About the Project

Mosaic Landscapes enables communities, professionals, and stakeholders to work together in a structured way, moving beyond consultation towards collaboration.

It combines hand-crafted landscape elements, user personas, and a Landscape Index to guide participants through a shared process of exploration, discussion, and prioritisation. This allows groups to test ideas, understand trade-offs, and build consensus around what a place should deliver. The tool ensures that all voices are heard through a structured process.

A key strength of the tool is its evidence base. The Landscape Index links specific environmental features to health, wellbeing, social, and environmental outcomes, allowing participants to ground their decisions in research without limiting creativity. This supports more transparent and defensible design choices, particularly in contexts where justification and accountability are critical.

The structured format also helps to reduce common barriers in engagement processes. Turn-taking and persona-based scenarios encourage participants to consider perspectives beyond their own, fostering empathy and reducing conflict. The tactile, hands-on nature of the tool slows down decision-making, leading to more reflective and considered discussions.

Mosaic Landscapes produces a clear, tangible output of a shared design statement that reflects the group’s priorities. This provides organisations with a robust record of engagement, supporting the project development.

Mosaic Landscapes has been tested in real-world settings including NHS estate planning, community engagement events, and public exhibitions. Mosaic Landscapes has consistently demonstrated the ability to increase participation, improve the quality of dialogue, and generate meaningful, actionable outcomes. By transforming engagement from a procedural requirement into a collaborative process, Mosaic Landscapes helps organisations build trust, reduce conflict, and deliver better, more widely supported places.

This project is currently undertaking further testing of Mosaic Landscapes while building a robust evidence base on the environmental, economic, and health benefits of place. The aim is to finalise the tool and support its integration into NHS estate planning processes.

Mosaic Landscapes board game on display at V&A Dundee as part of the From Hope to Health exhibition. / Photo: Grant Anderson