On 30 September and 1 October, the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham held the UK’s first-ever social cohesion Hackathon in partnership with local technology company DigiLab.

The Hackathon brought together programmers and software developers with community members of all ages and backgrounds to identify, respond to and tackle the issues and concerns of local residents.

Participants did not need to have any technology or digital experience, just a passion for their community and a desire to make it an even better place.

Teams were put together randomly, before deciding what area they wanted to focus on and heading out into the streets to talk to the people of Barking and test their assumptions. Their ideas were varied - one group focused on ensuring young people build friendship groups from across different backgrounds, while another explored the relationship between the cleanliness of the local environment and local pride.

On the Sunday, the ideas - including model representations the groups had created – were put to a judging panel. The eventual winner was The Speaking Seat, an initiative aimed at creating dialogue and building trust between neighbours through conversation.

Rahat Ismail, a member of the winning Speaking Seat team, said: ‘The Cohesion Hackathon provided a great opportunity to generate out-of-the-box ideas on how to bring communities together. It was really satisfying to take on the role of solution designers for issues that matter to residents - even if only for the weekend’.

With support from the teams at the council and through crowdfunding initiatives, the groups are now looking to take their ideas forward to make a real difference to the local community.