Centre for Knowledge Equity

Driven by equity, evolving through knowledge

Uniting lived, learned and practice experience to create the wisdom necessary to solve the social, economic and environmental challenges of our time.

Knowledge Gears

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What
We Do

Alongside our vast network of lived experience leaders, the Centre for Knowledge Equity invigorates and connects human wisdom and leadership to catalyse transformational change.
Network Development

Network Development

We are facilitating the emergence of diverse and intersectional networks, coalitions and movements as they develop radical collaborations for positive change.

Leadership Development

Leadership Development

We design and support a range of leadership development programs that elevate LEx Leaders and their organisations to strengthen their social impact work.

Partnerships and Collaborations

Partnerships and Collaborations

We develop dynamic partnerships across sectors, industries, communities and institutions to allow all forms of knowledge and wisdom to flourish.

Research Learning

Research & Learning

We are driving core ideas and understanding of knowledge equity across academic disciplines.

Innovation & Design

Innovation & Design

We support brave and bold organisations determined to embrace equity as a core driver of their future work, including working with funders and impact investors.

Imagination Observatory

Imagination Observatory

We connect wisdom and creativity from across our networks to reimagine systems in an ever-evolving world, forging new ideas and visions for the future.

About Us

LEX logo

Our Centre is home to the Lived Experience Leaders Movement (also known as LEx Movement): a network connecting, supporting and strengthening the capacity of LEx Leaders to create systems-level change, helping all our communities thrive.

LEx Movement now has over 880 members and has become a vibrant, resilient, and culturally diverse community made up of individuals, organisations and coalitions working across the UK. It is fast evolving into a movement of movements.

Join Us

Some of our Partnership Programmes

Lived Experience Leaders Movement

LEX logo
Lived Experience Leaders Movement (LEx Movement)

Our Centre is a radical new space for new ideas and collaborations to emerge and thrive. We move knowledge equity into action by working in partnership with LEx leaders, LEx-led organisations, and coalitions to generate innovative funding, learning, collaboration, and network development activities. Leaders, innovators, activists and more – who are designing and leading inspiring new ways of being, doing, and renewing the world we inhabit.

Knowledge Equity Fellowship

SCSE-logo
Knowledge Equity Fellowship

A ground-breaking new programme designed in partnership with the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, Said Business School, University of Oxford – to transform the systems change entrepreneurial field. Launched in October 2020, the programme is an innovative way in which business schools can attend to issues of equity, diversity and inclusion by connecting traditional learned and technical knowledge with lived experience – the knowledge of those directly impacted by unjust and inequitable systems.

2027 Programme

2027 Programme
2027 Programme
With our partners Ten Years Time, Koreo and Northern Soul, we bring foundations and working-class communities closer together to improve decision-making in the UK philanthropic sector. At the heart of 2027 is a yearlong paid placement for talented frontline workers from working-class communities at a leading foundation or trust, running alongside a blended personal development programme.

2027 is a 12-month, salaried job and professional development programme, which gives talented people from working-class communities the tools to integrate and activate their leadership qualities in the UK’s funding sector. We want to help shift power so people with lived, learnt and practice experience can help funders make better and fairer decisions about where their funding goes.

National Leadership Programmes

Clore Social Leadership
National Leadership Programmes

Senior and experienced LEx leaders from across our network integrate lived, learned and practise expertise to lead their social impact work. Through our collective leadership model, we work in partnership with Clore Social Leadership Programme to co-create and co-deliver programmes for social leaders working across social sector spaces. Our summer 2020 programme reached over 150 social leaders in the Migrant & Refugee sector responding to COVID-19, including over 100 LEx leaders. And in early October 2020, we commissioned and launched a programme for 100 LEx leaders working across the UK Criminal Justice Sector.

Challenge and Change Fund

Challenge and Change The Blagrave Trust
The Challenge and Change Fund

Working in partnership with The Blagrave Trust and a group of inspiring Young Advisers: Daze Aghaji, Jovan Nepaul and Chloe Deakin, we supported the design and development of the ambitious Challenge and Change Fund – aimed entirely at funding young people activating their experiences to challenge injustices in their communities, across the UK and the wider world. Our Centre continues to walk alongside the Blagrave Trust, its Advisers, and new and emerging partners on this exciting journey. To capture learning; support the systems change capacity of partners; and support the development of the Challenge and Change Network led by and for young change-makers.

Leaders with Lived Experience fund 2020

Community Fund
Lived Experience Leaders Fund

Members of our team have supported the design and development of the leaders with lived experience fund launched by a committed team at The National Lottery Community Fund. Established as a pilot in 2019, the fund is now in its second year supporting lived experience leadership. The 2020 Fund will support lived experience leadership to ensure lived experience plays a key role in shaping how communities move towards recovery and renewal in a post-COVID19 world. We continue to walk alongside grantee partners and TNLCF as a learning partner as part of a LEx research collective at EP:IC.

Hear from some of our partners

"We have been working with the Centre for Knowledge Equity during the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, and with their insight we have been able to strengthen our social impact, harnessing lived experience innovation and using an equity lens to guide our emergency response work, operations and business development. The CFKE team have been knowledgeable, inspirational and visionary."

Darren Davey, Managing Director. Second City Housing

"The Centre have generously and graciously worked with us to help launch the first Acumen Fellows programme in the UK. Their honest advise and trusted relationships have enabled us to reach lived experienced leaders from across the country. It is so rare to find a partner who has the audacity to think BIG and imagine the world as could be, whilst being grounded in deep humility and compassion."

Benjamin Lane, Acumen Academy UK

"The Centre have been an exceptional partner to us this year.  Their thought leadership and wide-ranging advice has helped us advance our work on inclusive and equitable funding practices.  They have hugely strengthened our understanding and thinking on the youth led change strand of our work as we partner together on the Challenge and Change programme. "

Jo Wells, CEO of the Blagrave Trust

"We were inspired by your work and your wisdom. You simultaneously pushed us to realize our potential for positive impact while reminding us to remain humble, grounded, and connected to those on the front lines."

2020 Leading for Impact student cohort, Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, University of Oxford

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