, Manchester has championed equality and innovation throughout its history – welcoming disruptors, creators and innovators from all over the world. As a proudly multi-cultural city, diversity plays a key part in the city’s identity, shaping the cultural and social landscape and driving Manchester’s reputation for community, equity and inclusive growth.
Yet not everyone benefits equally from Manchester’s success. Despite significant progress in recent years, the profound effects of poverty and deprivation still negatively impact the lives of too many people in Manchester. Structural inequalities, compounded by economic pressures, have left many communities facing stark disparities in access to employment, education, training opportunities and essential services.
Like other UK cities, Manchester is also grappling with the urgent and growing challenges of digital exclusion. In Greater Manchester alone, more than 450,000 people classified as “non-users” of the internet – lacking the connectivity, resources, and skills needed to fully participate in modern life. While advances in digital technology are driving innovation and economic growth, the benefits are not yet equally distributed.
Joining the CommuniCity programme offered an opportunity for Manchester City Council to connect with an international community of socially minded innovators driving collaborative and democratic approaches to technology.
Digital Strategy
Manchester’s Digital Strategy, aims to build a more equitable, prosperous and resilient society for all, where everyone can benefit from advances in digital technology.
In collaboration with services across the Council, the Digital Strategy team launched three pilot challenges focused on consolidating the support available for people experiencing poverty; improving access to cultural events; and enabling better communication between sources of food support. By empowering local people to design, shape and co-create solution to real-world challenges, the pilots explored how participatory design processes could advance digital inclusion, create space for new ideas and innovations to grow, and help to align new technologies with community needs and values.
Communities and community organisations play a vital role in driving social change. Many VCSEs that engaged with the pilots expressed a strong interest in using digital tools to amplify the impact of their support. Through lived experience, communities bring a deep and nuanced understanding of the strengths, barriers and opportunities in their local area that can shape more responsive public services that address genuine community need. Engaging communities early in co-creation processes and supporting their sustained participation could enable the development of tech-enabled services tailored to real-world contexts that deliver direct benefits to people from all walks of life.
The three CommuniCity pilots were co-located in Longsight, a neighbourhood south of the city centre that faces disproportionate economic challenges. Despite significant barriers to opportunity, the ward is deeply connected with a vibrant network of community organisations and charities offering activities, support and advice to residents. By situating all pilots in Longsight, the solutions developed were grounded in local realities.
For co-creation to be meaningful, communities must feel empowered to share ideas and feedback openly. Working closely with partners with long-standing, positive relationships with local communities was vital to involving organisations and people in the piloting process. Strengthening ties with Longsight’s community networks and building trust was essential to creating space for honest dialogue, connecting with organisations already involved in tackling local issues, and sustaining participation in the pilot.
Culture and diversity
In the Cultural challenge, which aimed to improve access to cultural experiences in Manchester among diverse communities, the pilot team worked closely with community interest company Better We to gather feedback on the pilot solution from its intended audience. Collaborating with a respected community organisation, trusted for providing support and social activities to improve quality of life in Longsight, enabled the piloting team to easily connect with residents who may otherwise have been hesitant to engage in co-creation processes. Holding workshops in familiar spaces, hosted by community leaders, established a safe and supportive environment for honest conversations. Acknowledging Better We’s vital role in convening the workshop with fair compensation also helped to build mutual respect and trust, strengthening relationships between the pilot teams and the Longsight community.
Nurturing trustworthy relationships with communities could also encourage wider civic engagement, enabling collaboration to deliver more effective systems and services that generate positive outcomes for everyone. Recognising the value of the time and contributions of local people and community organisations by compensating workshop participants further helped to position communities as equal partners in decision-making and encourage ongoing engagement.
All three pilots adopted an iterative process, engaging communities at multiple stages across the pilot process. Through establishing an ongoing dialogue with participants, pilot teams could continuously adapt their solutions to respond to the needs and values of real people, increasing the potential to deliver long-term impact. Taking an adaptive approach was also crucial in enabling participants to recognise the impact of their input in shaping project outcomes, ensuring that co-creation was meaningful.
Anti-Poverty
In the Anti-Poverty challenge, the piloting team explored how a centralised source of information could help people and organisations better navigate the often-confusing landscape of poverty support. While the platform was originally designed with residents in mind, feedback from community organisations highlighted challenges around knowledge-sharing and awareness of other support services, alongside concerns about the pilot’s sustainability. In response, the scope of the pilot was refined to focus on how the platform could support VCSEs signposting resources to residents experiencing poverty.
Ensuring that participatory design processes were inclusive and accessible was vital to enabling engagement and encouraging diversity of perspectives. Barriers to participation can prevent a range of voices from being included in service design. Holding workshops in trusted community spaces and offering a variety of ways to engage with design processes – both in-person and online – helped to enable people from a wide range of backgrounds to take part in the pilots. To build technologies that work for everyone in a community, and avoid causing inadvertent harm, a diverse range of views must be represented in design processes.
In the Wildcard Challenge, the piloting team visited over 20 community organisations in Manchester to better understand how their platform might be used to help organisations respond more effectively to rising levels of food insecurity. Meeting with organisations individually, and in their own settings, empowered a greater range of providers to participate than would otherwise have been possible, enabling the piloting team to shape the platform around the realities of everyday service provision. To enable more people from minoritised ethnic groups – who experience food insecurity at almost twice the rate of the majority population – to easily access and navigate support, inclusive adaptations such as multi-lingual support were embedded into the platform’s development.
Community and co-creation
By moving beyond tokenistic and surface-level engagement to meaningfully engage communities in the design of new technologies, local authorities can unlock new possibilities for social and digital innovation – delivering widespread benefits for the public sector, communities and organisations alike.
Insights from the co-creation process – including the importance of building trust, iterative testing, and collaborative development – will be used to inform how new technologies are embedded in future service delivery to deliver positive social impact.
Some pilots, such as Commu App, will continue to evolve. Following a positive response from social food providers in Longsight, the Our Manchester Food Partnership will continue collaborating with Commu, the piloting team behind Manchester’s Wildcard Challenge. Originally pioneered in Finland, Commu is a community platform that aims to make it easier for people to ask for and receive help. Over the next six months, the piloting team will continue to work closely with local authority colleagues and social food providers to support organisations to embed Commu in their daily operations, work with developers to tailor the platform to local need and assess the benefits of active adoption. If scaled successfully across the city, Commu could enable food providers to co-ordinate their services more effectively and empower more people in Manchester to engage with the help they need to eat well and access the right resources to open up long-term pathways out of poverty.
Manchester City Council is committed ensuring that the benefits of technology reach everyone. By sharing learnings, challenges and successes from embedding co-creation in the CommuniCIty pilots, human-centred design will be championed in the development of tech solutions that make a positive difference in the lives of everyone in Manchester.
Championing inclusive co-creation processes supports local authorities to build solutions to social challenges that work for the communities they exist to serve and create opportunities for equitable innovation. By engaging in meaningful co-creation, public services can better meet the needs, wants and values of communities and lay the right foundations to realise a more equitable and progressive society for all.
