Type: Teach me
Theme: Power

Description: To collaborate means taking action. But how do we make decisions on what to do, decisions that everyone can really get behind and support? I will introduce the method of ‘consent’ – as used in Sociocracy and Holacracy amongst others. We’ll practice the steps, and also explore the emotional conditions for making this work in real-life situations.

Type: Talk to me
Theme: Collaboration

Description: The tools and language of “delivery” have dominated public service reform for years. At the Centre for Public Impact we’ve been exploring how an alternative approach focused on enablement is now emerging. Join us in this interactive session to explore some of the main themes from this movement and share your thoughts about how Whitehall can adopt a more enabling mindset. There may be prizes.

Type: Help me
Theme: Collaboration

Description: In Hastings we have taken inspiration from the UK and around the world and spent the last two years putting place the tools to enable us to run a series of intense, month-long practical exercises led entirely by self-organised teams of the so-called economically excluded. These exercises are not theoretical training programmes –people will be building their own homes and enterprises together, supported by a community of mentors and facilitators. We are close, but practical challenges remain making this work at scale in a UK context. We’d welcome anyone who would like help us grapple with these challenges, or better still join our network and be a part of the learning and growing process over the next 12 months and beyond.

Type: Teach me
Theme: Power

Description: This workshop is for anyone interested in understanding power dynamics in groups, organisations and networks. It will draw your attention to unconscious processes at play in groups, your own patterns of relating and the many rational and emotional factors behind collective decision-making.

Type: Teach me
Theme: Relationships

On Road is a charity that connects journalists with people with lived experience of social issues to inspire new storylines in soaps, TV dramas, factual and comedy, as well as improving news coverage. We will share our knowledge on the kind of support that people with lived experience need to do this work safely and with agency, including practising self-care, building confidence through peer support, and learning strategic communication techniques when choosing which parts of a personal story to tell, when and why for maximum impact. We will discuss what journalists really want, and how they work, and share with you how we have developed long standing collaborative relationships with media professionals.

Type: Calm me
Theme: All

Play with inks, paper, charcoal, colour we attempt to take away the ability to control the outcome. Come and join us to experience the start of our creative process that opens up possibilities to create great work. In addition, your contribution here will make a difference as we bring it all together in a surprising and stunning collaboration.

Type: Talk to me
Theme: Relationships

Description: We believe that the nature of our relationships (i.e. type and frequency) has the greatest impact on our ability to live a good life. The greatest leverage on any social system is to change the characteristics of relationships. In this session we will use exercises and real-life case studies to demonstrate this and the importance of being able to understand how the current system of ‘public service’ works and why. We will discuss what hinders our ability to create, develop and sustain relationships as well as what is working and why. Understanding and gathering knowledge about the why is essential if radical, sustainable and effective change is to happen.

Type: Talk to me
Theme: Relationships

In 2011, the Mayday Trust decided to do something new. They listened to people’s experiences and feelings about homelessness services and as a result Mayday have transformed every aspect of its work and mission from a traditional supported housing charity, to a national influencer for systemic change for people going through tough times. 

The Personal Transition Services (PTS) is a radically new approach that is spreading across the UK – tackling homelessness and other tough times, such as leaving care, coming off drugs or alcohol, coming out of prison or psychiatric hospital.  So what is PTS and how does it work? How did they do it? More importantly, how can you?

Type: Help Me
Theme: Power

Description: How do organisations bypass governance and give real decision-making power to users/customers? How do you make membership a real and vital thing that gives you real influence on sexy things that might excite you, as opposed to theoretical power over things that don’t? How can organisations – especially community businesses – give their members something better than a boring AGM to make it worth their while?

Type: Calm me
Theme: All

Whether we are undertaking activism, business or any other project, looking after ourselves often takes a backseat. But none of us are immune to burning out. Join this practical session to discuss the symptoms and risks of burnout, and use tips and tools to help build resilience into our daily (and busy!) lives.

Type: Help Me
Theme: Power

Description: The APLE Collective is a national collective of individuals who experience poverty. Working together with organisations that support them they are taking positive action to eradicate poverty. They need your help to grow the network further, work through how they make inclusive decisions as they grow, and support to best use their collective voice to influence policy.

Type: Teach me
Theme: Relationships

We’re hardwired to use stories to make sense of the world, share ideas and find new ways to work together. But today, storytelling power is held by the 1% and overwhelmingly used to promote ideas that are bad for us. Join Stronger Stories – a movement of storytellers excited about the abundance of good ideas that can have a positive impact on the world – to learn a new and free way to get your good idea the attention it deserves. 

Type: Help me
Theme: Collaboration

Tomorrow’s Company is an independent, non-profit think tank that enables business to be a force for good in society. We believe that solutions to the biggest issues of our times require that everyone – business, society, and government, come together and gather at what we call “the intersection”. Business has a pivotal role to play but we are still grappling with the question of what is the contribution of business in societal progress?

We have identified big real issues that are holding society back that we need to find solutions for. For example, the problem of in work poverty is growing not reducing. Come along to this session to help us come up with an alternative model for the business sector in co-designing an approach that is inclusive of all quarters of society in addressing some of the biggest challenges of today’s world.

Type: Help me
Theme: Power

Description: Holy Cross Centre Trust is a small, secular, dynamic organisation based in Camden, London. We work with people experiencing social exclusion, isolation and marginalisation, and our approach is shaped by the belief that seeing people as more than their problem or label is fundamental to any meaningful change. We place mutual learning at the heart of our approach, which helps us become aware and mindful of the power dynamics that run through our work. But this isn’t enough. The next meaningful step is giving greater ownership and influence to our staff, clients and community volunteers. We want to explore what community co-ownership might mean for a social care organisation and what this could look like in practice. We want to be challenged to think big, and to wrestle with some of the tensions and challenges this will throw up.

Type: Teach me
Theme: Collaboration

We’re here to debunk the top 9 crowdfunding myths. We’ll set the facts straight so that you can increase your chances of creating and executing successful crowdfunding campaigns. We’ll be uncovering the truth about overnight successes, which platforms are the best, and what you can expect from your friends and family during a campaign. Come along to find out about common misconceptions in crowdfunding.

Type: Talk to me
Theme: Power

Kevin Heffernan
North Midlands Health & Justice Team, NHS England

Sameer Iqbal
Prison Liaison Service

Jay Arnold
Birmingham & Solihull Mental Health, NHS Foundation

Coproduction can easily become consultation and never truly challenge the power dynamic. It may even reinforce it by ticking the box of ’service user involvement’. In the North Midlands NHS England Health and Justice Team they weren’t prepared to let that happen. So, they started employing ex-prisoners and progressing them up the ranks not because of their professional skills but because of the value of their lived experience, with exciting results. It goes without saying it wasn’t easy, not least because it truly challenged the established culture, structure and set of processes. What were these challenges and how did they overcome them? What were the results? What can you learn and apply from their experience?

Type: Teach me
Theme: Power

Power mapping is a tool that visualises how power is exercised in relation to its context and other power players. In order to run effective campaigns and organisations, we must be always aware of our relationship to power and how it is operating. This session will introduce you to the power mapping tool to work out current power relationships and then we develop strategies on how to shift those relationships to increase your power, and ultimately how to shift power relationships to sustain the change you are working to achieve. These allow your organisation to make more strategic campaign plans, create a shared framework of understanding power, and connect short term campaign strategies to long term goals.

Type: Calm me
Theme: All

Reflection is a key part of learning and taking action, but reflective practice is hard to make time for. Join this space to discuss why reflection is important, different forms of learning relationships and how to find and be a mentor within your communities. Help to build our River of Reflection which will grow over the two days.

Type: Talk to me
Theme: Power

Description: With over 3,000 experiences recorded to date, Participatory Budgeting (PB) is a worldwide phenomenon for democratic decision making that has been evolving for over 30 years, and it is now rapidly expanding in Europe and North America, as well as the UK. PB can range from a means to engage new people and make funding reach further when allocating grants into communities, to multi-million-pound commissioning process for strategic mainstream budget setting. PB offers public bodies, fund holders and citizens a practical way to connect, deliberate and decide how resources are spent in a fair and transparent manner. Building on PB Partners long experience of supporting PB process across the UK, within this engaging workshop you will explore the what, why and how of PB, and its relevance to ‘losing control’.

Type: Help me
Theme: Power

Camerados is a movement of people that believe the answer to our problems is each other. It started with a simple but powerful idea: that friendships (however loosely defined) and a sense of purpose could help us all beat tough times; that isolation and loneliness underlie the big hairy problems in society (poor mental and physical health, addiction, homelessness, community tension).  The Association of Camerados is the tiny team powering the global movement.  They are exploring a radical new approach to accountability, one that is designed to put mission before preservation, that challenges the traditional power dynamic of the organisation over the people it serves, that is led by core principles not in opposition to them.  They’re on this journey already, they want to tell you all about it and then they need your help, challenge and ideas to take it further.

Type: Talk to me
Theme: Power

Description: This is an embodied experiential workshop using Deep Democracy and Theatre of the Oppressed techniques, co-facilitated by Catherine Carter and Philipa Bragman from CHANGE, a leading national human rights organisation that works nationally and internationally for the human rights of all people with learning disabilities. Starting with ourselves we will do a deep dive exploring our own experiences around having and not having power and feeling included and excluded. We will use forum theatre to share our stories identify barriers to inclusion and look at shared solutions. We hope the workshop will be engaging informative and fun! Together we hope we can make change happen and work out ways we can share power by including the most excluded communities.

Type: Calm me
Theme: All

Play with inks, paper, charcoal, colour we attempt to take away the ability to control the outcome. Come and join us to experience the start of our creative process that opens up possibilities to create great work. In addition, your contribution here will make a difference as we bring it all together in a surprising and stunning collaboration.

Type: Talk to me
Theme: Power

Description: We’ll share insights from Scope’s radical transformation from service provider to social change organisation and reflect on how we have shifted power to disabled people along the way, with lots of examples. And we’ll showcase Scope for Change, a programme where we hand over the reins to young campaigners to run their own campaigns on the issues that matter to them.

Type: Talk to me
Theme: Power

Description: Reducing the barriers to inclusivity and diversity in governance is not rocket science. Join us to explore the practical steps you or your organisation could take to include younger generations in decision-making. Of course, age is just one characteristic of diversity and we welcome too broader discussions around diversity in governance. We’d love to hear from those who agree that action is needed to include younger and more diverse voices in decision making and want to do something about it. Come and challenge your perspective on who should and can meaningfully be involved in decision making as well as to challenge ours.

At this session, you will take home a practical job description designed for including young or underrepresented people in governance, a developmental plan and business case to implement this in your organisation.

Type: Calm me
Theme: All

Whether we are undertaking activism, business or any other project, looking after ourselves often takes a backseat. But none of us are immune to burning out. Join this practical session to discuss the symptoms and risks of burnout, and use tips and tools to help build resilience into our daily (and busy!) lives.

Type: Help Me
Theme: Relationships

Description: Building relationships between funders, public sector agencies and people with lived experience of disability and mental health challenges to effect change – How do you do it? What are the conditions for creative collaborations to emerge? What is the personal impact, and effect on organisations involved? What are the challenges to values that arise? Join us as we share what has happened on our patch, explore our learning so far and challenge us to continue losing control…

Type: Teach me
Theme: Relationships

Description: The digital age requires a new kind of leadership — you will navigate many tough questions, without having all the answers. How can you effectively lead digital change while devolving authority to those with lived experience? How can you transform your organisation and take everyone on the journey? How can you make radical shifts that are also sustainable in the long term? This session is for current and emerging leaders at all levels who want to bring about digital transformation.

Type: Talk to me
Theme: Power

In this session we will talk about how a group of Queer Muslims have taken back power from dominant hegemonic religious voices and empowered themselves to claim authority over their own spirituality. We will talk about the concept of queering religious text and tradition and how our own practices of power sharing deconstruct normalised religious authority structures. Talk to us about how this might apply to your own work.

Type: Teach me
Theme: Relationships

Description: This session will give you practical tips on how to engage your audience, create a holistic user experience, and empower your users. We’ll learn from Breast Cancer Care’s mission to embed personal stories in their work and hear from someone living with secondary breast cancer who has found support through storytelling.

Type: Help me
Theme: Power

Long-term, sustainable social change requires more than just a single organisation or project to bring it about. Often it entails creating and sharing a vision of the future so strong, that it compels people to action, a wide spread change in narrative or attitude, a creation of a common identity and values across people with lived experience of an issue, a coalition of organisations and people working towards common goals, and an investment in the leaders of tomorrow that will embody the change and embed it into the next generation.

Funding that kind of approach is tricky. What does this mean for Foundations? What are they trying? What are the pain points, the highs and the lows around intention and back office management? Join this session to share your insights and debate what funders might need to let go of in order to build sustainable investment in networks, movements, leaders and communities Come and share your insights to support them and other funders to help them do this better.

Type: Calm me
Theme: All

Reflection is a key part of learning and taking action, but reflective practice is hard to make time for. Join this space to discuss why reflection is important, different forms of learning relationships and how to find and be a mentor within your communities. Help to build our River of Reflection which will grow over the two days.