PONT builds Public Design Coalitions

Review: PONT strengthens public design practices

Over the past two years, PONT has worked to strengthen public design practices: collaborations in which public authorities and designers work together on societal challenges.

PONT closely followed eighteen public design practices and provided strategic support where needed. This resulted in valuable insights into design-led working within a political and administrative context.

Design professionals and public sector practitioners who want to start or improve a collaboration can draw on this knowledge through essays and learning programmes. Concrete collaboration tools have also been developed, such as a lexicon and a procurement guide.

A next step: Public Design Coalitions

In the final programme year, the focus shifts from developing and sharing knowledge to applying and testing it in practice. To this end, PONT is building Public Design Coalitions together with partners: collaborations in which multiple organisations, in different constellations, work in a design-led way on the same societal challenge (previously referred to in earlier communications as ‘Flagships’).

PONT connects organisations and designers

A Public Design Coalition is a new form of collaboration, inspired by similar initiatives abroad. A coalition brings together organisations working on a challenge at national and policy level with organisations operating at local and implementation level. PONT builds these coalitions by connecting existing design practices and, together with public organisations, issuing open calls for designers.

PONT facilitates shared learning

Learning is central within a Public Design Coalition. PONT supports the coalitions with a learning structure. We organise the exchange of insights around the shared challenge, allowing new knowledge to be applied in practice and practical insights to inform policy. We also explore which combinations of approaches and solutions are needed to drive change together. Along the way, we continue to build knowledge on how public organisations and designers can collaborate effectively.

Building coalitions around four complex challenges

Based on input from various networks, including the Secretaries-General Consultation on Policy Quality (SGO Beleidskwaliteit), PONT has selected four promising societal challenges. These are complex issues involving multiple stakeholders and no single owner, where policy, implementation and everyday life are closely intertwined. It is precisely with this type of challenge that a design-led approach can help connect perspectives, enable experimentation, foster shared learning and set sustainable change in motion.

The four challenges:

• Organising care and wellbeing around people.
• Low literacy as a societal reality.
• Building a resilient society together.
• A new interplay in the energy and agricultural transition.

Read the news on the PONT website.