Our Projects
Food and Street Markets; Care and Social Care; Built Environment
Our projects all developed from work done within the Just Space network, of which Co Produce It is an offshoot organisation, about making London more resilient in the face of the pandemic.
Food and Street Markets
Two of our projects are centred around food, access to affordable, healthy food and the role of food in wellbeing.
We are working with street markets in East London as these have traditionally been an important source of fresh, affordable and culturally diverse food produce for communities. However these markets are increasingly under threat of gentrification, development, increasing restrictions and worsening management. We are working with traders at Queens Market, Newham and Whitechapel Market, Tower Hamlets to find out from them what their main concerns are and what they would like to see happen to address those concerns. We have made an introductory video about this work.
We are currently working to build links between the markets, traders and local authorities to develop a co produced approach to problem solving. This work is led by Saif Osmani.
Clapton Food Hub
Our work on food and healthy access to food is also extending to look at food hubs and in Clapton we are exploring the potential for a co produced food hub building on existing projects such as the food banks, street markets, Food Cooperative and Warm Welcome at Clapton Commons. This work is led by Aga Rolkiewicz.
Care and social care
We partnered with the Equal Care Coop and Clapton Commons to consider co production within their London pilot programme.
Since 2020 the Equal Care Co-operative has been looking to pilot the UK’s first commons-based care approach, aiming to activate grassroots care networks at a hyper-local level. In early 2022, they began working with residents and organisations in Clapton, of whom Aga Rolkiewicz and Luke Tanner were also members of Just Space and Co Produce It CIC. After 12 months of community organising, the Clapton Care Circle of Equal Care emerged with a new service model vision. This framework was developed as part of a 2023-24 project piloting a commons-based home care model in Hackney, funded by the London Office of Technology and Innovation (LOTI). LOTI offered up to £200k to help boroughs collaborate with third and private-sector organisations on innovative social care approaches, while we supported with knowledge on evaluation methods.
Our partners piloted this new model in neighbourhoods around Clapton Common, Hackney from April 2023 to September 2024. It was led by the Clapton Circle, especially with the support of a place-based community development organisation called Clapton Commons and with staff from Equal Care’s HQ in Calderdale, Yorkshire. Specifically, they worked with five recipients of care, putting them at the heart of their own care in a co produced, codesigned care team, including the individual, social worker, family and friends and community support groups, with a shared plan and using the Equal Care Cooperative’s platform.
Building, testing, and scaling this model involved:
- Creating a hyper-local network to build and resource five self-managing care teams.
- Coproducing an evaluation framework for commons-based care with a range of stakeholders.
- Enhancing our tech platform to empower other UK community groups to establish commons-based care services.
- Generating a service specification for local authorities to procure commons-based home care services.
- Co-creating a “playbook” on developing cooperative care providers—a “how-to” guide for local authorities and community groups.
Built Environment
We are also developing co production in the built environment
The Caring City
Systemic failures in housing, care infrastructure, equity and inequality cannot be met through the current resource allocation systems. We work with a focus on Town Planning, which we argue must return to its origins and bring forward radical alternatives centred on public held land, land value taxation, community-led solutions, intergenerational support, and climate justice. In coproduction with a wide range of stakeholders we will develop a series of policies under the banner of ‘The Caring City’ to look at fresh solutions to these problems. We already submitted an evidence paper to the GLA call for evidence in June 2025.
As well as grassroots organisations represented by Just Space we will take in supportive think tanks including NEF’s Homes for All and The Highbury Group, academic partners including UCL, race equality charities such as Action for Race Equality and Ubele, care based providers such as Bromley by Bow Health Centre and Equal Care Coop, the wider charitable sector, Development Trusts, and community build partners, tenants rights organisations, People’s Land policy, local authorities, NHS and academia to hear their issues and concerns in relation to planning policy and spatial access.
We then aim to bring together a considered alternative approach to town planning to the London Plan review process, plan development and Examination in Public.
Other Research
We are supporting other research projects too.
We are working with Azul Castenada Prado, a PhD student with Open University who is also linked to Future of London, one of our partners. Her research critically examines contemporary community engagement practices within the built environment across London and the UK. It focuses on the work of advocates, champions, and enablers who are actively collaborating with communities to challenge entrenched power dynamics, redistribute decision-making authority, and promote more inclusive approaches to urban design and development.
Future of London have also conducted research into co production with their members with input into that process being provided by Richard Lee.