A design collective
Make room for possibility.
We turn shared ideas into spaces, stories and hands-on experiments.
Bright speculation
Make a possible future tangible enough to explore together.
With paper, play and full-scale models, we help communities test a proposal before anyone commits money to it. People who would never read a planning report will happily move a cardboard wall.
How the approach works
Bright speculation
A brief lists deliverables. A question names the change people want to see. We rewrite every brief as one plain question and pin it to the wall on day one, where it stays until the last session.
In practiceOrchard Commons began with one line: what would Saturday morning feel like if the orchard already existed? Read the case
We work where the conversation already happens: library foyers, school halls, bus depots. Paper invites people to move, redraw and disagree, which is exactly what a plan needs early on.
In practiceThe Long Lunch ran eight sessions inside the lunch hall itself, at lunchtime, with the queue still moving. Read the case
A plan feels different when you can walk through it. We tape the floor, stand up the walls and run real routines: a bus transfer, a lunch queue, a Saturday shift at the library desk.
In practiceSixty riders walked their own journeys through a paper interchange before a single kerb was moved. Read the case
Every project closes with a kit: cutting files, a facilitation script and a training day, so the host team can run the next rehearsal without us in the room.
In practiceKittering Valley Transit now runs our rehearsal kit at every depot before a timetable change. See what a kit contains
“Make the model before the argument, and the argument gets kinder.”Ora Lindqvist, from The Open Rehearsal
“What would you build if you knew the neighbours were going to help?”
Priya Solberg, research leadEvery project starts with a neighbour’s question.
Commonfold began with a simple frustration: good plans that people could not picture themselves in. So we started cutting them into pieces people could move.
The conversations changed, and the plans changed with them. Today every commission opens with a week of listening before anyone picks up scissors.
See what we doWho we are
We are a network of forty-one designers, researchers and makers across six cities. Since 2021 we have helped libraries, transit agencies, schools and museums turn stuck plans into rehearsed ones, and we have kept the scissors sharp along the way.
- 41
- members in the network
- 38
- rehearsals run since 2021
- 6
- cities with a studio table
- 12
- open kits others can reuse
Commonfold is worker-owned, and every project team includes at least one person who will use the thing we make.
Imani Castellane
Founder and creative director
Imani spent eight years designing museum galleries before founding Commonfold in 2021. She leads our exhibitions and full-scale rehearsals, and still does her best thinking with scissors in hand.
“A drawing asks people to imagine. A paper wall lets them push back.”Read Imani’s page
Four futures we have rehearsed.
All projectsNotes from the other side of the table.
“We had argued about the new library layout for two years. They built it in cardboard over a weekend and the argument was over by Sunday lunch.”
“The drivers rehearsed the timetable before we published it. Three problems surfaced that a spreadsheet would never have shown us.”
“Students designed the lunch hall with scissors and tape. It has been open a year and the queue has not come back.”
Ideas you can walk through.
Four ways to make a plan physical, so the people it affects can shape it before it is built.
Services
Futures rehearsals
A proposed change, built at full scale for two days so a community can try it before anyone commits to it.
- 2 days
- 30 to 200 people
- Built on site
Exhibitions and installations
Participatory rooms that change with the people who visit, made for museums, libraries and public foyers.
- 4 to 12 weeks
- Touring-ready
- Packs into two crates
Participatory research
Map walks, card sorts and table-top models that make listening visible, ending in a report people actually read.
- 3 to 8 weeks
- Plain-language report
- Evaluation plan
Toolkits and training
Cutting files, facilitation scripts and a training day, so your own team can run the method without us.
- Print and PDF
- Open licence
- Training day
Three formats, one method.
Fixed scopes and published fees, so you can plan a budget before the first call.
The Two-Day
£6,800fixed fee
One question, one room, one weekend. The fastest way to find out whether a plan works for the people who will use it.
- Question workshop with your team
- Full-scale build and two public days
- Photographed record of every version
- Findings note within ten working days
The Quarter
£32,000from, per project
Twelve weeks of research, rehearsal and a public showing, ending with a kit your team keeps.
- Three weeks of listening and map walks
- Two rehearsals, each rebuilt from the last
- Public showing with a pledge wall
- Plain-language report and cutting files
The Residency
£5,200per month, three months minimum
A maker embedded in your team two days a week, sharing the method while the real work happens.
- Two studio days a week on site
- A monthly open rehearsal
- Training for up to twelve staff
- The kit, licensed to your organisation
Fees include materials and travel within 200 km. The community rate applies to charities, schools and volunteer-led groups with an annual turnover under £1m.
Good questions.
The things people ask on the first call. Anything else, write to us.
Libraries, schools, transit agencies, museums and neighbourhood groups: anyone with a public space and a decision to make about it. We do not take commissions for private developments.
The rehearsal itself is two days. Most projects run six to ten weeks from the first question to the last cardboard wall, and a Two-Day can usually be booked a month ahead.
A photographed record of every version the community built, a short written account of what changed and why, the cutting files, and the models themselves if you have somewhere to keep them.
Always. The studio travels with the paper, the tape and the scissors. We need a hall with a floor we can tape and a room where people can eat together.
You do. Kits are released under an open licence, so other organisations can reuse and improve them as long as they share their changes back.
How a rehearsal works.
Four principles keep the work honest. Four moves keep it on schedule.
Four principles
We turn a deliverable-led brief into a question people recognise from their own week, and keep that question visible on the wall from the first day to the last.
What we ask of youOne hour with whoever wrote the brief, and permission to rewrite it.
Paper invites people to move, redraw and disagree. We set up where people already pass: foyers, school halls and depots, never a closed meeting room.
What we ask of youA space people walk through anyway, for at least two days.
We test real routes, timings and routines at the scale the venue allows. A queue is only a queue when people are standing in it.
What we ask of youFive people who will use the place every day, paid for their time.
We close with a kit, the cutting files and a training session. The method should be easy to share, easy to change and impossible to lock away.
What we ask of youSomeone on your team who wants to run the next one.
Four moves, always in this order.
- Weeks 1 to 2
Listen
Map walks and kitchen-table interviews with the people whose routines will change.
- Weeks 3 to 4
Cut
A rough version everyone can rearrange, cut from one colour of paper and labelled by hand.
- Two public days
Rehearse
Run the proposal at full scale, record every change and photograph each version.
- Weeks 6 to 8
Hand over
Findings, the kit and a training day, so the next decision does not wait for us.
“Nobody defends a plan they helped cut out with their own hands. They improve it.”Imani Castellane, founder
What a kit contains.
Cutting files
Every wall, table and sign from the rehearsal, ready for a plotter or a craft knife.
Floor tape plan
A one-page layout drawn to scale, so two people can mark out the room in an hour.
Facilitation script
Timed prompts for the day, including what to say when the room goes quiet.
Friday photo protocol
Where to stand and when to shoot, so every version is recorded the same way.
Report template
A twelve-page plain-language structure your team can fill in after each round.
Training day
Six hours with up to twelve staff, ending with a rehearsal they run themselves.
Selected work.
Four questions, explored through paper, participation and a lot of floor tape.
Showing all 4 projects
Nothing cut to that shape yet.
No projects match your search. Try a client name, a city or a format.
Your project could be the fifth.
We hold two places a year at the community rate for small organisations and volunteer-led groups.
Exhibition
Orchard Commons
A library car park, reimagined as a shared growing space and tested at full size for one weekend.
The question
What would Saturday morning feel like if the orchard already existed?
The library had approval in principle for a community orchard on its staff car park. Neighbours had seen the drawings, and most of them still could not picture it. The staff who would lose their parking spaces could picture it very clearly.
What happened
Over one weekend, residents built the orchard at full size: forty paper trees, six raised beds, two paths and a lilac greenhouse, laid directly over the painted parking bays.
Visitors moved the pieces, argued about shade and redrew the path to the bike racks twice. By Sunday the proposal had a shared language. People talked about the pear corner and the quiet bench instead of the lost spaces.
What we made
- A full-scale paper orchard, assembled and struck in a weekend
- Three co-design workshops with a printed cutting kit
- A pledge wall that turned visits into planting-day volunteers
- A twelve-page plain-language report for the council vote
1,200visitors across the two public days
340planting pledges on the paper wall
4 wksfrom rehearsal to Phase 1 approval
“For three years I explained the orchard with a drawing. For two days I just pointed at it.”
Who was in the room
With six growers from the Quillon Street allotments, paid for their time.
Futures rehearsal
Tomorrow’s Timetable
A new bus network, tested through the journeys people actually make.
The question
Could someone make their usual journey without help from the planning team?
Clear maps could not answer every rider’s question about the proposed network, and the consultation period closed in two months. The transit team wanted to know where people would get lost before the network went live, not after.
What happened
We built a paper interchange with nine platforms inside a working depot. Riders followed their real routes while drivers called the services from a timetable board.
The rehearsal surfaced a crossing that looked harmless on the map and a transfer nobody could find. Both changed before the network was published.
What we made
- A full-size paper interchange with nine platforms
- Sixty scripted journeys built from anonymised ticket data
- A network map redrawn with riders during the event
- A rehearsal kit now used at every depot before a change
60riders walked their own daily journey
3route changes adopted before launch
62%preferred the redrawn map after the day
“We had modelled the interchange for a year. The paper version found the bad crossing in twenty minutes.”
Who was in the room
With four Kittering drivers who called every service by hand. Read Theo’s field notes from the depot.
Co-design
The Long Lunch
A school lunch hall designed with the students who use it.
The question
What would make students want to stay for the whole of lunch?
Long queues and a noisy hall were pushing students out of the canteen and onto the high street. The school had a refurbishment budget and one chance to spend it well.
What happened
Students modelled tables, serving points and quieter corners at table-top scale, then worked with the kitchen team on menus that matched the new layout.
A Saturday trial at full scale let the school test the layout with 180 students and the real kitchen before committing to the refurbishment.
What we made
- A student-led co-design programme over eight sessions
- A full-scale paper hall for the Saturday trial
- Three costed menus with the catering team
- A lunch-hall kit the student council reruns each spring
180students at the Saturday trial
9 minaverage queue, down from eighteen
28%less food waste in the first term
“They designed a lunch hall teenagers wanted to be in. Then they made us prove we could run it.”
Who was in the room
With twenty-four students from years 8 to 12 and the Fernhollow kitchen team.
Installation
Signal Garden
A museum landscape made from visitors’ memories of weather.
The question
How do you make a climate gallery people talk in, rather than walk through?
The museum wanted a climate room built around personal memory and shared conversation rather than another wall of charts.
What happened
Visitors cut a shape, write a remembered year on the back and pin it into a growing landscape of clouds, hills and rain.
Every Friday at four, a photograph from the same spot records how the room has changed and which stories have gathered around it. Those photographs became the museum’s evaluation.
What we made
- A modular paper landscape that packs into two crates
- A cutting station with twelve weather shapes and a script
- A Friday photo protocol that doubles as evaluation
- A touring pack for host museums, with a training day
9,000weather memories pinned so far
2museums now touring the room
110Friday photographs and counting
“It is the only room in the building that is different every time I walk past it.”
Who was in the room
With two curators from the Saltmarsh learning team.
Meet the collective.
A core team of three, joined for each project by specialists from a network of forty-one.
Worker-owned since 2021. Every member has one vote, and every kit we publish is open for other collectives to improve.
- 41
- members
- 6
- cities
- 1
- vote each
- 12
- open kits
Who joins a project.
Designers, researchers, facilitators and makers bring the skills each question needs. Some of the most useful people in the room have never worked in design.
- Paper engineers
- Scenographers
- Illustrators
- Evaluation researchers
- Sign-language interpreters
- Bus drivers
- Chefs
- Community organisers
- Carpenters
- Teachers
- Sound designers
- Growers
Want to join the roster?
Tell us what you make and the kinds of rooms you like working in. We read every note and add new people before each season starts.
Thanks, friend. You are on the list.
On a live site this note would reach the roster team, who reply before the next season starts. Nothing was sent from this example.
Founder
Imani Castellane
Founder and creative director
Imani spent eight years designing museum galleries before founding Commonfold in 2021. She leads exhibitions and full-scale rehearsals, turning the argument around a plan into part of the design process.
Trained in scenography, she teaches a spring studio on full-scale prototyping and advises community organisations on running rehearsals of their own.
Currently
- Leading the touring version of Signal Garden
- Writing the open licence for the Commonfold kits
- Teaching a spring studio on full-scale prototyping
Ask her about
- Exhibition design
- Futures rehearsals
- Facilitation
- Paper landscapes
- Museum learning
Making
Theo Marchetti
Head of making
A carpenter and set builder who turns drawings into full-scale experiments light enough for anyone to move.
Before Commonfold, Theo built touring exhibitions and festival stages. He leads the Saturday making sessions and keeps the cutting files tidy enough for other people to use.
Currently
- Packing Signal Garden into two crates for its second venue
- Prototyping a flat-pack greenhouse for the next orchard
- Teaching the Saturday cutting workshop
Ask him about
- Full-scale prototypes
- Cardboard engineering
- Touring builds
- Cutting files
- Safe installs
Research
Priya Solberg
Research lead
Priya designs the listening: map walks, card sorts and conversations with the people a plan will affect. They start every project by asking what becomes possible when neighbours help shape the answer.
A social researcher with a background in public programmes, Priya turns participation into clear findings and practical next steps, and wrote most of the words we use in the studio.
Currently
- Evaluating the first growing season at Orchard Commons
- Designing a card-sort kit for library consultations
- Editing the studio glossary
Ask them about
- Participatory research
- Evaluation without surveys
- Recruiting the right room
- Plain-language reports
- Card sorts
Studio notes.
Methods, field notes and the words we use, written up from the cutting table.
3 posts
Start with scissors.
Why unfinished materials invite better conversations, and the four rules we keep for every first model.
Imani CastellaneTwo days in the depot.
Clipboard notes from a rehearsal of a new bus interchange, written up the evening after.
Theo MarchettiA studio glossary.
Eight words we use every day, and what we mean when we use them.
Priya SolbergOne field note a month.
A photograph, a short story from a rehearsal and the occasional new kit. Never more than once a month.
You are on the list.
The next letter goes out on the first Thursday of the month. This example site does not store your address.
Start with scissors.
People feel free to move a paper wall. That small permission changes the whole conversation.
Imani Castellane12 June 20265 min readWe first used cardboard because it was cheap. We kept using it because of what it does to a room. Put a rendering of a new library on an easel and people comment on it. Put a paper wall in the middle of the floor and somebody will pick it up and move the entrance.
The social physics of a paper wall
A polished rendering asks for approval. An unfinished object asks for help. When the thing in front of you was obviously made this morning, disagreement stops feeling rude and starts feeling useful.
We have watched a retired engineer and a nine-year-old argue, politely and at length, about where a bench should go. Neither of them would have come to a consultation evening.
Rough on purpose
Early models stay simple on purpose, so the room talks about positions and possibilities before anyone talks about finishes. We hold ourselves to four rules:
- First versions are cut from one colour of paper.
- Labels are handwritten, never printed.
- Nothing is glued down until the second day.
- Colour and texture come after a shared decision.
“Nobody wants to trample your hours. Give them something with fewer hours in it.”Written on the studio wall
What it costs
This approach asks clients to sit with uncertainty a little longer than they are used to. The first day can look messy, and that is the point. The reward is a plan more people have helped to shape, and fewer people want to fight.
So we start with scissors and let the conversation decide the finish. To see the four rules at work, read how they shaped Orchard Commons.
Two days in the depot.
Clipboard notes from a rehearsal of a new bus interchange, written up the evening after.
Theo Marchetti3 April 20266 min readKittering Valley Transit gave us a working depot for two days and four drivers who knew every route by heart. These are the notes I kept on the clipboard, lightly tidied.
Thursday, 16:00We mark out the platform edges at full scale with floor tape, so every transfer becomes a walk people can feel in their legs.
Friday, 07:30Cardboard platforms, timetable boards and a mock ticket hall go up. The drivers rearrange the boards before we have finished taping them, which is a good sign.
Friday, 11:00Riders start testing awkward journeys. One transfer exposes a crossing that looked harmless on the map and is genuinely frightening with a pram.
Saturday, 09:00Riders redraw the arrangement on the floor while the planning team watches from the edge of the room, as agreed.
Sunday, 18:00We strike the set in ninety minutes. The depot keeps the boards for staff briefings.
What changed before lunch on Friday
- Platforms two and six swapped places.
- The crossing disappeared from the plan entirely.
- Somebody added a paper bench, and it stayed.
“A planner standing beside the map answers questions the map should answer.”Rehearsal rule number four
What we would do differently
Start the riders earlier. The most useful hour was the first one on Friday, before anyone was tired or polite. Next time the doors open at seven.
The full story, with the numbers, is in the case study: Tomorrow’s Timetable.
A studio glossary.
Eight words we use every day, and what we mean when we use them.
Priya Solberg18 February 20264 min readEvery studio grows its own language. Ours has been written on the wall, crossed out and rewritten often enough that it is worth writing down properly.
- Bright speculation
- Making a possible future concrete enough to explore together, without pretending it is already decided.
- The wall
- The shared place for the project question, every decision and every change. If it is not on the wall, it has not been agreed.
- Rehearsal
- A proposal tried at full scale, with the people who will use it, for a limited time.
- Rough on purpose
- The first version is cut from one colour of paper and labelled by hand, so the room discusses positions, not finishes. See Start with scissors.
- The Friday photo
- A photograph taken from the same spot at the same time each week, to record how the work changes.
- Awkward journeys
- The difficult routes that reveal what a typical route misses: the pram, the wheelchair, the late shift.
- Handover
- The kit and the practice that let the host team carry on without us.
- Leave the chalk
- Letting the host keep the useful marks, models and ideas a rehearsal leaves behind, instead of tidying them away.
“Not a pilot, which implies commitment, and not a workshop, which implies chairs.”On the word rehearsal
If a word is missing, it probably means we have not needed it yet. Suggestions are welcome through the contact page.
Bring your question.
Tell us what you are exploring. We reply within three working days, usually sooner.
Thanks, friend. Your note is ready.
On a live site it would go to the studio, and someone from the core team would reply to your email within three working days. Nothing was sent from this example.
Privacy
What we collect, why, and how to ask us to delete it. Last updated 1 September 2026.
What we collect
When you write to us or join the letter, we keep your name, email address, organisation and the note you sent. We do not use advertising cookies or tracking pixels on this site.
Why we keep it
Only to reply to you, to send the monthly letter if you asked for it, and to keep a record of projects we have discussed. We never sell or share your details.
Rehearsal photographs
We photograph rehearsals to record how a plan changes. Anyone can ask not to be photographed at the door, and we blur faces before publishing unless we have written consent.
Your choices
Every letter has an unsubscribe link. To see or delete what we hold about you, write to the studio and we will reply within thirty days.
Accessibility
How we make the site and the rehearsals open to as many people as possible.
This website
The site aims to meet WCAG 2.2 level AA. Every page works with a keyboard, images have text descriptions, motion is reduced when your device asks for it, and colour is never the only way information is shown.
At a rehearsal
- Step-free routes and a quiet room at every venue.
- British Sign Language interpreters on public days, booked as standard.
- Large-print and easy-read versions of every handout.
- Paid places for people whose routines the plan will change.
Tell us what we missed
If something on the site or at a rehearsal did not work for you, write to us. We read every note and reply within five working days.
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