Timeline:

2020

• COVID emergency grants distributed via Unlimited Potential.
• Ubele Systems Leadership programme launches.
• GM SC core team creation: A new local team with lived experience is established, marking a shift in decision-making of budgets and strategic direction.
• RAPAR grant, first grant from GM SC core team, to support undocumented people in gm to share their stories of belonging and exclusion through COVID.

 

2021

• Spaces participatory grant-making and learning journey (PGM): Funding for  independent, creative spaces where women and young people, predominantly of colour, challenge systems of oppression, or reimagine, renew  and heal supportive communities.
• Spaces 6-month learning journey: Partners meet regularly to share insights and learn from each other.
• Culture Hack Labs & Whose Knowledge? 6-month learning lab for 25 creatives in GM focused on shifting narratives.
• Content partnership with The Meteor: a 9-month collaboration to amplify grassroots stories.
• Spaces follow-on funding: Extended and multi-year support for grassroots partners.
• Strategic shift: From systems change to solidarity with working-class women and young people, predominantly of colour.

–

This is part 2 of GM SC’s history, if you missed part 1, you can read it here.

In 2019, the groundwork laid by Lankelly Chase evolved into a new phase as they explored what devolving decision-making into local groups could look like. This led to the creation of Greater Manchester Systems Changers (GM SC) core team, and over the next two years, GM SC focused on a ‘power with’ rather than a ‘power over’ approach. The core team launched participatory grant-making programmes, cultivated a critical mass of, and critical connections between, grassroots groups, and established a structure that centred individuals, collectives and organisations of activists, artists, changemakers, and dreamers working towards Collective Liberation.

 

GM SC core team: A new approach  to grant-making (2020)

Lankelly Chase believed that “people closest to a complex situation should be free to use their initiative to engage and take responsibility for their own change.” 

And so, in 2020, the GM SC core team was assembled and launched at the start of lockdown. Invitations to join went to people deeply embedded within communities under-represented in Lankelly Chase’s existing place work and who were leading on social justice-related and anti-oppression work.

• Afshan D’souza-Lodhi is a shining light in anti-oppression and knowledge justice work and a leading creative practitioner both internationally and amongst the GM Queer creative scene.
• Rose Ssali is a wise leader in gender and racial justice, with hands-on experience in creating a network of women who provide culturally specific services for women from the African diaspora.
• Matt Kidd works tirelessly at the intersection of class, poverty and economic justice, bridging the world of SMD and systems change.
• Carrina Gaffney along with support from Karen Crompton and then Rachael Gibbons held the bridging roles between GM SC and Lankelly Chase who provided backbone infrastructure and links to the rest of Lankelly Chase’s work, such as the Ubele Systems Leadership programme.
• Paul Connery weaved together relationship building, connecting, facilitating, and learning, quietly bringing environmental justice and nature-based practices into the work.

Within the traumatic context of COVID-19, the team went through a deep and slow-paced 3month onboarding process held by Habiba Nabatu (Lankelly Chase) and Carrina. They met online every 2 weeks, exploring roles and tasks, designing decision-making and conflict resolution processes and learning frameworks. They identified shared and differing values, ultimately agreeing that Participation, Perspective and Power were still valuable guiding principles, both for their approach to the work and for envisioning what this work could look like. They also had a shared political analysis of being anti-colonial, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialism, anti-racist, anti-ableist, anti-misogynist, anti-transphobic, anti-homophobic and anti-classist. 

The core team also stated that they wanted to be temporary. They did not want to recreate the hierarchy, power and resource hoarding that exist within philanthropy because of a shared fundamental belief in justice over charity.  

With these awarenesses, and nowhere neatly as is described here (!), they made the collective decision to see if they could:

• Establish a self-organising and governing network of grassroots communities and organisations working towards Collective Liberation in Greater Manchester. 

To achieve this ‘mission’, the objectives were to:

• Generate a critical mass of changemakers.

• Create critical connections between these changemakers.

And the strategy to do this initially would be to:

• Redirect the flow of money and other resources towards marginalised grassroots communities and movement builders. 

This new focus was launched with Spaces: a participatory grant-making and learning programme.

 

Spaces: a Participatory Grant-Making and Learning programme.

To put the principle of “power with” into action, the core team designed the Spaces participatory grant-making (PGM) programme, which launched in November 2020. After three months of decision-making and due diligence, £250,000 was allocated in grants to support a critical mass of independent, creative ‘Spaces led by and for marginalised women and young people of colour (but not exclusively), where they could come together to either:

• Reveal, question, and dismantle systems that perpetuate harm.
• Or explore how to heal, reimagine and renew systems so that all people can live with dignity and opportunity in supportive communities. 

Grants of up to £8,000 were awarded, and recipients were invited to participate in a six-month learning journey. This was a vital component of the programme, helping to create a sense of community, mutual learning and solidarity between people.

Through Spaces, the core team put financial resources directly into the hands of communities to do the work they wanted to do, in ways they wanted to do it. The initiative marked a shift in focus, prioritising funding a critical mass and forming critical connections between people working and organising at the grassroots level.

 

Addressing the need for follow-on funding: scaling impact and sustaining growth

For many, Spaces was transformative for a few reasons. For some, it was the first time they’d received any funding, especially with very few restrictions. For all of them, it felt like a thoughtful, nurturing application process and communal learning space. As the Spaces groups spent more time together there were two clear requests. The first request was for additional, longer-term funding to sustain their work and their own well-being, and the second was to not be in competition with each other. 

Recognising these wants and needs, the core team made a case to Lankelly Chase for additional funding, which was granted in 2022. The core team designed the follow-on funding structure across three levels to meet the distinct needs of grassroots organisations and collectives working in social justice.

• Small grants up to £20,000 initially for one year: These provided “breathing space” and stability for small or often volunteer-led organisations like De Butterflies, Obado, and Safety For Sisters.
• Medium grants up to £40,000 per year for two years: To support emerging collectives and networks navigating systemic reform and youth engagement, such as 84 Youth, Elevate Young Minds and the Black Youth Forum, Roots, Wraparound Partnerships, and ZIWO.
• A few larger grants of between £50,000–£70,000 per year for two years: For organisations or collectives seeking to make systemic interventions or working on neighbourhood transformations (what would become Islands of Sanctuary), such as Rekindle and Wigan Northern Heart & Soul. In addition to core funding, Global Arts and Community Arts North West received funds to redistribute (commissioning budget) amongst their own network of artists experiencing marginalisation.

This follow-on funding reflected the core team’s mission and objectives to support a critical mass of grassroots changemakers, honouring collaboration and connection. By providing flexible core funding, it also offered a hint of financial sustainability, enabling organisations to rise on their own terms.

 

Culture Hack Labs and Whose Knowledge? Learning labs: shifting narratives for liberation

Building on the success of Spaces, the GM SC core team launched another learning lab in 2021 with Culture Hack Labs (CHL) and Whose Knowledge? (WK). Unlike many narrative collectives, CHL and WK are led mainly by women from the Global Majority in the Global South, and both initiatives appealed as they deliberately bypassed the often London-centric narrative sector. 

The aim was to create a local network of radical storytellers interested in learning the CHL and WK methodologies. Over 20 people gathered virtually for six months and learned how to “hack” Greater Manchester’s dominant narratives, amplify the voices of marginalised communities and create their own narrative interventions. 

On reflection, this lab might have come in too early in the history of GM SC as ‘we’ are only just learning what GM SC wants to become, let alone what narratives ‘we’ might want to ‘hack.’ However, the knowledge and relationships built through this lab now exist across GM and within an extensive global network of narrative changemakers, ready to support future initiatives as GM SC’s vision continues to evolve.

One outcome from the learning lab was an awareness that it felt important to amplify the transformational work happening amongst partners and across GM more broadly. This happened via a year-long content partnership with the independent media and news platform The Meteor.

 

A shift in strategy: In solidarity working towards Collective Liberation

In late 2021, the core team gathered to reflect on the insights from the Spaces PGM work and the Narratives learning lab. This sense-making session was guided by Manchester poet and facilitator Shamshad Khan, who helped the team analyse, feedback and assess the overall impact of the work. Through this process, they confirmed a commitment to move away from place-based systems change. Instead, focusing on supporting a network of grassroots organisations and collectives organising from a place of solidarity with working-class women and young people, predominantly of colour, towards Collective Liberation.

The team also recognised the need to strengthen the “critical connections” between partners as a key objective moving forward.

By shifting its approach, GM SC set the stage for a community-led model of justice and liberation in Greater Manchester, where resources flow directly to grassroots groups without the constraints of top-down funding models.

 

Reflections on 2020–2021: Moving from power over to power with

From the creation of GM SC in 2020 until the end of 2021, so much has been learnt. The first learning was that distributing resources directly to grassroots organisations and collectives works. Devolving power to people who have both, lived experiences of oppression, and are deeply connected to their communities, creates meaningful connections with others doing life-affirming work. And this work builds alternatives to harmful systems.

Another learning is that people on the margins, especially those involved in creative work, rarely receive funding or opportunities to connect with each other. By supporting them, the GM SC core team created a critical mass of changemakers, nurturing connections that alleviated the isolation, burnout, and stress often felt by those at the forefront of this work. This experience strengthened the groups commitment to justice, solidarity, and collective liberation, reinforcing the importance of supporting and sharing power with people working in community.