It All Starts with a LEGO Set: Small Bricks, Big Lessons in Emergency Planning and Community Resilience
Hear from Abubaker Adam, our Partnership Lead, as he reflects on his experience attending an Emergency Centre LEGO Workshop and what it revealed about collaboration, creativity and community‑centred design in emergency planning.
I recently joined an Emergency Centre LEGO Workshop hosted by the City of London Corporation and delivered by Aston University. The workshop used physical 3D models and LEGO-based simulation tools to explore how emergency rest centres are planned, managed and adapted under pressure.
Led by Dr. Komal Raj Aryal, Lecturer in Crisis and Disaster Management and Module Lead for Global Risk & Resilience Management, the session showed how something as simple as LEGO can create a powerful space for practical decision-making, multi‑agency coordination and turning risk assessments into real‑world choices.
It was really encouraging and genuinely positive to see how strongly London’s emergency and resilience planners emphasised designing rest centres that leave no one behind. That commitment to inclusion, dignity, faith and belief, and community-centred planning came through in every part of the exercise, and it mattered. This approach reflects a wider shift toward emergency response models that are people-first and grounded in the complexity of real lives.
But the workshop also left me with some important questions. How well would these LEGO based exercises translate to different settings - rural communities, coastal areas or smaller local authorities with fewer resources? Can these models adapt beyond major cities like London, where infrastructure and capacity look very different? These questions matter because resilience needs to be portable, scalable and inclusive, wherever you live.
Another reflection I had was: can volunteers and young people use tools like LEGO to build household level resilience that strengthens community resilience overall? If individuals and families are better prepared at home, does that reduce pressure on emergency rest centres and statutory services when a crises hits? Could hands‑on, practical learning help build confidence, preparedness and shared responsibility long before an emergency unfolds? These questions point to resilience grown from the ground up - through learning, practice and community ownership.
For me, the LEGO set doesn’t stop at the workshop table.
My next step is to take these lessons home - first to my own children and family, and then outward to local faith communities and Local Resilience Forums (LRFs). There is real potential to connect resilience, community assets and inclusive needs in ways that feel practical and empowering. There is something powerful about learning by doing: building scenarios with your hands, asking hard questions and exploring solutions together in a safe, creative space.
It’s time to lay the bricks, test better ideas in a complex world and build understanding because resilience isn’t only engineered in control rooms or written into emergency plans. It grows in homes, neighbourhoods and communities.
Aisling Watton, an Emergency Response Officer at British Red Cross, attended the workshop and shared reflections on the experience:
“Using LEGO was not only a fun and tactile way to improve our understanding of how rest centres and temporary shelter spaces could be designed, but it also inspired a much deeper practical understanding of how people might actually use those spaces. The process highlighted how difficult it can be to fully visualise a space through drawings alone, and how physically building and adapting a model encouraged us to think more about the real-life application of this space.
Having individuals from multiple agencies and backgrounds involved in the exercise was particularly valuable. Different people brought different forms of practical knowledge and experience, from understanding infrastructure, plumbing and logistics, to how communities naturally adapt and create the spaces they live in.
The LEGO models encouraged discussion and experimentation demonstrating the value of collaborative and tactile approaches to both learning and emergency planning. Finally, a huge thank you to both Aston University and the City of London Council for organising an exercise that was engaging and full of knowledge sharing and learning.”
Small bricks. Big lessons.
When communities learn by doing, wellbeing grows, trust is fostered and building a resilient Britain becomes a reality.
For more information, please contact:
Dr. Komal Raj Aryal
Lecturer in Crisis and Disaster Management at Aston University