13 years ago we sat in our accountant’s office. He was called Frank and we had just met him (it turns out he is a wonderful man that we are still in touch with). We signed some official papers and handed over £150 to formally incorporate Us-creates Ltd.
Last Friday, we sat in the Uscreates studio and signed official papers sent through from our lawyer (who cost more than £150) to enable Uscreates to become part of the FutureGov family. And we are all really rather excited about it!
Starting up: using design for social change
We set up Uscreates to put our design skills to good use. To solve interesting, important challenges and problems. We set up to use design for social change (in fact this was our first ever strapline ‘design for social change’). We didn’t set out to grow a discipline, to build a design practice or to challenge traditional consultancy. But through our growth, development and learning we have been part of the service design ‘movement’ — The interest, influence and value of service design has grown incredibly over the past 13 years. Participle, Red, Snook, Think Public, Live Work and Uscreates amongst many others have been both peers and competitors in a growing market that uses design to do things better. (Uscreates Design Director Cat Drew brought many of these together and writes about the journey here.)
Making change happen
Even though our impetus to start was more modest … simply using our skills, interests and design attitude to positive effect, we have become part of something much bigger.
In the early days it was just the two of us. Joanna Choukeir joined not long after and more recently Robbie Bates and Cat Drew. Together this fab leadership team alongside all the talented Uscreatures have contributed to changing the ways of thinking and working to effect change at scale. And this is exciting.
What started unintentionally is now an ambition. We want to change the way things are done and we want to do it at scale and we want to do it where it matters, public services. We believe design is key to doing this.
A shared ambition to create better futures
Uscreates has joined FutureGov and together we have a shared ambition to transform public services. Together we have a bigger impact. Together we offer a real alternative to traditional ‘at scale’ transformation. Together we can shape and lead what this should look like in the future.
For our clients this means an extended offer across public services and health. It also means a far greater talent pool bringing the best of digital transformation and service design under one roof.
For our teams it brings far reaching opportunities to grow and develop and continue to shape and scale the shift that is so needed.
For all the amazing talent out there — those just starting out and those in leadership roles, those who are courageous, ambitious and driven — this is an opportunity to join us to forge and design new and better futures.
Public services should be better — so should the way we work to transform them. Together, Uscreates and FutureGov are the people who can help do this.
