Intentional Collaboration with Lived Expertise - Power, Bias, and Systems Change

Introduction

People who live the realities of community change every day, also hold critical knowledge that cannot be found in reports, policies, or professional training. Lived and living experience is a key form of expertise in collective change efforts - one that reveals how systems are encountered, where barriers persist, and what meaningful change looks like in practice. This workshop explores how we can move together beyond consultation toward authentic partnership, recognizing lived expertise as an essential contributor to learning, decision-making, and sustainable systems change.

This workshop helps participants learn effective, best practices for collaborating intentionally with people who bring lived and living experience to their work. Instead of treating lived expertise as a checkbox, we focus on equitable partnership, centring power sharing, removing systemic barriers, noticing bias, and using futuring principles to guide systems change that’s grounded, accountable, and sustainable.

Are you a program leaders, facilitators, researchers, designers, practitioners, community-based organizations, or a funder working on initiatives that require authentic partnership and meaningful shared authority? This workshop is for you!

key learning objectives