Connect Further Reading
These blogs, written by members of our Care City team, offer a deeper look at the thinking, questions and tools that have shaped Connect so far. They explore what it really takes to create the conditions for connection, especially in places where loneliness and isolation can feel woven into everyday life.
Together, they reflect on making space for friendship, strengthening community resilience, and learning directly from lived experience. Whether you’re interested in the ideas behind the work, the practical models we’re testing, or the design tools helping us listen better, this reading opens up the thinking behind our approach and where it might lead next.
Emily Brook’s blog “Building the space for friendship in Barking & Dagenham” reflects on our aim of creating societies that have more space for people to care about each other.
James Sinclair’s blog “Building a community system resilience model to tackle social isolation” looks at what we can do about social isolation when a lack of social connections seems such a societally embedded problem.·
Sarah Trott’s blog “Design Thinking, Journey Mapping, Prototyping. Project reflections from our intern” shares her project reflections & some of the tools she created to capture, learn from and share the lived experience of project participants.