World-leading experts gather to explore new tools to tackle shared political and social challenges

One week after the start of a fraught COP29, two weeks after the US election results, and three weeks after a difficult and fiscally constrained budget, we brought together world-leading expertise, community groups, campaigners, researchers and political leaders to learn from each other here at the UCL Policy Lab.

UCL Policy Lab’s Ecosystem Project develops new tools for speaking across difference, helping social change leaders of all kinds ground politics in the lives and experiences of ordinary people.

The project is building a world-leading centre to explore and understand how political and social ecosystems work and why they matter. It is allowing us to understand anew this connective tissue that connects politics with the people and ideas needed to tackle our biggest shared challenges. 

As we saw in the US election, our politics remains deeply polarised, with core ideas around democratic norms and institutions contested against the backdrop of mistrust driven by a perceived lack of respect from our political institutions and leaders.

We were delighted to host the world-renowned expert in social change and political strategy, Professor Hahrie Han. As Director of the Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, a multi-million-dollar initiative to enhance democratic politics, Han has developed new ways of understanding how activists and community-based campaigners can play a major role in restoring faith in politics. Han shared learnings from her new book, Undivided, and discussed how churches and other social organisations are seeking to tackle the most formidable political divisions of class and racial justice.   

At a packed workshop at UCL East, leading campaigners and organisers, civil society leaders, trade unionists, and academics heard from Han as she set out an action-based, place-based approach to community organising. Han’s talk provided an essential springboard for group discussions. These included how to organise with those we differ from, respecting the contribution of all, and seeing disagreement as an opportunity to learn, grow, and transform rather than a marker of irreconcilable division.

This theme was central to a dinner discussion with Han and some of the country’s most senior leaders in politics, campaigning, advocacy, and civil society. Over the evening, we heard perspectives from the political world, exploring how to rebuild deep-rooted and communal coalitions to improve the lives of ordinary Britain.

The Ecosystem Project also offers a space for leaders to move from reflection to action.  In this same week, we brought together leading figures from across the children and young people policy and advocacy sector to investigate together how best to deliver expanded opportunities for Britain’s youth. Drawing on the latest polling evidence of public attitudes from More In Common and Labour Together, the group discussed how to incorporate these opinions into their immediate work while exploring medium and long-term strategies to shift views and open new policy opportunities.

Across all these events, the power of an ecosystem approach was evident. Institutional children’s charities learnt from innovative campaign agencies how they might strengthen the voices of children and young people in our politics. Think tank researchers learnt from community organisers about grassroots civic participation. UK activists learnt lessons from the successes and failures of approaches in the US and globally.

Perhaps most importantly, everyone involved was able to share learning and demarcate their different, at times complementary, roles in pushing for social change, building resilient relationships of trust and constructive challenge. It is providing this space that makes the ecosystem so essential.  

In sectors with tight deadlines, strict budgets and stretched workforces, we provided a moment to step back, reflect, and discuss proactively what a better approach to social change and working together might look like.

As this week of events shows, it is only through convening across networks of ecosystems that we can build the movements that will help foster ordinary hope in communities across Britain and deliver a politics of genuine respect for all.