Workshop 1 is done! Here's what we learned
On the evening of 24th March, nearly 50 people from across Oxfordshire joined us online for the first Future Streets workshop. 56 people had registered. 48 were with us at peak. By the end, 43 were still in the room. Oxford city was well represented, with people joining from East Oxford, Cowley, Blackbird Leys, North Oxford and Iffley. Beyond the city, participants came from Abingdon, Thame, Wallingford, Witney, Bicester, Wantage, Chipping Norton, and a handful of villages across the county. For a two-hour online evening session, we'll take that as a win!
A reminder of our starting point for this series, and workshop 1 : that streets and neighbourhoods could support more people to really thrive. But what does that actually mean in Oxfordshire? Peter Lefort facilitated a session that moved between personal reflection and systems thinking, unpacking what matters most, what needs to change, and what the idea of thriving in our places means for those who live here. Participants were asked what they want to hold onto about their streets and neighbourhoods, what they'd let go of, what's missing, and what they'd keep away.
We’ve crunched the post it notes from all seven breakoutrooms across four different core questions - here's a first look at what emerged.
What people want to keep - and build on
Participants want streets that are alive: with people, nature, children, neighbours, and independent local life. Green space and nature featured in almost every response, not as a luxury but as something people feel the absence of: trees, wild verges, birdsong, community growing spaces, hedgerows that double as wildlife corridors.
Alongside that is a deep appetite for social connection, knowing your neighbours, bumping into people, children playing outside without parents having to worry about traffic. Public transport comes through as a genuine priority, but framed around freedom and connection rather than efficiency: really good bus routes between Oxfordshire towns, not just into Oxford, affordable trains that work like they do in Europe, permanent community services to key amenities. Walkability matters too, with seating along routes, gentler kerbs, wider pavements, and infrastructure designed for everyone, not just the able-bodied.
And running through all of it is a desire for local life: independent shops and cafes within walking distance, affordable spaces for community and voluntary organisations, and more say over what happens to local places. What participants are describing, taken together, is a street and neighbourhood that works as a social ecosystem, where the design of the place actively supports the kind of life people want to live in it.
“What participants are describing, taken together, is a street and neighbourhood that works as a social ecosystem, where the design of the place actively supports the kind of life people want to live in it.”
What people want to leave behind
The dominant thread, running through almost every response, is the extent to which streets have been given over to cars: the volume, the noise, the fumes, and the space taken up by parked and moving vehicles. But beneath that sits something broader. Streets described as cluttered, neglected, inaccessible and poorly maintained. Green space lost to development and parking. Independent businesses replaced by chains. Shared spaces that feel uncared for. What participants want to leave behind is not just traffic. It is the cumulative effect of streets designed around movement and consumption rather than people and place.
What struck us about both sets of responses was their depth, richness and texture. They were grounded in lived experience: the specific feel of a street, the sound of birds not drowned out by traffic, the magnolias someone walks past on their way to the bus. Taken together, they paint a picture of people who know exactly what they want their places to feel like, and who are frustrated by the gap between that and what they have now.
We'll be publishing a fuller version of these insights on the Workshop 1 page of our website next week. Follow our social channels to be notified when it goes live. And to bear in mind this is very early days for the project and there’s a lot be built on here.
Where is this going? The Power of Community-led Indicators
These were some of the questions asked right at the end the session when we invited comments. Our February blog sets out the logic behind this project in full here
TL;DR we're working from a systems-learning approach, which means we don't know yet what will emerge but the visions and indicators will become the spring board for understanding shared values and pathways to action.
This is a good moment to elaborate on the power of community-led indicators, or Cornerstone Indicators as they're known. The concept was developed by wellbeing economist Katherine Trebeck as a way to bring measures of progress out of technical policy documents and into everyday life.
The idea is a small set of indicators, built with communities rather than by experts, that capture what genuinely matters to people. Current institutional indicators for Oxfordshire include the healthy life expectancy gap, collision data, numbers of children seriously injured on roads, and years of healthy life lost to air pollution. These are important measures. But they are designed to track harm reduction, not human flourishing. They tell us whether things are getting less bad. They don't tell us what good actually looks and feels like to the people who live here.
Cornerstone Indicators developed by local people hold real power and potential. They could unlock local business investment in change programmes, spawn grassroots movements at street and neighbourhood level, shift organisational priorities for civil society groups, and spark new collaborations and partnerships. The aim is to move the conversation about what progress really means away from think tanks and policy spaces, and into the cafes, playgrounds and bus queues of everyday life, building accountability for measuring what actually matters to communities. Read more at cornerstoneindicators.com.
Cornerstone Communities
Who was in the room, and who wasn't?
Future Streets is designed to be as inclusive as possible, aiming for broad representation across geography, ethnicity, and travel mode across the project arc. Because this is an intentional iterative design process, each individual workshop doesn't need to be precisely representative, but we do need that breadth across the project as a whole. That means shaping the invitation to reach beyond the usual networks, removing barriers to participation, and building transparency into the process itself. Built into each workshop, not as an afterthought but integral to the experience, are questions that help us understand who's in the room. We use Mentimeter to make that visible to everyone present, and as a group we name the missing voices together.Here's what we learned from Workshop 1.
Of those who responded to our demographic questions, 100% were white, 94% were homeowners, 78% had regular access to a car, and nobody aged 18-30 was present - "not at all representative" appeared in the chat as people saw the results come in. Walking was the most common way people get around, which reflects the active travel leaning of the room, but driving was the second highest mode, with 66% respondents travelling by car as a driver, followed by cycling and train, then bus.
We've taken four actions since Tuesday:
We’ve decided to run at least one in-person version of Workshop 1 targeted specifically at communities underrepresented on the 24th. One is booked and in the diary for Monday 13th April and the insights here will be integrated into the current baseline.
Our outreach for Workshop 2 has specifically targeted and prioritised young people and we have confirmed under-18 participation from outside of Oxford
We're developing a digital , shareable version of the key questions in Workshop 1 for people who couldn't attend, so there's a lower-threshold route in to take part. This is currently in draft and will be ready to publish and circulate next week.
We've contacted or met with community connectors to reach people who won't come through our usual channels.
What's next
Keep an eye out for fuller insights from Workshop 1, published on our website next week. Follow our social channels to be notified.
Couldn't make Workshop 1? A digital version is on its way, with a survey so you can contribute your own responses.
Workshop 2 is on 16th April at Oxford Town Hall, led by futurist Rob Hopkins, with live illustration by Richard Carman. It's a full day, and it's going to be something. Book your place here.