“I was fortunate to attend a recent Ideas Alliance learning event where I got to listen to the very brilliant Katie Fleeman from Liverpool Combined Authority. Katie is leading a very grounded, relational approach to change working with homelessness commissioners from across the city region.
Here are some of Katie’s gems of wisdom together with some insights from me.”
– Kath Smythe
Ideas Alliance is turning 10 years old, and to celebrate we’re hosting The Ember Sessions: Gathering, connecting, hope. We’d love for you to join us!
It’s a day of free online sessions covering topics like commissioning and alliance contracting; appreciating tension and conflict with appreciative inquiry; commissioning for place; and the power of people in co-production.
Our Director Helen Sharp reflects on her early experiences with commissioning, and how she came to the realisation that things needed to be done differently.
“Overnight, our commissioning came to life – it sprung out from the spreadsheet, it demanded creativity and fresh ideas and it challenged us at every step as we continually asked ourselves ‘why have we been doing it this way?’”
Oldham Positive Action Network had been doing a great job at co-production through trial and error. They had built a group of fifteen local lived experience advisers, and had been running community conversations and testing a range of workshop formats. They just needed some help with the structure.
Ideas Alliance’s Kerry Bertram worked with them through a series of online and in-person coaching sessions. Here’s how it went.
We’ve been asking our Associates to share their best work mistakes. It’s been wonderful to see so many insightful stories coming from initial moments of “oops”!
This wonderful reflection from Amelia Wakeford is a great example of how a small, human mistake can open up something much bigger – shifting relationships and reshaping how people work together.
This piece was written by Dr Jody Aked, an associate of Ideas Alliance, drawing on her work alongside communities and local government across the UK. She reflects on the often unspoken cultural divides between community and local government that shape how collaboration does and does not happen.
We asked a few of the people we’ve been working alongside this year to share their joyful moments from 2025. Not necessarily their major achievements, just some of the positive bits that stayed with them. Reading their stories has reminded us how much good rises out of simple conversations, shared tables, lively workshops and teams who look out for each other.
Everyone wants to involve people more deeply in shaping decisions that affect them. It’s now widely recognised as the right thing to do. But for many councils and organisations, participation still feels unmanageable. That’s why we created Participation Labs – a practical way for organisations to build the skill and confidence to make participation a normal and embedded part of how they work.
How can councils really hear from their residents – not just the loudest voices, but everyone? With Thriving Together, we mixed online and offline ways of listening to help build stronger connections with local people and find out what matters most to them.
