About the Project
What if we could time travel to the future? And what if, when we got there, we found streets and neighbourhoods exactly as we needed them to be?
We're inviting people from across Oxfordshire to co-create a vision of thriving streets and neighbourhoods - and explore the practical pathways to bring this vision to life.
Through five workshops between March and September, we'll:
Ground ourselves in where we are now
Time-travel to imagine what thriving streets could look and feel like with futurist Rob Hopkins
Co-design community-led indicators of change
Map enabling conditions - what can we start doing now, to bring this future into the present moment.
Each workshop builds on the last, but can also be attended as a stand-alone event, so whether you join for one session or all five, you're part of a larger collective process. To allow for accessibility, two workshops will in-person in Oxford, three will be online so people from across the county can join in.
Why are we doing this?
Thinking about how our streets and neighbourhoods could be different is about human relationships, about how we work together, who has the power to shape decisions, and whose knowledge is ‘in the room’.
Here's what we know: people across Oxfordshire share common ground. A desire for places that are a joy to live in, streets where you feel safe and can get around however you need to, where the air is clean, there's space for nature, and where children and neighbours can move freely.
But we haven't stopped to articulate what that looks like together. And it’s really difficult to picture which we don’t know yet without taking the time to really stop and imagine for a moment.
That's where Future Streets begins - combined with genuine curiosity about what becomes possible when responsibility is held in relationship across citizens, local government, businesses, civil society and community leaders.
Who is this for?
Residents
Whether you're a parent, an elderly person, an active travel enthusiast, a bus user, or a car-dependent and frustrated by limited options, your everyday experience of streets matters here.
Councillors and officers
A community-led vision builds the evidence base and democratic mandate for policy. This project builds on the work of the Citizens' Assembly with a place-based, bottom-up vision and co-authored indicators of change that give communities — and councillors — a shared language for what success looks like.
Disabled people
This is co-design from the start, and your lived experience shapes what thriving looks like.
Young people (12+)
This is about futures you'll inherit, and your voice matters as much as anyone's.
People from ethnic minorities
We're working to ensure this vision genuinely reflects all of Oxfordshire, and your perspective shapes that.
Civil society campaigners and community organisers
Your involvement brings tangibility to common ground and could unlock new ways to partner and collaborate.
Business owners
Evidence shows local economies thrive when businesses are accessible and connected with attractive spaces for lingering and socialising. How might we make this the norm across Oxfordshire?
Citizens and residents
Whether you're a parent, an elderly person, an active travel enthusiast, a bus user, or car-dependent and frustrated by limited options, your everyday experience of streets matters here.
Disabled people
This is co-design from the start, and your lived experience shapes what thriving looks like.
People from ethnic minorities
We're working to ensure this vision genuinely reflects all of Oxfordshire, and your perspective shapes that.
Business owners
Evidence shows local economies thrive when businesses are accessible and connected with attractive spaces for lingering and socialising. How might we make this the norm across Oxfordshire?
Councillors and officers
A community-led vision builds the evidence base and democratic mandate for policy. This project builds on the work of the Citizens' Assembly with a place-based, bottom-up vision and co-authored indicators of change that give communities — and representatives of local government — a shared language for what success looks like.
Young people (12+)
This is about futures you'll inherit, and your voice matters. We’d love young people and youths included in every work shop across the series including the all day Time Travel experience with Rob Hopkins. We are happy to liaise with Head Teachers to support inclusion and participation.
Civil society campaigners and community organisers
The idea of 'liveable streets' intersects with multiple systems - from health equity to climate adaptation, early years development to aging in place, nature recovery to community wealth building. Your involvement brings tangibility to common ground and could unlock new ways to partner and collaborate.
Workshop format: Each session is facilitated and designed to be accessible, welcoming and participatory. You'll work with others through discussion, creative activities, and collective sense-making.
Time commitment: Most workshops run for 90 minutes. Workshop 2 (with futurist Rob Hopkins) is a full day in central Oxford for accessibility. Location TBC..
Accessibility: Online workshops remove travel barriers. In-person sessions in April and September will be in central, accessible venues with refreshments provided. If you need specific accessibility support, let us know when you register.
Participation style: This isn't consultation - it's co-creation. You'll be working with insights from previous workshops and your input will directly shape what comes next.
Human connections: All workshops, whether online or in person, are carefully designed to create opportunities to exchange ideas, hear other viewpoints and make genuine connections with other members of your community.
What happens in the workshops?
What change might come of this?
Honestly? We don't know yet. And that's a healthy place to start - there's not much point going in to something if the outcome is already decided.
What we do know:
A co-created vision can acts as a north star - a shared reference point to unlock new ways of working together, ideas for programmes, funding, policy change, and advocacy. It expands what feels politically and practically possible.
Community-led indicators help us communicate what we're working toward in human terms, not just data. We refer to them across these pages as ‘signals of change’ but they can also represent the new narratives we’re working toward. They can sit alongside institutional or municipal metrics and indicators, and give communities and decision-makers ways to envisage and track change at the hyper-local scale.
Bringing diverse voices together - when people who wouldn't normally be in the same conversation meet, unexpected things emerge. Ideas that none of us would have arrived at alone. There’s also a sense of agency that comes from sharing ideas and co-creating together. This isn’t an ‘outcome’ that’s easy to log or measure, but an experience that stays with people and creates its own ripple effects.
Who is involved?
Oxfordshire Liveable Streets is leading the project with Siobhann Mansel-Pleydell as strategy and project director, supported by the OLS board. We've built a unique collaboration architecture bringing together specialists in participatory design, futures thinking, facilitation, systems change and visual documentation - each contributing expertise to create a genuinely inclusive, responsive process that creates space for emergence.
Citizen Architects
Elisa Engel and Katherine Leat of Citizen Architects lead on participatory design that centres community voice and navigates power dynamics with care. Citizen Architects specialises in participatory processes for social change. Elisa and Katherine bring 20+ years' experience creating inclusive engagement in complex public-sector contexts, bridging communities and institutions.
Peter Lefort
Expert facilitator and systems thinker who makes complex systems legible through playful, structured methods. Peter works across diverse frameworks including Doughnut Economics and Positive Tipping Points and will help design and deliver several workshops.
Suyash Sinha
Designer and futures thinker (MA Futures Design, Royal College of Art) interested in public systems, social equity, and how public engagement enables systems change. He's the connective tissue that makes sense of insights across the Future Streets workshop series.
Rob Hopkins
Co-founder of Transition Network and author of 'How to Fall in Love with the Future: a time traveller's guide to changing the world'. An Ashoka Fellow and TED speaker, Rob pioneered the Time Travel methodology - immersive collective imagination practice that helps communities perceive different futures. He's facilitating Workshop 2, where participants will journey to 2040 to envision thriving neighbourhoods.
Richard Carmen
Architectural illustrator working in watercolour, ink and crayon to bring places and ideas to life. With a background as an architect and extensive experience in public consultations, Richard works live - capturing and translating emerging ideas as they develop. He'll be providing live illustration and creating visual documentation of the futures we imagine together.
Citizen Architects
Elisa Engel and Katherine Leat of Citizen Architects lead on participatory design that centres community voice and navigates power dynamics with care. Citizen Architects specialises in participatory processes for social change. Elisa and Katherine bring 20+ years' experience creating inclusive engagement in complex public-sector contexts, bridging communities and institutions.
Peter Lefort
Expert facilitator and systems thinker who makes complex systems legible through playful, structured methods. Peter works across diverse frameworks including Doughnut Economics and Positive Tipping Points and will help design and deliver workshops.
Suyash Sinha
Designer and futures thinker (MA Futures Design, Royal College of Art) interested in public systems, social equity, and how public engagement enables systems change. He's the connective tissue that makes sense of insights across the Future Streets workshop series with design thinking.
Rob Hopkins
Co-founder of Transition Network and author of 'How to Fall in Love with the Future: a time traveller's guide to changing the world'. An Ashoka Fellow and TED speaker, Rob pioneered the Time Travel methodology - immersive collective imagination practice that helps communities perceive different futures. He's facilitating Workshop 2, where participants will journey to 2040 to envision thriving neighbourhoods.
Richard Carman
Architectural illustrator working in watercolour, ink and crayon to bring places and ideas to life. With a background as an architect and extensive experience in public consultations, Richard is adept at working live - capturing and translating emerging ideas as they develop. He'll be providing live illustration and creating visual documentation of the futures we imagine together.
Ready to get involved?
Workshop booking opens very soon - we’re in the process of building out these pages . In the meantime, register to participate and find out more here about the project and how to get involved.
We have limited numbers, and we're working to ensure diverse participation across Oxfordshire.