Taking these forward, we designed and delivered a Webinar Series to explore the root causes of these phenomena.

To stimulate the conversation Nick Gardham (CEO) wrote several short essays. In each session, participants heard from experts, organisers and people with lived experience of these before digging deeper into each through a ‘problem tree’ analysis in small groups. Overall, 323 signed up for these five conversations.

Following these, our team analysed the conversations and pulled out several cross-cutting themes at a higher level of abstraction that appeared frequently across the different webinars: Dignity and Security, Belonging and Division, Power and Voice in the Economy, and Protecting Our Future Together.

These four themes were chosen for further exploration at a four-part online Assembly Series. During each assembly, we heard inputs from several experts; shared personal observations about each issue; joined the dots to uncover the logic of the systems that cause and maintain them; and developed proposals for national interventions that tackle these issues.

The conversations were captured fully using an AI listening tool (Dembrane) which transcribed the deliberation and synthesised the outputs into four reports. Overall, 346 people signed up to these four events.

Now, we are seeking funding to move this large-scale participatory dialogue into action. We will identify and develop our community-led campaigns across the themes addressed during the Assembly Series.

This gap between participation and power is a democratic deficit and has led us to develop a new phase of work: a mechanism that will enable low-income groups to engage government and influence policymaking in ways that are sustained, collective, and rooted in lived experience.