For many years Lankelly was known for two things: severe and multiple disadvantage, and systems change.

We were keen to build the capabilities of people and organisations within the field of severe and multiple disadvantage so that they could analyse, change and disrupt systems using the ideas and methodologies we had become interested in.

We knew that that taking a systemic approach was significantly different to business as usual in the field at the time. We knew from experience that it could feel exhilarating, freeing and personally challenging all at once, and could require people to let go of long-held assumptions. It could even be painful, as people realised they had been working in ways which might actually have inhibited positive change.

At the time we said: “As system change is an embryonic field, there aren’t the accepted approaches that there are in the field of social innovation for example… Agencies and individuals struggle to think systemically or to think beyond the current established paradigm. We need to build people’s capacity to think systemically as well as have a range of different ways to enable people and organisations to collectively arrive at different solutions – methods that place as much value on the process as the end result”.

We thought about the role we could play to support people through the process of adopting these ideas and practices. We were quite evangelical about this, and felt confident we could do it well, based on the success of our Systems Changers programme for frontline practitioners.

It didn’t occur to us at the beginning that our own assumptions about the direction of this work, and the premise on which it was built, would themselves be challenged. The evolution of this work into the movements strategy ties in closely with the organisation’s awakening around white supremacy and racial justice.

New colleagues who joined Lankelly to lead this work almost immediately raised the issue that “the people in this field were largely well-educated, white, had a predominantly global north knowledge base and spoke a language that excluded those who were not part of the field”.

The field felt exclusive, and Lankelly’s role was recognised to be problematic: “the framing of ‘building the field’ was closely enmeshed with issues of power and… that showed up in the way we spoke – e.g. ‘spreading’ the know-how, making tools more ‘accessible’ and ‘democratising’ the field”. 

Colleagues leading this work moved to decentre Lankelly – instead of positioning us as the convenor and the strategic lead, the focus moved to Lankelly supporting existing networks and organisers who had existing relationships.

In some respects this moved us back into more conventional funder territory, and out of the ‘funder-protagonist’ role – at least in this part of our work. (We held both roles for a while – with the place work exemplifying the entangled funder-protagonist role). 

So by 2020, the work that had started as ‘building the field of systems change’ had  become a journey into unpicking the potential of networks and networked activities to create a critical mass of people working to change systems. 

This included exploration of different methodologies around convening and network organising, including resourcing a book about systems convening by Bev and Etienne Wenger (co-funded with the Centre for Public Impact and the RSA).

The global context of 2020 dramatically affected the development of the work – from the impact of the pandemic to the conversations around racial justice and inequity. 

The potential of transformative networks both in the mutual aid space and the racial justice organising space (and the intersections between these) became abundantly clear. During this time of crisis, we learnt a lot from who had been instrumental to disruption and about what equitable leadership within networks looks like. We noted the importance of certain characteristics within networks, including close proximity to the issue, the vital role played by network ‘nodes’, and the clustering of activists with shared values. This led to questions about how such organisations were resourced, nurtured and supported before, during and after the crisis. 

By this point Lankelly Chase had also been on a journey. Instead of our mission being to ‘change the systems that perpetuate severe and multiple disadvantage’ we were framing our work as as ‘tackling systems of injustice and oppression’. 

It was a short step from here to thinking about movements as, essentially, networks that are already transformative in their vision and nature and focused on change, transformation and disruption. An inquiry into how anti-oppressive movements can be resourced in a way that is equitable and enabling began, with field experts recruited to lead it.