Engagement campaign of the year

For this trailblazing campaign, three young women from the Lancaster West Estate in North Kensington were chosen as ‘landscape ambassadors’ for a nine-week landscape design programme, exploring how they navigate the estate in the context of their lived experiences and mentoring them in developing their ideas and priorities for estate improvement.

By embedding long-term, meaningful engagement at the heart of the project, the team captured the ambassadors’ nuanced perspectives – moving beyond token consultation to genuine co-design. A standout innovation was the use of a graphic novel as a communication tool, translating complex climate planning into accessible and relatable storytelling. The novel not only informed the estate’s redesign, it also became a lasting educational resource, widely praised for its inclusive language and design. It now serves as a blueprint for accessible climate engagement across Kensington and Chelsea and beyond. 

This initiative has shown that empowering residents leads to more sustainable, liveable outcomes. It demonstrates how deep listening, creative engagement and equitable participation can lead to more resilient – and more widely accepted – environmental interventions.

The judges said:

“A great example to showcase young women shaping sustainable urban design through storytelling, research and co-design, involving diverse groups of residents, empowering them to take an active role in shaping their surroundings”