Tessy Britton is a social designer, researcher and educationalist who works in a transdisciplinary way to develop innovative methods for stimulating positive and collaborative approaches to community co-production

Tessy is an outspoken critic of ‘conflict by design’ approaches to increase citizen activity, suggesting that these approaches are manipulative, exhausting and ineffective. Her immersive research over the last few years has focused on surfacing the imaginative ways that communities have developed their own innovative projects. She thinks that professionals should enthusiastically throw away their outdated methods and restrictive ideologies and start learning from community-level innovators about inspiring new ways of making and shaping their communities.

As Director of Social Spaces, Tessy focuses on developing project-based social infrastructure to support larger social regeneration efforts. Taking a fully collaborative approach, Social Spaces stimulates and supports residents, elected members and council staff to collaborate more effectively to co-produce their communities by starting connecting projects using social design strategies and tools.

Based on the collaborative book ‘Hand Made - Portraits of emergent new community culture’ that was edited and produced by Tessy in 2010, The Community Lover’s Guide to the Universe project has recently begun publishing the first in a series of 60 local editions highlighting innovative local projects from around the world. These collaborative books are freely available to read and share online and are being produced by voluntary editors, many prominent themselves in this field. Community Lover’s Guide to Rotterdam (edited by Maurice Specht), Community Lover’s Guide to Amsterdam (edited by Jonmar van Vlijmen) and Community Lover’s Guide to Hackney (edited by Laura Billings) can all currently be read online, and more editions are due out in 2012.