Category

• Promising Local Practice

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Poverty impact

• Prevention
• Mitigation
• Reduction
• Awareness

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Poverty driver

• Provide benefit in-kind (experience)
• Increase income from benefits
• Increase employment income
• Non-driver - improving quality of life

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Keywords

• Legislative Theatre
• Influencing policy makers
• Culture shift
• Co-facilitation
• Lived experience

Aim

To co-design and co-deliver legislative theatre workshops with people with lived experience across four food banks in the UK. The results of which would inform the Hunger in the UK report which would be used to inform and influence policy makers and guide Trussell Trust strategy.

Summary

Changing the Rules initially comprised four participatory policy-development workshops that took place across the UK in 2022/23. The workshops were collaboratively designed in an intensive session in Manchester in October 2022. This was facilitated by Legislative and Forum Theatre practitioners, respectively - Katy Rubin and Dan Boyden, and co-facilitators from Together for Change, a panel of lived experience citizens working with Trussell Trust. Thereafter four workshops were conducted in food banks across the UK which gathered data for Hunger in the UK.

What difference does it make?

This project is influential to both those who are making UK poverty policy, as well as to the attitudes within Trussell Trust towards co-producing research. As a result of the project, other actors within the organisation adopted more favourable attitudes towards co-producing research. The produced report is also a valuable source of information on poverty for UK decision-makers, and effectively brings participatory methods into research aiming to influence poverty policy.

Key take-aways

• Working in a co-production is a more equitable process.
• Using creative processes such as Legislative Theatre involves people with lived experience to be part of the solution.
• To take the time to build relationships with practitioners and people with lived experience so they can become involved at the very start of a project. Ensuring the budget for this is essential.

 

Organisations

Trussell Trust with Katy Rubin and Dan Boyden.

Location

This first wave of Changing the Rules took place in food banks across the UK, namely Derry, Newport, Kirkintilloch and with a final hybrid workshop in London bringing together some of the participants from across the UK.

This first wave of Changing the Rules ran from October 2022 to January 2023. The second wave is in planning. Changing the Rules could run for up to 4 years with sufficient funding.

Contact