Shift Design — people-led social change

Farewell from Shift 💛 Today we officially close our doors. Thank you to everyone we've worked with and alongside for your partnership, passion and friendship. Our final reads: 👉 Our decision to close: https://lnkd.in/e-K5Qyur 💼 Our open archive of work: https://lnkd.in/dE-WrDHi ✨ Closing reflections on making change stick: https://lnkd.in/djzZCuQJ

As Shift Design — people-led social change comes to a close we’ve been reflecting on our role in supporting change over the years. Soberingly - we found more examples of how the ‘design for good’ sector we’ve been a part of ends up stifling rather than enabling community- led ideas from ever truly taking hold. Despite closing - we remain ever hopeful that it doesn’t have to be this way - there remains so much opportunity for sector and community to work together to help realise true alternatives to the current status quo. But to do so - we need different and better ways of being and doing - practices, norms, and relationships that offer real, shared and just partnerships with with the communities we aim to serve. And given the moment we’re in - we need them urgently. We’ve put some learnings together in a long-form blog, sharing some of our own principles towards alternative practice for the sector. These principles reflect where Shift has got it wrong as well as how our practice evolved in recent years to work differently. It’s by no means a blueprint of how to do this work. We don’t have answers, just a deep commitment to listening, learning and working differently. And we’re so deeply grateful to everyone who has helped us explore these alternatives - inspiring and shaping our most recent approach to this work. We’ve decided to share where some of our partnership work was starting to see change stick - from taking ideas backed by the community and supporting them to experiment and emerge into the real world. But moving forward - significant community investment is still needed to make space for these pockets of change to solidify and scale from beyond the margins. We recognise this blog is just one small contribution to the emerging practice already shared by many working to deliver community- led change. As many of us at Shift now rest, reset and explore what’s next, we’d love to connect with and learn from those embedding better, alternative design practices. If you / anyone you know might be interested in exploring this together then please do reach out! A massive thanks goes to Louise Cooper for co-authoring this piece. https://lnkd.in/e5gcuBgB

In case you missed it, Shift Design — people-led social change has published a new learning report on participatory social investment, supported by a Learning Consortium of 12 funders including Esmée. As part of the learning, they have also shared a set of open-sourced resources for funders interested in exploring participatory funding approaches. They've also published a blog about why community participation is important with recommendations for the sector to take forward. The report is based on learning from their Vested pilot in partnership with Trust for London, which brought together a group of young adults who have faced barriers to employment to decide how to invest £300k in employment opportunities in London. ➡ Read the blog: https://lnkd.in/eGaYzXvP ➡ See the learning report: https://lnkd.in/eJB2Cnjj ➡ Check out the open-sources resources: https://lnkd.in/e7cKMhHp #SocialInvestment #ParticipatoryFunding

After more than 20 years of change-making, today, we’re sharing the news that Shift will be closing. Over the last few months, we’ve been carefully ending our final projects and will be wrapping up as a team across April and May. We’re looking back on our journey (as Shift and formerly We Are What We Do) and feeling grateful for all the amazing people, communities and partners we've worked alongside. While this is sad news, we’re also feeling hopeful for what lies ahead for our team, our ongoing work (e.g. The Relationships Project, the Black Food Fund with Hello Brave, & more), and the brilliant organisations carrying on the work. You can read some honest reflections on what’s led us to this decision in the blog below. With love and thanks, The Shift team x https://lnkd.in/e-K5Qyur

Last year, we commissioned research from Shift Design — people-led social change to better understand the barriers faced by people who worked in low-paid jobs when they want to build an investable business. This helped us identify ways we can support the path to #Workertech ventures, and our pre-investment support programme came directly from the work. Apply now for our pre-investment support programme by 26 April - receive £1000 grant and mentoring support: https://buff.ly/3xx78NN

What range of experiences do you need within a participatory panel? 🤔 This blog shares what we've been learning about this as we try to carve out a model for doing participation well in the world of social investment.

🏗 Building participatory infrastructure for a people-led future 📅 Thursday 29th February, 13:00-14:00, UCL Excited and honoured to be sharing my work over the last few years as part of UCL Institute for Global Prosperity's series on deliberative democracy. I'll be talking about the different layers of participation that, I believe, will be essential for an evolutionary, people-led future. This builds on my research on democratic innovation (Nesta) and examples from my recent work in participatory design (Shift Design — people-led social change)—as well as the opportunities to bring deliberative and design practices together. https://lnkd.in/eur-aQeN

💡 Three opportunities for change for community-led mental healthcare 💡 Oli Whittington shares some reflections from our work, as well as some examples that are inspiring us from New Local , Civic Power Fund, Dark Matter Labs, & Healing Justice London (HJL) https://lnkd.in/epsXJhaz

🛠 Last Friday was #GreatMentalHealthDay, so we're sharing our toolkit on how to design a youth-led mental health prevention programme 🛠 Find out more in this blog by Oli Whittington https://lnkd.in/dasVuAXZ

We have a big new job opening at Shift Design — people-led social change We're looking for this new person to lead on partnerships and help lead the organisation. It's a big moment for us - with an amazing team, fab culture and progressive ways of operating, alongside an ambitious new strategy, solid portfolio of work delivered and a few juicy challenges to get stuck into. Closes on 12th Jan. Find out more here, please help spread the word and get in touch if you're interested in finding out more: https://lnkd.in/eepxbneA