This blog was initially posted on the Fair By Design website

Most sectors are filled with jargon. The consumer protection and anti-poverty spaces are no different. At Fair By Design, we rely on a glossary of terms that make complete sense to us but might seem very alien to others. Terms like inclusive design and financial inclusion mean different things to different people, and none more so than when it comes to ‘lived experience’, a term we use often, but which can mean different things to different people.

One of our core goals at Fair By Design is for our work to be shaped and informed by those who experience the poverty premium. To us, this means people who experience the poverty premium are part of our decision-making and at the heart of what we do.

With this in mind, this year we have worked with The Poverty Alliance to establish a Lived Experience Advisory Panel. The panel is made up of a diverse group of 15 people from across Great Britain.

In a recent session with the panel, we wanted to understand whether terms such as ‘lived experience’ and ‘expert by experience’ resonate with them? This blog is a summation of the key themes from that session and a further blog-writing session with four members of the panel, quotes from the panel are featured throughout the blog.

No one term is perfect for everyone 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, when we spoke to the panel, the key theme from our discussion was that no one term is perfect for everyone. Many people were happy with the terms lived experience or expert by experience. These terms were seen as interchangeable, positive and as respectful to those involved.

Crucially some panel members highlighted that not only do they have lived experience of poverty themselves, but they also have experience of helping others in their community, both informally and through their employment e.g. as a social worker.

“Having first hand experience of the issue or the system in terms of how we can change it for the better is important. It is almost about being qualified enough to speak about the issue and the problem because we have that first hand experience. Creating a solution for a problem can only happen if the people it intends to serve are the wheel that turns it.”

However the term was not perfect for all, one particular moment of reflection for us was when one of the panel members said that they did not mind the term, but it can also feel painful, like a kind of mockery, when the system puts you in a disadvantaged position and then asks you how it feels to live through that experience. 

Others felt that it diminished their role in campaigning against poverty, they had more to offer than just their experience and preferred to be called anti-poverty campaigners.

“It means being able to shape future policy and law with our input to the powers that be, whereas before our input wasn’t really considered. That’s what it means to me, my opportunity to talk about how and where policies, procedures and law can be improved because of my experience.”

Several people preferred the term ‘panel member’ as it does not divulge too much about what they are going through and has a sense of equality across everyone working in the sector. We are all working together to create change so we should use terms and structures that give our contributions equal standing.

“When I use the term lived experience sometimes, I feel like I owe it to people to explain my suffering or trauma and I guess it gives people permission to ask questions about my own experience that I haven’t necessarily given consent to. If I say panel member, I can choose to divulge however much I want.”

Lived experience is more about the way you do it

Interestingly, all participants emphasised that good lived experience contribution wasn’t just about the right terms and much more about creating a space for people to share their experiences.

For one panel member, lived experience was her opportunity to get her voice heard and feel safe within the structure of the group. Part of that experience was belonging to a diverse community, where differences in faith, colour, and lifestyle were respected. She described the work as cathartic, not just because it allowed her to speak, but because it challenged the systems that create these circumstances in the first place.

“Four things spring to mind when working in the group, nourishing, cathartic, meaningful and transformative. Those are the four words I think of when we do group work.”

The feeling was that lived experience work should be an opportunity to create safe spaces, where people feel respected, and their beliefs and feelings are heard. People told us that sharing can be therapeutic and an opportunity for individuals to not feel alone. For this group of people, the way of doing lived experience needed to be one that respected them and their lives.

Finally, it was clear that the system has placed people in a situation where they are in poverty, but this is not their only, or even their main, identity: The panel are teachers, mothers and friends first.

In addition to this, many people on the panel haven’t always experienced poverty, life events led to them becoming financially vulnerable, but this isn’t a fixed identity.

Others said that they were in full time work, but the conventional view of their role in the group could mean people assumed they weren’t working at all, lapsing into a lazy stereotype around people in poverty.

This is always going to be something we revisit

This conversation made clear that this cannot become a ‘box ticking’ exercise and that successfully incorporating lived experience into policy design and campaigning means creating opportunities to have ongoing conversations.

What feels right for panel members in their lives today may feel different tomorrow and next year. This is especially true as we work through a journey with people of telling their stories and experiences.

Through capacity building sessions put on by Poverty Alliance, supporting them with media training and understanding the parliamentary process, they can be changemakers outside of the group. They may join the panel as a lived experience panel member but could leave it as an anti-poverty campaigner, who does not only share their experience but also shape policies as their expertise evolves.

As one of our panel members said: “I want to keep revisiting these terms to re-evaluate what we’re looking at and making sure voices are only not just included but actively listened to and boundaries are respected, that this work doesn’t expose trauma without care and support. It is about making sure lived experience is recognised not just as through the “sharing a story,” but as a form of expertise that can change systems.”

Conclusion 

The session reminded us that we shouldn’t look to fix our language. For our panel, lived experience isn’t just a term, it is about feeling respected and part of meaningful policy changes. It is clear that lived experience encompasses so much more than language, it is about an approach that values people’s time, experiences and allows them to be heard.  We will keep revisiting these conversations because the words we use are important and should continue to reflect the people behind them.

“Working in the group feels collaborative, it feels like a weaving together of different people’s realities, but that helps us to think deeply and respect each other’s truths. It feels to me personally validating that to know my experiences are not just being politely heard but being genuinely valued as part of something bigger.” Fair By Design Lived Experience Panel Member. 

Annmarie Lewis, Head of Criminal Justice at the Trust, highlights what’s coming up for the T2A Transition into Adulthood campaign

If you’ve been following our work, you may have noticed a pause in updates from the criminal justice programme and T2A. But that pause wasn’t silence, it was reflection. A moment to listen, learn, and recalibrate.

Since stepping into this role last November, I’ve had the privilege of immersing myself in the legacy of T2A, while continuing the journey I’ve been on for over 30 years as a pioneer and champion in the broader justice reform movement. And in recent months, it’s become clear: we’re at a crossroads.

We’ve seen policy shifts that feel more reactive than reflective. The Sentencing Review included some welcome progressive elements, but we were disappointed that it failed to recognise young adults as a distinct group with specific needs, despite our substantive submission. This omission, alongside the Sentencing Council’s new guidelines, reflects a troubling trend, the adoption or manipulation of a ‘two-tier justice’ narrative – the notion that women, racially minoritised, and other marginalised groups receive preferential treatment through the criminal justice system. The evidence, however, does not support this contention.

For decades, underrepresented groups have experienced a two-tier system in practice, a reality that has driven long-standing campaigns for racial and gender justice. The current political weaponisation of this rhetoric is not only flawed, but unsafe. It risks undermining progress, embedding regressive policies, and distorting public understanding of justice reform. We must challenge this narrative with clarity, truth, and strategy.

A Time to Rethink, Reframe and Reimagine

This isn’t about despair, it’s about direction. We’ve taken a step back to ask: what does justice look like for young adults today? And more importantly: who gets to shape that vision?

That’s why we convened a powerful and diverse group on 30 June — people from different communities, professions, and lived experiences, each bringing their own insights and passions — for a day of deep conversation, bold imagining, and commitment to radical change.

Our workshop, Shaping Justice Together: A New Vision for Young Adults, was more than an event, it was a powerful moment of collective intention. A call to co-create a new blueprint for a justice system that sees young adults not as problems to be solved or issues to be fixed, but as people shaped by their experiences, many of whom have lived through significant harm. We aim to develop a vision that embraces the full complexity of young adult lives without diminishing it, that doesn’t ask what’s wrong with you, but rather what happened to you, and seeks to restore, not erase, the humanity of everyone involved.

Imagine a system that understands the duality of being both survivors and, at times, agents of harm. One that recognises their actions, choices and behaviours cannot be separated from the contexts they’ve lived through, often shaped by trauma, inequity, and unmet needs.

Imagine an approach that holds space for healing, accountability, and restoration, not only for young adults, but also for those impacted by their actions. One that believes growth is possible, change can happen, and reconciliation can emerge when the right care and support are in place.

Now imagine a system that not only recognises the dual nature of state and social harm — where children and young adults can be harmed by state agencies as well as by social inequality — but also begins to disrupt these cycles. Dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline: the systemic pattern where disadvantaged young people, particularly from racialised communities, are pushed out of education and into the criminal justice system. And beyond that, recognising the growing reality of the prison-to-prison pipeline: the ways in which prisons themselves become criminogenic spaces that deepen harm and entrench cycles of offending, not only for young adults inside, but also for the young adult staff working within them.

Alarmingly, we are seeing increasing numbers of young staff committing offences, particularly within prison environments, and crossing the threshold from employee to prisoner themselves — caught in the very system they once served. These are not isolated incidents; they are symptoms of the acute trauma and the substantial challenges facing a highly stressed and often demoralised workforce, highlighting a system in urgent need of transformation. Our young adult staff, many of whom carry their own lived experience, need the same care, compassion, support, safety, and accountability to do this work well. Healing must be systemic, not selective. We need a system that understands justice isn’t just about those impacted by it, but also about those working within it.

This is a call to reimagine justice not as punishment, but as a pathway forward, rooted in fairness, compassion, responsibility, and renewed hope for all.

Narrative Change: From Harm to Healing

This is not just a shift in language, but a shift in values, and a focus on what works. A move from harm to healing, from isolation to inclusion, from conflict to connection. One that honours young adults’ potential, rather than simply punishing their mistakes, and strengthens the communities around them, rather than further tearing them apart.

We’re not alone in this. Across the sector, funders and partners are coming together to challenge harmful rhetoric and build a shared strategy for narrative transformation. The idea of a ‘two-tier justice system’ that favours women or other disadvantaged, marginalised, and under-represented groups isn’t just misleading, it’s dangerous. It obscures the structural inequalities that have long defined our justice system, particularly for young adults from racialised and marginalised communities, including young women and girls.

We’re working closely with the Corston Independent Funders Coalition, the Harm to Healing Coalition, and UK narrative change with partner funders, to align our efforts, reduce duplication, and amplify what works. The Harm to Healing Coalition, born out of the work of Dr. Patrick Williams, Temi Mwale, and the HtH Resource Group has helped set a strong narrative focus for reimagining justice through a new lens. Because the truth is there’s incredible work happening at the grassroots. Just look at Spark Inside’s recent roundtable, which brought together young men, practitioners, and policymakers to reimagine wellbeing and racial equity in custody, building on the work of their  being well being equal campaign and report. Or Daddyless Daughters, who are pioneering transformative work with girls and young women affected by family breakdown, abuse, and adversity, helping them build healthy, sustainable lives and relationships, and preventing criminal and sexual exploitation. These are just two examples of the powerful, community-rooted work that we are supporting to drive change from the ground up.

We explored the map, the model, the modus operandi, and the missing pieces and the energy in the room was electric! We’ll share key outcomes in a future blog, but for now, we’re excited to announce that the second in the series will take place in September.

What’s Next for T2A?

Over the next year, we’re focused on four key priorities:

– Synthesising 20 years of T2A evidence into a clear, actionable vision for young adult justice, and embedding systems change across policing, prisons, probation, public affairs and public policy.

– Embedding lived and learned experience at the heart of our work through a new T2A Alliance advisory panel and group.

– Advancing racial and gender justice by challenging systemic bias and centring equity in all we do

– Driving strategic communications to support the next phase of T2A and counter harmful narratives.

We know the road ahead won’t be easy. But we also know that change doesn’t come from waiting; it comes from working together to drive radical reformation and bring about total transformation. Not just of systems, but of the very vision of justice itself.

What comes next doesn’t have to be a system at all… but a radically different future rooted in humanity, safety, and love.

Annmarie Lewis, July 2025

Cathy Brown, Barrow Cadbury Trust’s Head of Economic Justice (Birmingham) writes about the exciting and innovative ideas and solutions which arose from the Economic Justice Brum huddles  

My journey with Economic Justice Brum began at the same time as the Huddles began to form in January. 

Mine has been a journey of connection, learning and growth, and after listening to our Huddlers talk about their journeys over the last four months, I can see many of the same elements present in the paths they’ve taken. 

Seven Huddles formed, and all seven were present and celebrated at the launch event at the end of May. All started from the same point but ended up somewhere quite different. 

You might well ask, what’s a Huddle? It’s a small, time limited peer learning group. Or, in human speak, a group of people exploring and enquiring into a topic for a set amount of time.  

Our groups were exploring the three pillars of our movement: Personal Empowerment, Building Alternatives, and Challenging Dominant Institutions.  

Transformative Economics – designing infrastructures for alternative economic systems in Birmingham neighbourhoods. Our Huddlers adopted the symbol of a dandelion to represent breaking free of existing economic thinking & systems, distributing new ideas and transforming old ground. 

SEND Seen – our Huddle exploring how to harness power and redirect wealth to change the SEND system Brum from adversarial, demeaning, failing to be holistic, creative, person-centred, effective, and dignified. 

Emergency vs Emergence – this Huddle group read and analysed the book ‘Emergent Strategy by Adrienne Maree Brown’ – concluding a move away from the individual to the collective is needed, and exploring the skills and actions needed to do that.  

A Life Well Lived – exploring care, connection and community in capitalist times. A group appreciating how hard we find it to explore without conclusion, to consider problems without solving, to allow ourselves to simply experience, connect & listen. 

46.4% of Birmingham’s children live in poverty. That’s over twice the national average.  

The Child Poverty Changemakers Huddle asked the question ‘How do we fix something so fundamentally broken?’ and issued seven ‘asks’ of Birmingham City Council including a play strategy, family-centred housing, and good youth work in the hope that #maybeoneday no child in Birmingham will experience poverty. 

Our huddlers explored economic liberation through the lens of creativity and culture and the question “How do you define your personal economy?”.  Their definitions included blogs, poetry and illustration. 

Mindset Matters – this Huddle was “impactful, empowering, cathartic” “economic justice served family style” – amazing black women leaders looking inside themselves to question, challenge, explore and grow.  

Some of the groups will carry on meeting and working together. Some have concrete ideas that the movement can take forward. Some have generated further connections, thoughts, enquiries and possibilities to explore. That’s the nature of a movement. I leave you with the words from our Mindset Matters Huddle: “We are going to take over the world!” 

If you are intrigued by the story of our Huddles, and if you are keen to know more about the Economic Justice Brum movement and get involved in building a fairer economy for Birmingham, then please do check out the website, find us on Bluesky or Linked In – come and join us on the journey. 

28th April 2025 – there’s a feeling of excited tension as Fair By Design and Poverty Alliance staff log into a Teams meeting room at 9:45. It’s not often a Monday morning meeting has us excited, but this one feels a little different.

As the clock ticks over to 10:00, 15 people join the call and meet each other for the first time – these 15 people are our new lived experience advisory group. The group will draw on their experience of the poverty premium – the extra costs faced by people on low incomes – to help guide our work.

Over the course of two hours, everyone introduces themselves, we hear what has made people smile in the last week and get to know each other’s pets. Shared values and motivations for taking part come to the fore as we discuss the purpose of this group.

It’s clear there is a feeling of frustration, and sadness at other panel members’ difficulties with benefits and companies who haven’t supported them in the way they should have. But overwhelmingly, there’s a shared sense that things need to change.

Who’s around the table

The panel is made up of 15 people from across Great Britain, with representation from England, Wales and Scotland.

It includes a diverse range of people to ensure those most disproportionately affected by the poverty premium are represented. We know that some communities are particularly at risk of paying a poverty premium for household essentials, so we’ve made sure that there’s good representation from those communities on our panel.

The aim is to create a safe, supportive and collaborative environment where everyone feels empowered to contribute their experience and knowledge of poverty-related issues.

Support and training will be provided to help build confidence in speaking up – whether to politicians, the media, or in meetings.

Panel members are being reimbursed for their time, with options on how they receive this. We understand not everyone wants financial compensation, so other benefits are available. This is our way of recognising the value their lived expertise brings to our work.

What we’re going to do together

Over the next year, the panel will meet five times to help shape and guide our work. It will sit alongside our existing governance structures, our steering group and the Barrow Cadbury Trust Board.

The panel’s experience will input into all areas of our work. This will include helping us set priorities by identifying which issues are affecting people most, what we should focus on, and what we might be missing.

They will also help shape our policy work by advising where further research is needed and what type of work we should undertake.

In addition, panel members will guide our research by working alongside academics and staff from other organisations to help shape individual research projects.

We’ll also support those who are comfortable sharing their voices and lived expertise through blogs, videos, social media, media interviews, or public speaking.

Conclusion

We have a strong track record of working with people with lived experience in our communications and policy work. But we want to go further – making lived experience a central part of shaping our strategic work.

Over the next year, the voices and experiences of these 15 people will be at the heart of everything we do. Keep an eye on our work to see how their insight is helping shape change.

If you’d like to learn more about the process, or how to set up a similar panel, please get in touch.

Fair By Design outlines key principles for a future energy system that is fair to those on low incomes

Today, energy prices are still around 45% higher than winter 2021-22, with an estimated 6.1 million households living in fuel poverty across the UK. This is also born out in debt statistics – consumer energy debt reached £3.82 billion at the end of Q3 2024, according to Ofgem.

As the Government looks to reform the market and support the transition to net zero, at Fair By Design we think there is an opportunity to design a system that works for everyone, especially people on low incomes who are most prominent in the statistics above.

This blog highlights our thinking on the future of energy, especially focusing on how a new system can work for low-income consumers and reduce some of those sobering numbers. With numerous consultations and calls for evidence currently taking place, not least the Government’s consultation on an update to the Fuel Poverty Strategy, here we outline key principles for a future energy system that is fair to consumers on low incomes:

1. Energy should be treated as an essential good, not a luxury.

1. Everyone should have access to the energy they need to stay safe and well at a price they can afford. This means designing a market without poverty premiums — where people on the lowest incomes aren’t charged more because they pay differently or lack the digital tools needed to access cheaper tariffs.

1. It also means reducing the amount of energy people need to use, by supporting energy efficiency.

1. Affordability must never rely on people dangerously rationing the energy they need to stay warm, cook meals, or keep the lights on.

How should the future look like?

As the domestic energy market evolves, we are calling for a commitment from Government and the regulator that there will be no new poverty premiums in the future.

More broadly, trust in the energy market must be rebuilt. That means addressing the basic affordability challenges people face today. We look forward to seeing Ofgem’s fully developed proposals for a debt matching/debt relief scheme to ensure people can escape the shackles of debt they found themselves in during the energy crisis. Crucially this must be accompanied by a social tariff to ensure energy is affordable going forward.

We would also like to see high standing charges reduced, and the premium charged to those who pay by standard credit eliminated. Practices like excessive back billing must be tackled, and the period for which suppliers can back bill should be reduced

There is also an opportunity through the Government’s consultation on a new fuel poverty strategy. We welcome the Government’s commitment to review progress towards the statutory 2030 fuel poverty target. We support retaining this target and urge the Government to fulfil its promise to invest £13.2 billion in the Warm Homes Plan at the next Spending Review. With National Energy Action identifying an £18 billion funding gap, this investment will be vital to ensuring homes are made more energy efficient and affordable to heat. Improving energy efficiency is one of the most sustainable long-term ways to bring down bills and ensure a fairer energy future for everyone.

A fair transition to net zero

We must design a system that works for everyone from the outset. That starts with building a stronger evidence base about how market reforms will impact different groups of consumers.

The rollout of smart meters is a crucial piece of the puzzle. Without one, consumers may be unable to access time-of-use tariffs or new flexibility services in the future. But the current target, to achieve a rollout to 75% of households is set to end in 2025 . Depending on if this figure is met, there is a risk of locking a significant proportion of households — including many on low incomes — out of the new energy market. The smart meter roll out must be extended before the end of this year.

In addition, the shift to net zero assumes that consumers will engage more actively with the market — by switching between tariffs or flexing their usage to take advantage of lower prices at off-peak times. But we know that many consumers do not proactively engage with the energy market.

In 2016, the Competition and Markets Authority found that 56% of consumers had never switched supplier or didn’t know if they had, and 72% had never switched tariff or didn’t know it was possible. People on low incomes were even less likely to be “active” consumers. Research by the University of Bristol (2016) for Fair By Design found that 73% of low-income households had not switched supplier in the previous two years.

More recent analysis by the Centre for Sustainable Energy (CSE) shows that low-income households gain very little from reducing demand at peak times. Innovative tariffs may be too complex or simply inaccessible to people without smart meters, digital skills, or flexible incomes. At present, the cheapest unit rates and standing charges are often only available to those who own electric vehicles — not those struggling with their bills. CSE has therefore highlighted the opportunity to support fuel-poor households to increase their usage at times of excess generation and low prices, not just encourage high-use consumers to reduce demand at peak times.

Finally, we believe Ofgem should carry out a full distributional analysis of the move to market-wide half-hourly settlement, using insights from existing pilots and building where there is evidence of disadvantage, Government and regulator must act to mitigate those disadvantages – not wait to pick up the pieces afterwards.

In conclusion, to build a fairer energy market, we must design policies around the needs of people on low incomes. That means removing poverty premiums, tackling existing inequalities, and ensuring no one is left behind in the transition to net zero. The future must be fair and affordable for all.

 ‘The starting point is not a goal but a collaboration’ – how Barrow Cadbury Trust has used systems change approaches to tackle complex issues in the justice system.  

Young adulthood 

How do you explain to people who don’t work in criminal justice about the distinct needs of young adults caught up in that system? Well, we held a mini 18th birthday party in our workshop room with balloons and birthday tunes! We then invited them to think back to when they turned 18 (or when someone they know turned 18).  

Their reflections from this exercise were revealing and we identified three main themes: 

One attendee said afterward that they ‘particularly enjoyed the visualisation exercise - I mostly forgot that overwhelming jumble of thoughts and emotions around the age of 18.’  

The group in question were attendees at the Systems Innovation Network Global Conference, mainly working in sectors such as health and sustainability, where systems thinking has taken root.  Two of Justice Futures co-directors Gemma Buckland and Nina Champion, along with Laurie Hunte from the Transition to Adulthood Alliance at Barrow Cadbury Trust and Nadine Smith, a young justice advisor, were facilitating a workshop exploring how systems thinking can help improve outcomes for young adults in the justice system, and why a systems approach to funding is necessary to tackle complex issues and see transformational shifts.  

Nadine explained the distinct needs of young adults in the criminal justice system including the fact that their brains are still developing and that the process of maturity doesn’t end at 18. She described the ‘cliff edge’ of services and support stopping and how young adults are often grouped with adults of all ages, whether in court, in custody or on probation, whereas we have a separate system for under-18s. She discussed her work with the Transition to Adulthood Alliance (T2A) and Leaders Unlocked, ensuring that young adults with lived experience are empowered to influence systems change by conducting research, designing services, and speaking to policymakers.  

She set out that this is a complex issue as there is not one solution; it’s interconnected, multi-dimensional, and involves multiple and conflicting perspectives. In systems speak, this is known as a ‘wicked challenge’

The criminal justice eco-system 

We then got attendees thinking about the different actors in the ecosystem that T2A works with and their multiple and conflicting perspectives. Using a Si Network Actor Mapping canvas, attendees were asked to imagine themselves as young adults, policymakers and practitioners to think about what values, power, mental models and incentives these actors have in the system when it comes to meeting young adults’ distinct needs.

When looking at power, attendees highlighted various types of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ power dynamics including physical violence, money, the law, the power to ‘say no’, and even the power of an officer’s uniform. Incentives varied from hitting targets to ‘respect’, serving the community, to wanting a quick exit from the system. Mental models included ‘do the time, do the crime’, ‘prison works’, crime being caused by individual choice rather than societal failures and the ‘punishment v. rehabilitation’ dichotomy. Lastly, the values influencing actors in the ecosystem noted by participants were protection, risk reduction, efficiency, the rule of law, empathy, and suspicion.  

The purpose of the exercise was to better understand what’s going on ‘under the surface’ with different actors in the system, so we can then work with the systemic patterns identified productively to affect change in the system.  

As one workshop participant reflected ‘one of the most powerful exercises you can do is to step into other people’s shoes in the system.’ Another commented that ‘the ambiguities that arise are interesting.’ And one said it was ‘eye-opening. I could connect directly with some of the issues I’ve noticed in our neighbourhood. [It was] very effective in helping us look at these issues from different perspectives.’   

These insights are what these systems tools are designed to bring out – helping people see differently, think differently and then do differently … our tagline at Justice Futures! 

If we’d had more time, we would have discussed the insights the group had gained from examining the system from different actors’ perspectives and then used these to identify which leverage or intervention points would have the most long-lasting, positive impacts on the system. This is something that T2A, supported by the Barrow Cadbury Trust, has been navigating for the past two decades, as set out in a recent evaluation report by IVAR.  

Changing the funding paradigm 

We also used the actor mapping canvas to explore the values, power, incentives and mental models typically found in philanthropic funders, acknowledging that this is shifting (as we explore further below).  For example, traditionally philanthropic funders might value learned expertise over lived expertise, favour funding short-term ‘sticking plaster’ solutions by looking for quick fixes, lack diversity, and might use models that promote competition rather than collaboration. They also often exercise some form of power, not only in the resources they hold, but in setting the criteria, timescales, decision-making and monitoring processes of their grants and project proposals.   

Barrow Cadbury Trust is an unusual funder by taking a long-term, systemic approach to shifting paradigms. One example is their longstanding support of the Transition to Adulthood Alliance. IVAR recently evaluated this approach to systems change, and we highlighted some of the important key themes and learning from that report:  

IVAR’s findings mirror Catalyst 2030’s open letter for NGOs to sign, calling for funders to take a more systemic approach to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. One of these goals, SDG 16, relates to peaceful and inclusive societies and justice for all.  

IVAR drew attention to Barrow Cadbury’s mindset shift, seeing themselves primarily as a systems change partner, rather than a funder. The report found the distinction between ‘being a player, rather than just an enabler’ has been deliberate and intentional, as Barrow Cadbury Trust are proud to both ‘drive and serve.’ This activism is done in collaboration with alliance members and with a vital awareness of the need to ‘out the power dynamic by relational means; listening carefully, responding to challenge, showing respect, being flexible, deferring to greater expertise and building partnershiprelationships not administrative ones.’ 

We also discussed a report and system map by New Philanthropy Capital showing that advocacy activities aimed at influencing political systems get less than 2% of all money going to criminal justice-focused NGOs and system coordination activities get less than 1%. We also highlighted the findings of two other reports (by Harm 2 Healing and Rosa) which show that grassroots, ‘by and for’ organisations promoting racial and gender justice often miss out on funding due to bureaucracy, a lack of unrestricted funding to support capacity building and the instability and uncertainty of short-term funding.  

Laurie highlighted an example of partnership working between funders, where Barrow Cadbury convened a group of philanthropic funders to collaboratively help tackle racial disparities in the criminal justice system and address important issues of capacity building and leadership development for ‘by and for’ organisations. 

We used the Berkana Institute’s Two Loops model to demonstrate the transition from the current dominant paradigm (in this case, funders as funders) to the new emergent paradigm (in this case, funders as systems change partners). We wanted to identify some of the ‘seeds of change’ happening globally and to start connecting and illuminating them.  

 Attendees gave examples of where they had started to see shifts from the current dominant paradigm of ‘funder’ towards ‘systems change partner’. Some interesting examples from around the world were shared, including: 

•  Children’s Investment Fund Foundation—a global funder which takes a systems change approach by investing in the long term, focusing on root causes, having a high appetite for risk, being flexible, and investing in building a thriving ecosystem and emerging leaders. 
• Viable Cities – a challenge-driven, strategic innovation programme in Sweden where people submit ideas as individual organisations and then collaborate with other applicants to design projects to create climate-neutral cities by 2030.  

• NCVO – a voluntary sector infrastructure body in the UK which is exploring the use of collaborative funding applications.  

It was clear that attendees wanted to see more of these shifts in the future. As the IVAR report found, trusts and foundations are uniquely placed to support systems change as ‘they have the money, the time, and the patience. They can afford to take risks, to shift power, to disrupt, to play a leading role, like Barrow Cadbury Trust, or to be a patient cheerleader. All of these choices are in their gift.’  

We hope the workshop gave a small taste of how systems approaches and systemic funding can help tackle complex issues, including in the criminal justice sector. As one attendee concluded, working in these ways helps bring people from ‘systems blindness to systems sight’.  

 Nina Champion, Gemma Buckland, Nadine Smith and Laurie Hunte