Learn about how The Ubele Initiative partnered with Reos Partners and Impact on Urban Health to facilitate a unique social labs process that explored participatory grantmaking with Black communities in the UK.
In seeking to explore funding, power and participatory grantmaking with Black communities, Impact on Urban Health (IoUH) initiated a process that engaged a group of community leaders in a participatory process focused on the shared challenge of safety (lack of) for Black and racially minoritised communities in Lambeth and Southwark.
The process, termed ‘The Black Systemic Safety Fund’ was designed and facilitated by The Ubele Initiative and Reos Partners using a social lab approach. It consisted of six workshops, with participant-led learning journeys, prototyping sessions, and reflective interviews in between. The overall process took 18 months and spanned from July 2022 to December 2023.
Given the historical and ongoing marginalisation and systemic inequities faced by Black and racially minoritised communities, it was particularly important to assess the applicability and usefulness of these methods within minoritised communities.
By understanding how to best adapt methods we can work towards cultivating an environment conducive to the thriving of Black and racially minoritised communities and experts in such settings. This entails understanding how methods should be adapted and tailored to better suit their needs.
What does Black led systems change look like? What value might it bring to consider such an approach? Systems change efforts can be complex and challenging. It is therefore crucial to gain a deeper understanding of how to effectively facilitate change.
The Black Systemic Safety Fund adopted the social labs approach. A social lab is an experimental process that brings together diverse stakeholders to tackle a complex social issue. Since the majority of local community experts were themselves Black and racially minoritised, the social lab process differed somewhat from other labs run by Reos Partners, and was adapted to meet the needs of a Black-led systems change initiative. For this particular process, facilitators adopted a series of participatory methods which centred on the use of music, art, play and creativity as a means of moving through ‘stuck problems’.
Core to the initiative has been an emphasis on centring Black and racially minoritised community leaders as experts in thinking about and addressing systemic challenges. The Black community leaders were compensated for their insights, expertise and engagement with the Systemic Safety Fund process, and then given a further £500K directly to collectively develop and resource a range of interconnected prototypes, solutions and initiatives aimed at tackling the systemic barriers to safety within their local communities.
In a short report series, we highlight key insights relating to three specific focus areas, ‘Safety’, ‘Funding, Power and Participatory Grantmaking’, and ‘Processes for Black Led Systems Change’. In the reports, we share what we learned about these various topics, and what questions can help guide future processes.
01. Processes for Black Led Systems Change
02. Exploring Funding, Power and Participatory Grantmaking
03. Safety (Coming Soon)
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