Leaders with Lived Experience Pilot Programme

Written by Conor Cross

Background

At the beginning of 2018, following an analysis within The National Lottery Community Fund of the different types of leadership that the Fund supports, approval was granted to develop a funding programme centred on leaders with lived experience, people who use their first-hand experience of a social issue to create positive change for, and with, communities and people they share those experiences with.

Our Supporting Civil Society strategy, released in May 2018, has a section called Empowering Communities. What this meant was sharing power more equitably, creating opportunities for people to be heard and make an impact, involving people with lived experience in decision making, and valuing the diversity of people’s experience to create change for others.

Historically lived experience has been marginalised, with professional and learnt experience dominating civil and wider society. Because of this, the Supporting Civil Society strategy acknowledged that a key part of the strategy was centred on devolving power, and it was clear that if we wanted a meaningful approach to support lived experience, the process would have to diverge from traditional programme development approaches by devolving power and co-producing it with the people it wanted to support.

The Design Phase

Workshops

The approach started with five workshops across the UK (Manchester, Derry, Belfast, Glasgow and Cardiff), which in total were attended by over 70 LEx leaders. The sessions were externally facilitated, demonstrating that this wouldn’t be an event directed and controlled by the Fund, and to also allow the facilitator to outline that we were interested not in stories of trauma but moving toward more valued engagement.

The workshops were divided into three exercises; discussing the barriers for lived experience leaders, the enablers for leaders, and a dream phase, where participants were asked to imagine a world in 2021 where lived experience leaders are flourishing. An internal staff member was present at each table to capture the conversations.

Both before and after each workshop, there was an exploration of the power imbalance between funders and lived experience leaders. While it was acknowledged that this dynamic cannot be removed completely, steps could and should be taken to minimise them as much as possible, such as staff wearing casual clothes as opposed to formal office wear, and not using language that is exclusionary, speaking in plain English as opposed to ‘Fund speak’.

At the end of each workshop, there was time for reflection on the main themes and outcomes, as well as what people would take away from the session. We asked about next steps, how we can continue to build this work together, and asked people to nominate anyone else we should be talking to, both individuals and organisations, reiterating that this is not about a select few people, but building a growing UK-wide movement for learning, sharing and connecting.

To close each workshop, we informed those in attendance that we were going to develop a funding programme designed by and for lived experience leaders, and if they had any interest in attending a design residential in September 2018.

The Residential

The residential aimed to build on the workshops and wider lived experience work, and to develop an outline for a new funding programme supporting lived experience. It was held in Milton Keynes in September 2018, and was attended by 16 leaders with lived experience, as well as several internal staff.

Over 40 people who had attended the workshops or had been engaged in the design process so far were interested in attending the design residential, however we had space for less than half of those interested, so had to be selective in who attended. There were several considerations as we pulled this list together:

• A mixture of experienced and established leaders as well as new and emerging leaders.
• An equitable spread of leaders from across the UK.
• No one sector dominating, with representatives from as many different sectors as possible.

We worked with an external facilitator, Nusrat Faizullah, to lead the two days of the residential. As well as this, TNLCF staff were needed throughout sessions to provide the practical parameters about what can and cannot be achieved with the programme and what the wider package of support could look like.

The two days began with some framing for the residential, explaining the scope of the work, why we were exploring lived experience, how this is part of our commitments in the Supporting Civil Society strategy and the values we had embedded throughout the process; co-production, devolving power, People in the Lead and continuous learning.

There were several different design areas that would be discussed collectively, within groups or individual reflection. These were:

• Purpose/Goal/Aim
• Structure of Funding
• Application
• Communication
• Relationships/Support
• Evaluation
• Wider Movement

Within these different design areas, there were many different questions that we wanted the group to answer. For example, Communication had the following questions:

• How do we reach people?
• Who are the gatekeepers?
• How do we communicate the purpose of the fund?
• How do we go beyond the usual suspects?
• How does this tie into TNLCF’s other messaging and other Lived Experience projects within the movement?

Despite there being many areas that needed to be covered, there was no fixed agenda with firm timings of each session. Rather, the agenda was very organic, depending on the group and how they would work through the design areas as well as what other topics came up in discussion.

Nusrat explained to the group that they would be designing from two parallel spaces; intellectual and emotional, and that the programme would be the result of exploring those two spaces.

At the end of the two days, we summarised what we had discussed and explained what the key points were and gained agreement that this reflected the two days. To finish, we explained that we would go away and use this to create the programme, and from this point maintain distance to ensure that there was no conflict of interest for those in attendance who would also be applying to the fund.

The Programme

Applications for the Leaders with Lived Experience Programme opened for six weeks between January and February 2019. Organisations were able to apply for between £20,000 and £50,000 up to two years

Organisations were eligible to apply if:

• Was set up by a lived experience leader and/or
• Is run by lived experience leaders and/or
• Has a leadership that reflects those you seek to support

There were three programme priorities:

• pilot and learn about different ways we can develop leaders with lived experience
• support work to change the way lived experience is viewed and valued in decision making
• encourage innovative examples of how to develop lived experience at all levels of an organisation

Included on the web page was an Easy Read guide, as well as examples of what is and isn’t a leader with lived experience. Applicants were asked to download an application form, which had 7 questions, and beyond organisational details, only asked two substantive questions:

• What role does lived experience play in your organisation?
• What do you want to do and how do your project activities fit with one or more of the programme priorities?

The information was able to be so simple as we didn’t ask for full organisation details needed for our grant management system when an application was submitted, rather only asking for Data Capture forms to successful applicants.

Initial modelling for the programme indicated that we would receive between 200 and 250 applications. On February 25th, 2019 when applications closed, we had received over 650 applications, with over 90% eligible, which demonstrated both the volume of lived experience-led organisations as well as the need for a programme specifically focused on lived experience.

Decision-making

The timeline for the programme was short, and there was only three weeks between the closing of the application window and the decision-making days in order to commit the money before the end of the financial year

The initial sift of applications was completed by internal staff, scoring each application by at least two members of staff on a 0–3 scale. The aim was to progress the highest scoring applications — no higher than 100 — to decision-making. Guidance was developed for sifting which detailed the ethos of the programme, what lived experience leadership was, as well as the ambition to move beyond only well written applications for this programme and try to really assess the role lived experience plays in the organisation and understand how it aligns with the priorities of the programme. Sifting was completed in 10 days, and the 97 applications were sent out to the decision makers.

The decision-making days were held on the 11th and 12th March 2019 and decision makers were made up of both internal staff and external leaders with lived experience. Emphasis was given to recruiting staff from across the UK and those who didn’t have a background in grant-making to attempt to not replicate the groupthink which can sometimes manifest in panels, asking the same questions and moving unintentionally toward a pre-conceived vision of what our funding and ‘good’ should look like.

To reinforce this, real deliberation was given to the format and facilitation of the two days. For example, there was no table, instead placing chairs in a circle, and using post-it notes with organisations names on them across the room to allow people to vote with their feet after discussion to maintain energy levels.

As well as the thought behind the process of the two days ensuring that it felt and looked different, attention was given to assess the applications through an equitable lens, exploring our biases and values and understanding how this could impact our ability as a group to make decisions. The biases and values we discussed at the beginning of the two days were continually referred to, acknowledging that it was not enough to tick a box at the beginning, but to embed an exploration of our personal barriers to equity throughout the two days.

While a key part of the two days was to understand how each application aligned with the programme priorities and the role lived experience plays in their organisation, real thought was given to both geography and theme, ensuring an equitable spread of grant holders across the UK that reflected the depth and diversity of lived experience-led organisations.

In total, 20 organisations were recommended, which were brought to UK Panel for sign-off a couple of weeks later.

Project delivery and the Learning Partner

Grant set-up was conducted throughout April and May 2019, with all grant holders commencing project delivery by August 2019.

A key theme running throughout the Design Residential was a focus on learning, evaluation and the management of the grants. Because of this we procured a learning partner to capture emerging learning and to support grant holders through their journey on the Pilot Programme, recognising that as a Pilot and the first programme of its kind at the Fund, there should be a firm commitment to the capturing and dissemination of learning.

To ensure that the learning partner aligned with the ethos of the programme, the invitation to tender asked that any potential applicant demonstrate that lived experience was embedded within their organisation.

Underpinning the requirement for the learning partner to align with the ethos was a firm belief that at the core of this programme, from the way it was developed to the final programme, was a desire to explore different ways of grant-making as well as different conceptions of what ‘good’ means.

An extension of this desire was for the grant holders and learning partner to create a space which didn’t replicate a pre-existing idea of what is to be evaluated or what it means to perform the role of capturing and supporting learning. It was thought that if we had conformed to this approach for the Pilot Programme, we would end up with a reflection of the status quo as opposed to a journey which explores alternative ways of how civil society can function and what being ‘good’ means.

Three applications were received for the tender, and grant holders were encouraged to take part in the tender process. The successful organisation was EP:IC Consultants, a research, learning and evaluation collective that was founded by and led by people with both lived and learned experience.

One of the reasons that EP:IC’s application was scored highly by both internal staff and grant holders was their commitment to avoid the aforementioned pre-conception about their role and the timeline, but a process from the start to co-produce the role of the learning partner with the cohort.