The Government School of Design builds public design capability across the UK’s Civil Service.
The original Government School of Design was founded in 1837 to strengthen national design capability during industrial change. Today’s school focuses on strengthening the Civil Service’s capability to make public policies, services and spaces under conditions of complexity, uncertainty and rapid change.
What is public design?
Public design is the professional practice of making public policies, services and spaces with and for people, within the complex systems in which they live and work.
It is a distinct and emerging field of research and practice, not simply a term for using design methods in the public sector. Public design is shaped by the conditions of public action: democratic authority, public accountability and collective risk.
It spans the policy-to-delivery pipeline and brings together public purpose, evidence, people’s needs and lived experience, institutional systems and the realities of delivery.
Public design capability and public value
Public organisations use public authority, money and operational capacity to improve citizen wellbeing. Public design capability helps them make more informed choices about how those resources are used.
Design enables organisations to examine problems from different perspectives, involve people affected by public action, explore alternatives and test assumptions before committing significant resources. It works alongside policymaking, operational delivery, analysis, digital, commercial, legal and other professional capabilities.
Together, these capabilities contribute to public outputs that may, in turn, improve efficiency, wellbeing and public legitimacy. Design capability can strengthen how public organisations create, test and improve the outputs through which public value may be realised.
A shared professional foundation
Public design provides a shared language for multidisciplinary work. It helps different professions connect public intent, institutional systems, people’s needs and the realities of delivery without replacing their specialist expertise.
The school also brings together the family of designers working across the public sector. Its curriculum is organised around seven Universal Public Design Practices shared across different roles and disciplines.
The teaching model follows the universal foundation associated with the Bauhaus and later design schools: students first develop capabilities shared across design disciplines and then build those required for particular roles. This creates a common professional foundation and makes design capability more portable across teams, organisations and career paths.
Evidence, research and practice
The school’s work is informed by the Public Design Evidence Review, which brought together research about the role, use and value of design in public contexts. The review identified recurring practices and potential contributions, while also highlighting gaps in evidence about how public design capability is developed, organised and sustained.
The Government School of Design builds capability by operating as a research and practice platform. It works with national design institutions, professional bodies, universities and museums to connect teaching, professional practice and research.
The school provides a setting in which approaches to public design capability can be developed, applied, studied and improved. Its role is to strengthen the relationship between research and practice and support the continuing development of public design as a professional field.