Co-Creation & Co-Design for Uncommon Insight

What We Offer
Our consultancy offer is based around three key processes:

  • defining problems
  • co-designing solutions
  • communicating experiences

The results are fresh perspectives, or uncommon insights, into issues combined with useful tools for resolving them and engaging ways of communicating the experiences and knowledge gained.

Why Choose Proboscis?
Artistic practice has a unique ability to open up problems and issues in ways that other, more formal processes find hard. Intrinsically transdisciplinary and inclusive, we are able to create deep and rich forms of engagement that make complex issues tangible and appreciable that may otherwise be hard to grasp.

How We Work
Collaboration is at the heart of all our work. Our processes are co-creative and involve co-design of outputs as well as knowledge and skills transfer as part of sustainable outcomes.

Working in collaboration with clients and partners we define the problem, explore solutions, implement change and communicate the outcomes. We do this through creative visioning, inventive thinking and making – adapting and customising our extensive repertoire of tools, methodologies and techniques to the client’s specific context and situation.

Proboscis often acts a bridge between organisations, sectors and industries that don’t usually work together and we can implement trusted, pre-competitive environments for wider collaborations between corporations, academia and public sector bodies, as well as involving other parties such as grassroots communities.

Beyond the Horizon
Proboscis excels a taking leaps of imagination to perceive beyond the horizon of everyday life. We reimagine the tools of today to adopt and adapt them for uses they weren’t originally intended for : pushing the boundaries of the possible and the plausible to demonstrate whole new ways of thinking, being and doing. We are experts at bricolage, invention and innovation : anticipating the needs of the future by hacking the present; accessing those places where rational thought alone won’t take you.

Contact Us
We offer a range of services to public and private sector clients – from the design and facilitation of creative workshops to transdisciplinary research consultancy.
Contact Giles Lane for further details: insight(at)proboscis.org.uk or +44 (0)7711 069 569.

Read About Some of Our Methods

Method Stack – from our Agencies of Engagement project for the University of Cambridge

Partners have included:
Philips Research UK, Orange, Hewlett-Packard Research Labs, France Telecom R&D UK, Ordnance Survey, London School of Economics, University of Oxford, Royal College of Art, University of Nottingham, University of Southampton, Birkbeck College (University of London), Queen Mary University of London, University of Waterloo (Canada). For a full list see our page on investors, sponsors and partners.

Clients have included:
Futurecity, UK Govt Ministry of Justice, Birmingham City Council, British Council, Crafts Council, Hertfordshire County Council, Peterborough City Council, University of Cambridge, University of Cardiff, Manchester Beacon Project, Royal Holloway University of London, Science Museum London, Arts Development East Cambridgeshire, Institute of Public Policy Research and IDEO London. For a full list see our previous clients page.

About Us
Established in 1994 we focus on innovative public/social engagement, research and creative visioning projects. We have a strong track record of partnerships and collaborations across sectors (government, telecoms, business, academia, cultural industries and third sector) as well as initiating and managing innovative transdisciplinary projects with multiple partners. We have developed expertise in facilitating creative innovation, social and cultural research, public engagement, new technologies, media and communications – providing services for public institutions, government departments and private companies.