The Emerging Infrastructure Design Lab was a ten-month programme to help small voluntary, community and social organisations become more digitally resilient. It was funded by the National Lottery Community Fund and delivered by Careful Industries, in 2022.

The purpose of the lab was to hold a space for participants to examine more critical and future focused ways of introducing new technology, and mature intentionally as organisations entwined in local ecosystems or local communities, recognising valuable inter-dependencies with wider structures around them. The project encouraged organisations to slow down the pace of innovation, and look for opportunities to introduce resilience and sustainability into design.

The Design Lab worked with Emerging Infrastructure organisations to develop sustainable practices over one year. 

However, it became clear that this journey of change required a far longer time period; challenges for organisations span beyond establishing more robust internal structures — there are also unpredictable external barriers and constraints which impede their ability to sustain infrastructural roles in communities: access to funding, short term project cycles, wider public sector cuts, and increased demand and need from communities affect how resilient or sustainable an organisation can be regardless of the robustness of their internal systems.