Reports and Projects

How Networked Neighbourhoods can make innovation work for everyone.

The UK’s innovation future does not have to trickle down from “supercharged high potential clusters”. This Green Paper, commissioned by Phoenix Court, explores how a neighbourhood-scale approach to innovation can inspire a culture shift across the UK.

January 2025

The role of digital ID could both reflect and shape the kind of country we are and will become. 

A rapid response study undertaken during summer 2024, drawing together a map of known Government digital identity initiatives with the results of nationally representative public polling.

September 2024

How does AI show up — or not — in the street?

Investigating how civic AI policy impacts the urban environment by scoping everyday observatories for public engagement with connected and automated systems.

September 2024

A handbook for community practitioners, local and combined authorities, and policymakers who are setting up projects to create and own their own broadband access.

Created by Promising Trouble in 2024.

Anna Dent at Promising Trouble outlines why the new government and public sector as a whole need to take a careful approach to automation in public services, including the use of AI.

July 2024

Promising Trouble’s report ‘Meeting young people where they are: Towards a new model of essential digital support’ reframes the challenge of digital services for young people, and suggests that thinking about support, rather than separate services, unlocks a new way of working which puts young people at the centre of their own journeys.

June 2024

Digital inclusion has a bearing on almost every part of life. This report introduces a Social Model of Digital Inclusion that considers health and wellbeing not just for individual people but for local communities, and the population as a whole.

May 2024

Part of the Community Connectivity programme in partnership with Impact on Urban Health. 

In 2024 digital inclusion is still informed by a charitable approach that does not address the market and government failures that cause digital exclusion and poverty. Digital inclusion: from sticking plasters to sustainable progress sets out three quick policy fixes that can improve digital inclusion outcomes in the UK.

February 2024

Everyone across Britain needs to share in the opportunities that new technologies create.

Tech for Today, a new report from Careful Trouble, outlines why a new government must prioritise practical delivery that delivers real benefits today, for all of us.

February 2024

Engineering and stewardship for a sustainable, inclusive economy.

This foresight report for the Royal Academy of Engineering examines the role of engineering in solving complex, “superwicked” problems.

November 2023

A report for Open Society Foundations, exploring the connections between foresight and digital power.

October 2023

Headline figures, market conditions and social tarriff awareness levels in the UK.

June 2023

The real cost of broadband for low income households.

Promising Trouble looked in detail at how affordable home broadband is, particularly for lower income households, and found significant challenges.

June 2023

Broadband affordability estimates for the UK. Economic modelling using ONS data for low income households.

May 2023

A creative industries foresight study, exploring the impact of digital culture and technologies on the creative industries. Identify three sticking points that create barriers to innovation.

April 2023

An easy-to-use, approachable handbook designed for community tech practitioners who are interested in building or maintaining sustainable, digital technology alternatives.

By the Green Web Foundation, Commissioned by Promising Trouble and Power to Change.

March 2023

Careful Industries has been working with the Frontier Tech Hub to understand how — and, indeed, if — Web3 might be deployed to help solve some of the world’s greatest challenges.

November 2022

Innovation happens everywhere.

These essays by community innovators show how technologies can help strengthen democracy, create community wealth and enable us to take better care of each other. Part of Promising Trouble and Power to Change’s work on Community Tech.

October 2022

The Case for Community Tech sets out a vision for how hardware and software created by, with and for community organisations contributes to the growth of place-based communities and promotes a more diverse and sustainable technology ecosystem.

Promising Trouble in collaboration with Power to Change.

September 2022

A review by Dominique Barron of Promising Trouble of the most prevalent existing digital inclusion frameworks in the UK.

March 2022

A glimpse of three alternative worlds in 2036: worlds demonstrating possible, plausible and just futures for Civil Society. Neither utopian nor dystopian but somewhere in between; a little like real life, but fifteen years ahead.

March 2022

Setting the direction for the Civil Society Foresight Observatory. What does foresight look like in the third sector?

August 2021

In 2020, we convened a Civil Society response to the UK government’s National Data Strategy.

Policy briefing | Final submission

December 2020

A real-time investigation into the relationship between civil society and technology in the early stages of the COVID–19 pandemic. We have created the Glimmers Toolkit to help teams and organisations reflect on their rapid transformation, look ahead, and set new KPIs.

September 2020