The Architecture and Design Scotland Design Skills Symposium 2012 began with a big challenge – to learn how to create a brief to change a place.

While Ayr is our classroom the lessons apply anywhere and design thinking is the tool that will be used. This means working together across services, communities and environments to develop a vision and set of actions that will deliver the change. Such briefs are an increasingly important part of the challenge facing Scotland’s places: to align services and investment in places.So how do we do that?