🛠️ Making stuff that matters: how digital culture is reshaping public services

A few years ago, I wrote a post called The resolutions won’t be televised, reflecting on how public services need to think differently — not just about delivery, but about relationship. That feels even more relevant now.

Digital culture has changed how people connect, create, and care. Not just online — but in neighbourhoods, networks and systems. If we want to build adaptive, participative and resilient public services, we need to tap into the energy and motivation already around us. Not extract it, but nurture it.

🎁 The quiet power of the gift economy

We don’t build trust by trading. We build it by giving — attention, ideas, energy — without expecting a return. That’s why many digital spaces work like communities more than marketplaces.

It’s also why people sometimes trust their local Facebook group more than a government website. They’re getting stories, not services. Relationships, not transactions.

In Adur & Worthing, we’re learning from this through:

• Our Kitchen Table programme, where people share ideas and support each other’s cost-of-living projects — not just to win funding, but to build trust.
• Our Participation Lab with staff and communities, where we prototype tools for deeper listening, shared learning and distributed leadership.

🧭 1. Listen and make sense of stories

The most radical insights don’t always come from strategy sessions. They often come from lunch breaks, WhatsApp chats, overheard frustrations — the water cooler moments.

People share stories because they want to be understood, not just heard. That’s why tools like:

• Local Trust’s community research model,
• Beautiful Trouble’s storytelling tactics, or
• data storytelling platforms like Flourish,

…are so powerful.

In Adur & Worthing, our Go Vocal platform and community exhibitions at Colonnade House give people ways to tell stories about their places — in their own words, through their own creativity.

🤝 2. Make stuff that matters — together

Innovation isn’t an app or a team. It’s a practice — of building, testing, and learning with others. That’s why movements like Code for America and Civic Square focus on shared infrastructure and social imagination.

Locally, we’ve seen this happen through:

• Our learning & development around everything from trauma-informed working to artificial intelligence.

What makes it work? Time, trust, and permission. Not just to succeed, but to explore.

Try this: Run a low-fi design sprint on a big local challenge. Invite frontline staff, residents, and unlikely allies. Share power, not just tasks.

🌍 3. Join the dots between digital and place

Digital participation doesn’t replace community organising — it can amplify it. But only if it meets people where they are.

That’s why hybrid approaches matter. In Worthing, we’re pairing online tools like Go Vocal with physical gatherings — from food events to exhibitions — that help different communities shape decisions.

And we’re learning from others too:

• MySociety combining civic tech with local insight.

Try this: Host a “digital drop-in” where residents can see how their input shapes action. Make it fun, visual, human.

🔄 4. Transform services by transforming ourselves

As someone once told me: “Transformation isn’t just about transforming services, it’s about transforming ourselves.”

That’s not easy. But it’s possible — if we:

• Build teams that are reflective, not just productive.
• Value emotional intelligence as much as expertise.
• Create learning environments, not just delivery machines.

At Adur & Worthing, our Mission Control model helps us prioritise the work that really matters, and navigate complexity together.

And we’re learning to work in the open — not because we have it all figured out, but because we don’t.

💬 Final thoughts: from content to contribution

The best public services aren’t built for people. They’re built with people who want to contribute — to their community, their workplace, their world.

That means:

• Designing for participation, not just access.
• Treating creativity as strategy, not just decoration.
• Seeing staff and residents as co-investors, not just users.

We won’t transform public services by streaming new resolutions. We’ll do it by building new relationships.

If you’re trying to do this too — in government, in communities, in networks — I’d love to learn with you.

Because making stuff that matters starts with how we show up.

This blog draws on insights from Adur & Worthing Councils, British Future, New Local, Code for America, Civic Square, MySociety, Participatory City and others exploring radical participation in practice.