My initiative is designed for and delivered in London
Yes
I am 18 years of age or above, by the application deadline.
Yes
My organisation is a registered UK entity and has a London-based address.
Yes
My organisation is a non-profit (e.g. school, university, or local authority) — not a for-profit, which can only join as a partner.
Yes
If there is a for-profit organisation as a partner in my initiative, they work on a cost-recovery basis only.
Yes
My solution is implemented at scale, or if not, I have a clear business plan, a minimum viable solution (prototype, pilot, or proof of concept), evidence of access to a lease for the space you are leveraging, and evidence of work or impact in London within your coalition.
Yes
I am aware that, if I am submitting more than one application to a Challenge run by Ashoka and Go! London, only one of them is able to progress through the stages.
Yes
Are you an employee (and their children and grandchildren) of Ashoka or any of its respective affiliates and participating advertising and promotion agencies?
No
I have read and accepted the Challenge Terms & Conditions.
Yes
First Name
Chris
Last Name
Young
Pronouns
He/Him
Email address
I would like to receive notifications and updates about Go London!, Ashoka, Ashoka Changemakers, and other Ashoka opportunities.
1
Are you an Ashoka Fellow?
No
Are you applying from an organization founded by an Ashoka Fellow?
No
If you are applying from an organization founded by an Ashoka Fellow, please specify the name and organisation of the fellow below.
Lead Organisation Name
Ealing Council
Year that you started/ registered your organisation
1965
Initiative Title
Regional Park Urban Hack
My initiative is designed for and delivered in London
1
Website URL(s) or Social Media Handles
https://www.instagram.com/ealingcouncil/
Initiative Stage
Growth (You’ve moved past the very first activities; working towards the next level of expansion.)
Sectors/Themes: What topic does your project most directly relate to?
Civic Engagement
Initiative Summary: Describe your initiative in one sentence
Continue Ealing Council’s successful model for empowering passionate young people to co‑create solutions to better utilise Ealing’s existing parks and open spaces, working with academic partners. This initiative will work with young people to co-design Ealing’s new Regional Park and to turn their ideas into pilot projects for meaningful civic action.
The Problem: What problem are you helping to solve and who will benefit the most from your solution? How close are you to the problem and/or community impacted?
Ealing has the 10th lowest rate of sports facilities per 10,000 people out of 309 local authority districts. Yet Ealing is very proud of our (nearly 140) public parks and open spaces. Ealing is also currently in the middle of its Regional Park programme, which provides many exciting opportunities for people in the borough, including the perfect opportunity for implementing young people’s ideas about what would make the Regional Park a success for young people. Through our Urban Hack initiative in Ealing, we delivered four‑day workshops empowering local young people to become change‑makers. The Urban Hack proved that young people want to be more involved with decisions about how improvements could be made to their local area and we received extremely positive feedback from our participants and from our schools, but we struggled to turn young people’s ideas into reality. Working with our Regional Park team and an academic partner, this funding will enable us to build on our successful Urban Hack model for engaging with young people’s ideas for reimagining public spaces. Our proposal is to now go a step further by empowering young people to turn their ideas into operational pilots over the academic year. This will enable both insightful learning about what to create in our Regional Park space as it is being developed and instil a strong sense of community within our young residents, encouraging them to make the best use of their public spaces. More about the Urban Hack can be found here: https://www.theurbanhack.co.uk/
Your approach: How are you/ will you addressing the problem outlined above? How does your solution unlock or reimagine access to spaces for sport and physical activity? What role do landowners, local authorities, or other decision-making stakeholders play in your approach? We'd love to know about the origin of your idea, and what was your "aha" moment" that led you to take action?
Our “Urban Hack” course equips students at Ealing schools with service design skills through a blended model of workshops, field research, prototyping, and a council facing pitch. The programme has already unlocked innovative thinking about using unconventional spaces for sport and physical activity by asking students to reimagine how public, school, and community environments can serve young people better. The Urban Hack has highlighted recurring concerns among young people: loneliness, low confidence, and the need for low‑cost, social activities created with them rather than for them. This initiative is a direct response to what they said was missing. By embedding an academic or industry partner, students gain expert guidance that turns ideas into workable prototypes and implementation plans. Under this, extended, proposal participants will work with our academic partners and the council to turn these ideas into reality over the period of an academic year . Young people would be given the opportunity to own their projects and the council, schools, and local stakeholders would become co-design partners. Our academic partner would deliver the training and support with the pilots, whilst Ealing Council would allow permissions for these activities to happen and coordinate with our networks. The “aha” moment came as Urban Hack students were pitching their ideas back to us. Many of these ideas were bold yet practical, proving that young people are ready to lead if given the structure and support. In line with Ealing’s ambition to work more closely with communities and empower residents, this is a simple yet high‑value way to bring communities together, boost wellbeing, empower our young people, activate our existing spaces, and co-design our Regional Park.
Collaboration with young people and the community: In what ways does your initiative engage young people and community members closest to the problem? What role do they play in building the solution you deliver?
Young people will be central to shaping, testing and, ultimately, delivering this initiative. Our, highly successful and well received, Urban Hack workshops will teach young people the skills to become change makers. The workshops will challenge young people to reimagine public spaces to get more young people into sport. Following the workshops, they will be supported to work with the council to develop proposals into pilot projects to be implemented across Ealing’s public spaces. Our proposal centres on partnering with an academic institution to lead the skills transfer and co‑development process. In this space, we will invite our Community Researchers, local residents who have volunteered to research determinants of health within our borough, to share their findings and insights so that our young people are working alongside fellow residents with first-hand research. This ensures young people not only shape their ideas but also build the skills and confidence to guide implementation from experts. We will also bring in colleagues from across Ealing Council, collaborate with local schools, and work closely with our wider network of community groups to strengthen delivery, create continuity, and maximise long‑term impact. This collaborative approach ensures that those closest to the issue are directly leading on the creation of new ideas for their local area. The Regional Park team are extremely keen to ensure that young people's voices are heard so that the Regional Park is designed as a space young people greatly utilise. The young people will utilise their lived experience to create concepts, grounding projects in authentic community voice. This way we will create initiatives that are relevant, resilient and truly community‑owned.
Potential for/Evidence of Impact: How do you imagine your initiative will make a difference in unlocking spaces for and access to physical activity and sport so far? If you have already implemented it, what difference have you made so far? What is the impact your initiative has had , and or what impact do you envision having in the future?
Our Urban Hack programme has proved to be a great success. We have ran it with five of our schools within the borough and we have received glowing reviews from participants and saw an increase in the number of participants who wanted to become involved in changing and improving their community after they completed the Urban Hack compared to before. Our initiative addresses the ‘implementation gap’ by training young people both in how they can become change makers to best utilise public spaces and then empowering them to deliver their own pilot projects, delivering projects reflecting their own social and wellbeing needs. We anticipate increased park use, improved confidence, reduced loneliness, and stronger community belonging among participants. Over time, we expect a youth‑led culture of regular activity and social connection to develop across Ealing’s parks, activating green spaces in a way that is sustainable, inclusive, and shaped by those who were previously underrepresented by existing programmes. These learnings will be utilised by our Regional Park team who will embed the findings from the Urban Hack into the development of Ealing’s new Regional Park. As noted above, one of the aims of the Regional Park team is to design the space with young people at the heart of the decision-making process. Our participants will also be invited to be part of a Youth Advisory Group for how the Regional Park should be developed and designed. This will all be supported by strong partnerships with schools, community partners, and local authorities to best ensure maximum impact.
Innovation: What is different about your initiative compared to other solutions that are already out there? How is your approach original and innovative?
Urban Hack is unique because it combines service design education, civic engagement, real world briefs, and academic partnership into a single course. The extended course will guide young people to do their own research, ideation, prototyping, to ultimately implementation. Unlike standard school enrichment, it is youth led, community embedded, and builds solutions for actual council challenges. The programme creates “mini innovation labs” inside schools, allowing young people to rethink how Ealing’s public spaces can serve them. This is the perfect platform for bringing young people together to address the barriers to young people entering sports within Ealing and then going that step further to empower them (with our strong support) to deliver their own pilot projects to address those barriers. This gives them a first-hand opportunity to deliver first-hand change within their borough, as well as invaluable delivery experience and an opportunity to boost their CVs. The innovation also lies in reframing Ealing’s sports centres and public open spaces from more passive “green spaces” into active wellbeing hubs shaped by the very young people who told us more could be done in these spaces. And because the ideas will originate directly from students, we are building a solution (and designing a Regional Park) that is locally grounded, youth‑driven, and genuinely co‑created. We believe this best ensures a youth‑powered model that is sustainable, evidence‑informed, and capable of growing into a long‑term community asset. On top of that, working so closely with a service-design academic-partner from a university will provide a powerful insight into what young people can expect from university, helping to inform their life choices for the future.
Viability and Scalability: How are you setting your initiative up for success, and what is your plan to ensure operational sustainability of your solution and its impact? What are your ideas for scaling your initiative to the next level?
Success is built on a tested delivery model and clear programme structure which will be amended for this, extended, programme. Participants will complete a fundamentals course in service design and change-making, and then a showcase of their ideas. Embedded within the training will be the key parameters within which the participants must work, such as the need to stick within an allocated budget, the need to consider the Total Costs of Ownership (TCO) for their proposals and some key legal and compliance considerations. Colleagues from the Regional Park team will be invited to introduce these important parameters, inducting the young people into the real-word boundaries within which delivery professionals must work and ensuring the scalability and long-term viability of their proposals. We are confident that proposals will be cost-effective, as we are already utilising current existing parks and open spaces which Ealing is renowned for. Having demonstrated the efficacy of our approach, we will work across the council to integrate Urban Hacks into the planning and consultation process for future council projects. Possibilities for scaling the Urban Hack include expanding the approach to cohorts other than young people, creating Urban Hacks for user groups of any council service (e.g., Adult Social Care), examining opportunities for enhancing consultations on future proposals via the Urban Hack approach and turning Urban Hack graduates into local ‘Change Champions’ willing to support training future cohorts in Service Design and Delivery methods. Other proposals to ensure the long-term viability include the proposed setting up of a Youth Advisory Board, and opportunities to participate in civic apprenticeships, work experience, or national innovation challenges.
Roles and Responsibilities: Describe how responsibilities are shared among your team or partners.
Urban Hack Delivery Team: Programme oversight, contract and financial management, evaluation, data collection, and day‑to‑day delivery. Regional Park Team: Programme design, enabling initiatives, space provision, and utilising learnings/data for design of the Regional Park. Academic Partner: Technical mentorship, facilitation, specialist workshops, development of course materials and support for prototypes. Schools (or similar body): Student recruitment, pastoral support, and potential safeguarding provisions. Students: Co‑researchers, designers, and presenters driving pilots.
Upcoming Milestones: Please provide an overview of the milestones that are required for your initiative to come to fruition/to grow.
More will be determined during the capacity-building participation process, but the following initial milestones helpfully create a starting point: • Winter 2026: Secure academic partner. • Spring 2026: Finalise programme delivery plan. • Summer 2026: Work with partners to plan out cohort of young people to recruit. • September to October 2026: Student recruitment and onboarding. • November to December 2026: Deliver Fundamentals Course and Pilot Development. • January to March 2027: Pilot Delivery. • March 2027: Showcase of Pilots in a Graduation Ceremony. Other considerations such as the establishment of a Youth Advisory Board will be developed according to what we learn from the approach as set out above as part of the capacity-building process.
Capacity-Building Participation and Support Funding: If you were to make it as a finalist, you will be required to participate in an 8-week capacity building programme. If funding/ cost is a barrier to your participation, we may be able to offer up to 10,000 GBP of grant money available to support you. Please break down below, if it is the case, what costs you would incur and you would need covered. (Please note that there are restrictions on how the grant money may be used; please refer to the T&Cs for further details.
We would seek up to £10,000 in grant funding so that we would be able to work more closely with community groups and partner organisations so that we can best define the issues facing our students wishing to participate in this initiative, and how we can ensure it has the best chance of working as a project. This would allow us to properly formulate our discovery of the project from which we can build a robust project and community and youth engagement plan. This allows us to also further understand the scope of the programme to achieve greatest impact, for example whether we should focus our Urban Hack on the more-specific topic of "Getting More Teenage Girls Into Sport" which we see as having strong potential to work with partner organisations. Should we not be permitted this grant funding, we would seek to complete this discovery and capacity-work as best as we can from limited council resources.
