Lived experience leadership, the third sector and the power imbalance quandary

Rhiannon Griffiths, Managing Director of Comics Youth, explains what our Leaders with Lived Experience Pilot Programme means to her organisation, and how that relates to her own experience of power dynamics in the sector. She believes that the ability to shape and drive change should rest with those with a personal understanding of the difference that’s needed - namely those with lived experience of social issues - as people in traditional positions of authority are rarely best placed to address an imbalance of power.

Power dynamics are an ever-present issue in the third sector. In my experience of progressing through numerous support services in my youth, I found it extremely frustrating to see people in power continuously make decisions without the first-hand knowledge or experience to do so. I also found it difficult to form relationships with people in power as they couldn’t quite grasp who I was as a person or what I had been through. To this day it baffles me how those without the necessary knowledge or lived experience can claim to know what’s best for those truly in need of support and furthest away from power.

This lack of lived experience representation in positions of power is something we at Comics Youth have found in our work with youth organisations over the years, with youth voice and participation becoming increasingly tokenistic. There’s a deep-rooted sense of apathy within the sector, and a fear of changing and adapting service models to better suit the progressive nature of today’s society.

At Comics Youth, we support marginalised and disadvantaged children through comics-focused activities. We work with young people experiencing chronic illness, depression, anxiety and low self-esteem, through workshops, one-to-one graphic narrative sessions and drop-ins. In setting up the organisation, I aimed to provide a way to impart my knowledge and experience of self-regulation and resilience to young people struggling in their own difficult journeys, and to provide young people with a platform to challenge the stigma that surrounds their identities.

Extended sector-wide, this could be an approach that holds the key to changing and modernising the way power is distributed. We don’t just want to be told that lived experience leaders of the future have the power to enact change; we want to see it happen. I would love to see more young people on boards of directors or serving as trustees. Young people are active, politically charged and socially aware; we need to listen to them and provide opportunities for them to step up and serve.

In pursuit of that goal, we successfully applied to The National Lottery Community Fund’s Leaders with Lived Experience Pilot Programme. Although the third sector as a whole exists to stop injustice and create good, a lot of funding programmes fail to offer people who have direct first-hand experience of social issues the opportunity to solve them. For this reason, we’re hopeful that the lived experience programme will spark a radical change, allowing us to come together with critical thinking, constructive ideas, and pure hearts; to acknowledge where systems are failing and how we can prop them up by reference to our lived experience.

National Lottery funding is going to enable us to kick-start the first young person-led publishing house of its kind in the UK called Marginal. Here, young people aged eight to 25 with lived experience of complex trauma, mental health issues and marginalisation will have the opportunity to flourish and have their voices heard by professionally designing, curating and mass printing stories about the way the world sees them. We will train and support 15-20 young people to become leaders and publishers of the future, and we’re excited to see where they go from here.

In terms of what success will look like for this project, there are two viewpoints: what we want to achieve for our young people and organisation, and the change we’d like to spark across the sector.

Success is our young people having their voices heard, and, long-term, our dream is to up-skill them to take ownership of Comics Youth. I don’t want to be in charge in five to 10 years’ time; I want to see our young people take over. Through Marginal, I’d like them to learn about governance, finance, management and business development, with the goal of taking control of the organisation.

By publishing comics made by young people, we want to open a wider dialogue and narrative around lived experience in today’s society. I want to see those involved in the project drive system-level change, influence policy and create their own wonderful worlds at the same time as building the first young people-owned publisher that’s financially healthy and sustainable.

It’s time to acknowledge the pain and distress that can be caused by an imbalance of power, not only to individuals, but also to organisations who remain stuck in outdated or out-of-touch routines. I’m ecstatic that our young people will have the opportunity to speak the truth to power and lead this change. We can only hope the wider sector will stand up and take note of the importance of empowering those with lived experience to truly be people in the lead.