Community of Practice pinboard
It’s All About Power
The Power Project calls for a new way of thinking about power, and action to build solidarity in social change.
Reports, articles, toolkits
The Way Ahead: Civil Society at the Heart of London
(April 2016) This is the final report of the Review of the Future of Civil Society Support in London, commissioned by London Funders.
Understanding Poverty in all its Forms: a participatory research study into poverty in the UK
(October 2019) This project from ATD Fourth World in collaboration with the University of Oxford brought together professionals, academics and people with first-hand experience of poverty from 2016-2019 to change the ways in which poverty is understood and talked about by decision makers and governments.
Lived Experience Leadership
(July 2017) This report Baljeet Sandhu is an exploration of whether, and how, social purpose organisations in the UK value lived experience in social change work.
The Value of Lived Experience in Social Change
(July 2019) Also by Baljeet is a call to action to ‘reboot the leadership DNA of the social sector.’
Power and Making Change Happen
(November 2010) by Raji Hunjan and Soumountha Keophilavong is part of the Democracy and Civil Society Programme from the Carnegie UK Trust and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation to explore the links between analysing power and achieving social change.
Amplifying Voices for Change
(2020) A research project by Sharon Brown on Lived Experience Speakers Bureaus as well as a toolkit for anyone doing similar work or looking to start. It covers multiple countries, a variety of issues and provides advice, guidance and lessons learned from different perspectives and areas of the work.
This is the #CITIZENSHIFT
(2014) This report was published by The New Citizenship Project, established to help catalyse the shift to a more participatory society. This report offers a new way of understanding the current period of intense societal change, and asks what it is we can all participate in and contribute to.
Power and Empowerment
(2007) This chapter covers all things power, including the four different expressions of power. Power is an integral dynamic of politics. Yet, it turns out to be one of the more
uncomfortable and difficult topics to address.
TIME FOR A CHANGE
(2021) This report is a rallying call for a better way, suggesting that if we change the way we work, together we can build a fairer society. This report has been contributed by several hundred people across the Better Way Network, in gatherings over 2020, offering their insights and working up these ideas together.
Community Power: The Evidence
(2021) New Local’s new report demonstrates the wide-ranging positive impacts community-led approaches have, on everything from individual wellbeing, to trust in democracy and reducing demand on services.
Making Change Happen: Power
(2006) This edition by Just Associates looks at concepts and ways of understanding power with the hope of contributing to
debates on how to strengthen analysis, action and movement building.
We Rise: Movement Building
A toolkit for movement builders developed by Just Associates. This includes downloadable tools and related material for use in your own work wherever you are and whatever your needs.
The Knot
(2021) A collection of essays seeking to encourage us, as service providers, policymakers, researchers and people with lived experience, to engage with the real complexities in people’s lives to start to unpick the knots between poverty, trauma and multiple disadvantage.
Feminist research guidelines
(2020) Set of guideance by ActionAid to support staff, partners and those interested in how ActionAid carries out feminist research.
Leading Change Network's Public Resource Center
A collection of useful resources here: including publications by Marshall Gantz and campaign stories.
Opinion: On equity in the international development sector — we need more intravists
(2020) Opinion by Blessing Omakwu about becoming an “intravist” and what that means in efforts to change organisational structures.
Dismantling Racism
(2016) A workbook for social change groups, on dismantling racism in order to achieve more effective collective action. “We work together collectively well when we tend to our personal work and our personal work makes better sense in the context of the collective”.
The STAGE Partnership: Learning and Legacy
(2021) Power dynamics exist between organisations, affecting coalitions. This report from IVAR on the learning and legacy of the Stage Partnership explores the positives and challenges of partnership working between small, medium and large charities.
Roots of Transformation
(2021) Boundless Roots have worked on a report for two years, wanting to improve our individual, organisational and collective approaches to change. Included is a nested systems model and an iceberg model for thinking about systems change.
New Brave World
(2021) Developed out of the social impact sector, this report describes the pop culture for social change field in the UK, highlights its promise and suggests a need to invest and lean into its potential.
all about POWER
(2019) The purpose of this primer is to help us move to a shared understanding of power, so that all of us who are committed to social and gender justice can build our strategies from a more comprehensive, shared definition and analysis of power as it operates in society.
all about MOVEMENTS
(2019) Why do movements matter? Why do we march on the streets or come together online? Great resource on movements and movement building. This primer builds on concepts shared in CREA’s earlier primer, “All About Power”.
Riding the Waves
(2018) This report explores influential case studies and makes recommendations about how we can harness the power of pop culture for social good.
‘Development’: A visual story of shifting power
(2021) Oxfam’s exhibit in collaboration with Colombian collage artist Hansel Obando. Together, they wanted to tell the story of ‘development’, from its origin to its current challenge, from its contradictions to its possible horizons.
How to harness new power to make the world a better place?
Learning to Listen Again
(2020) The Covid-19 pandemic continues to create unprecedented challenges for everyone across the UK. People experiencing multiple disadvantages are some of those most affected, yet their voices are seldom heard.
Learning to Listen Again phase 2
(2021) Following on from the Learning to Listen Again report, this report focuses on the lessons from the second phase of listening, as the UK went through regional lockdowns and a third national lockdown.
Who is an expert?
(2019) In this article we are urged to rethink what expertise means, and who really possesses it. Although it’s from a global perspective, it prompts some thoughts on practices and challenges that are locally familiar too.
“When will we get a report on your findings?”
(2019) This article takes into account researchers’ responsibilities toward the communities in which they operate. Communities must be informed of findings; they must be given a stake in the research results. Otherwise, what is the point of research?
The Commons - Social Change Library
The Commons Social Change Library is an online collection of educational resources on campaign strategy, community organising, digital campaigning and more. Based in Australia, they gather resources from around the world.
Podcasts
Bondcast brings together the latest insights and perspectives to broaden the conversation on global development and humanitarianism.
The Leadership Quest shares and unveils some of the thinking from the very best leaders out there.
This series includes nine fascinating people with diverse perspectives who discuss their views on a Collaborative Society, with Lord Victor Adebowale.
One episode about Power, Empowerment and Social Change, with Rosemary McGee & Jethro Pettit.
Brighter Futures is a group of active young migrants, who have been recording some podcasts on issues that affect them.
WADUP makes audio stories online with young people across the world.
The Resist+Renew podcast, where facilitators interview social movement organisers about their work and how they do it.
In this episode Daniel Edmiston explores the disconnect between relatively stable statistics on poverty in the UK and an increase in experiences of acute financial hardship around the country.
This episode looks at feminist leadership and ‘deep power structures’ within organizations.
This podcast explores creating participatory ideology for social justice. Peter Beresford also talks about his new book, Participatory Ideology, which you’ll find in the book section below.
Books
Radical Help by Hilary Cottam, 2018
‘Our welfare state might still catch us when we fall, but it cannot help us take flight.’ We love this book. It explores how the welfare state is not fit for purpose and proposes new ways of organising and supporting communities.
No Shortcuts: Organising for Power in the New Gilded Age, Jane McAlevey, 2016
No Shortcuts is about the decline of the union movement, the power of grassroots mass organising, and how anyone interested in social change can rebuild powerful movements at work, in communities and at the ballot box.
New Power, Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms, 2018
Heimans and Timms argue that ‘New power’ is behind the rise of platforms like Facebook and Uber, the out-of-nowhere victories of Trump and Obama, the unexpected emergence of movements like #MeToo, and what social movements can do to harness it.
Rules for Radicals, Saul Alinsky, 1971.
The bible for change-makers. Written in the 1970’s as an organiser’s manual. Still a great read today.
Taking Power Back by Simon Parker, 2015
‘Taking’ power, rather than waiting for it to be given, has been a key theme for the Power Sharing Project. Here, Parker considers this question through the lens of political and democratic power, arguing that the lack of faith in the UK political system lies in the centralisation of power in Westminster.
Change the World Without Taking Power by John Holloway, 2002
A different perspective heard on the Power Sharing Project is that some people are simply not comfortable with the notion of ‘taking power’. Holloway, a Marxist sociologist, argues that we’ve seen the transfer of ‘power over’ one group to another in revolutions throughout history, often with disastrous effect.
The Power Paradox by Dacher Keltner, 2017
How do we really gain and maintain power – through coercion or cooperation? What does it do to our behaviour? And what makes us lose power? Dacher Keltner turns everything we thought we knew about influence and status upside down, redefining power for our times.
Power, Poverty and Inequality by IDS, 2016
The focus here is on the ways in which invisible power helps perpetuate injustice and widen inequalities. There are recommendations for how to reverse the negative effects of invisible power through unsettling the normal and making visible the unacceptable.
A New Weave of Power, People & Politics by Lisa VeneKlasen with Valerie Miller, 2007
This guide provides some vital concepts and approaches to begin to reinject notions of power, citizenship, and human
rights into the increasingly sterile debates on participation and advocacy. You can read the introductory chapter here, and you’ll find chapter 3 in the ‘Reports and articles’ section above.
The Power Book: What is it, Who Has it and Why? by Claire Saunders, Georgia Amson-Bradshaw, Minna Salami, Mik Scarlet, Hazel Songhurst, 2019
With this inspiring and brightly illustrated guide to power, learn about the different types of power, what it means to have power, and what you can do with your own power to create positive change.
Narrative Power and Collective Action: Conversations with people working to change narratives for social good - Part 1 by Isabel Crabtree-Condor, 2020
Narratives are a form of power that can connect, as well as divide. Interested to know more? 20+ collaborators from across the world share their knowledge, tips, and tactics from their lived experience.
Narrative Power and Collective Action: Conversations with people working to change narratives for social good – Part 2, by Isabel Crabtree-Condor, 2020
See how creative minds are finding new ways to imagine alternative futures and bring them to life by owning who they are, speaking up, through storytelling and collective action.
Poverty by Ruth Lister, 2021
Poverty remains one of the most urgent issues of our time. In this fully updated edition of her important and widely acclaimed intervention on the topic, Ruth Lister introduces readers to the meaning and experience of poverty in the contemporary world.
How to Resist: Turn Protest to Power by Matthew Bolton, 2017
Matthew Bolton describes this book as for people who want to make a change but they’re not sure how. Maybe you’ve been on a march, posted your opinions on social media, but don’t feel like it’s making any difference.
We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: The Promise of Civic Renewal in America by Peter Levine, 2016
In a more American context, this is a primer for anyone motivated to help revive the fragile civic life and restore citizens’ public role.
Rules for Revolutionaries: How Big Organizing Can Change Everything by Becky Bond and Zack Exley, 2016
In a more American context, 22 rules of Big Organizing have been identified that can be used to drive social change movements of any kind. And they tell the inside story of one of the most amazing grassroots political campaigns ever run.
Awakening Democracy through Public Work: Pedagogies of Empowerment by Harry Boyte, 2018
Boyte’s book shows that we can free the productive powers of people to work across lines and differences to build a better society and create grounded hope for the future.
Participatory Ideology by Peter Beresford, 2021
This book examines the exclusionary nature of prevailing political ideologies. Bringing together theory, practice and the relationship between participation, political ideology and social welfare, it offers a detailed critique of how the crucial move to more participatory approaches may be achieved.
Power Sharing Project blogs and articles
The True Cost of Solidarity
In this long-read blog, Sarah Thomas, SMK’s Head of Power and Participation, challenges the sector to acknowledge - and invest in - the true cost of taking action to shift power and build greater solidarity in social change. SMK’s Power Project was a two-year...
Power and solidarity – a revolutionary idea in three acts
It’s been a long and complex journey, but the findings from the Power Project are clear. Social sector organisations must think differently about power to build solidarity for social change. Saul Alinsky, organiser and activist, suggested that for a revolution to be...
Power, lived experience and social change: the story so far
In this blog, Head of the Power Sharing Project Sarah Thomas reflects on the unexpected journey the project took and calls for a new conversation about power in civil society – one that will help people with personal experience of poverty and inequality harness their...