Community-led Engagement on Net-zero (CEoN)
Developing a Grassroots Sustainable Futures: Collective Participation in Community-Based Cultural Organisations
1 Project Summary
This project is funded by the British Academy (Ref: SSF/210084) – Developing a Grassroots Sustainable Futures Platform: Collective Participation in a Community-Based Cultural Organisation.
The project is grounded in an exploration of community perceptions of net zero development—including understandings of the concept of net zero—and broader sustainability agendas. Its central aim is to identify practical ways to establish a framework for meaningful public participation in shaping sustainable futures through a grassroots approach.
The research engaged local cultural organisations and community members to investigate concrete challenges associated with sustainable development and government-led net zero agendas, particularly in relation to decarbonisation, greener industries, and sustainable living practices. These agendas represent a significant response to climate change, aiming to enable governments “to reduce the usage of earth’s natural resources and reduce environmental pollution” (Shahbaz et al., 2020, p. 2).
Alongside community-based research activities—including co-creation workshops, surveys, and semi-structured interviews—the project incorporated an extensive literature review on net zero, sustainability, and grassroots organisation and activism. This review informed the research design and stakeholder engagement and provides a foundation for both current and future academic outputs.
2 Core Team
Dr Lee Barron (School of Design Arts and Creative Industries), Principal Investigator
Dr Jiayi Jin (School of Architecture and Built Environment), Co-Investigator
Prof Sheng-feng Qin (School of Design Arts and Creative Industries), Co-Investigator
3 Collective Participation
People and their interactions are at the heart of cities. This research is driven by the need to create an inclusive and accessible platform for information exchange and open discussion, one that brings together people, knowledge, learning, and education in meaningful ways. Such a platform can support dialogue, shared understanding, and collective reflection on urban challenges and opportunities.
Through this research, we aim to develop sustainable, community-led platforms that are deeply embedded within the local communities of South Tyneside. This work is being shaped through close collaboration with local cultural and civic institutions, including:
The Word: National Centre for the Written Word, South Shields Museum & Art Gallery, Newcastle City Library, and South Tyneside Council, We are deeply grateful to the community staff and participants who have generously contributed their time, knowledge, and experiences to this research.
4 Co-creation Toolkit
Despite growing policy commitments and technological advances, the concept of the net-zero city often remains distant from everyday urban life. For many residents, net-zero initiatives are perceived as abstract, technocratic, and external to their daily concerns. They are frequently introduced as additional, project-based interventions—pilots, demonstrations, or policy overlays—rather than as integral transformations of how cities function socially, economically, and culturally.
This disconnection stems from several structural issues. First, net-zero agendas are commonly framed through carbon metrics, long-term targets, and system-level efficiencies, which do not easily translate into lived experiences such as comfort, affordability, care, or belonging. Second, the costs of transition—behavioural change, financial investment, or inconvenience—are often borne by individuals in the short term, while benefits are collective, delayed, and intangible. Third, public engagement tends to be consultative rather than constitutive, limiting people’s ability to shape priorities, negotiate trade-offs, or co-own outcomes.
As a result, net-zero is frequently treated as a top-up initiative rather than a social project. It is governed through sectoral silos and expert-led decision-making, instead of being embedded in everyday practices, local value systems, and community power structures. This not only weakens public connection and legitimacy, but also limits the transformative potential of net-zero transitions.
To address this, the toolkit draws on Synergistics, which enables collective intelligence from communities in situations characterised by conflicting interests, uncertainty and multiple forms of knowledge. Rather than seeking consensus or optimisation, it focuses on identifying complementarities, co-benefits, and emergent opportunities across diverse stakeholders.
This approach is particularly suited to net-zero transitions, as it can engage multi-stakeholder constellations including cultural organisations, public institutions, businesses, community groups, and informal networks. It supports creative, collaborative, and visionary thinking, while remaining grounded in local realities and actionable outcomes.
The Co-creation Toolkit is organised as a flexible set of techniques across four iterative stages, each stage corresponds to a different mode of collaboration and knowledge production:
1) System Mapping – Co-learning: To establish a shared understanding of the local context and baseline challenges
2) Scenario Mapping – Co-knowledge: To explore drivers of change and alternative futures
3) Synergy Mapping – Co-creation: To design opportunities, synergies, and innovations
4) Strategy Mapping – Co-production: To translate ideas into practical pathways, roadmaps, and policies
5 Outputs
Lee, B., Jin, J., Qin, S., & Zhu, Z. (2022) British Academy Project Report: Shared Understandings of a Sustainable Future (SSF\210084)
Lee, B., Jin, J., & Qin, S. (2022). A collective participation: Building long-term sustainability through the grassroots approach. Just Sustainable Futures in an Urbanising and Mobile World, Development Studies Association (DSA), University College London.