In detail: our new strategy and name

Introducing our new name: People’s Economy

At the launch event for our new five year strategy, we announced our upcoming name change.

As our work has evolved, people and communities have remained central to our strategy and vision. This has prompted necessary reflection on everything from our goals and theory of change to internal practices and, ultimately, our public brand.

The move from Economy to People’s Economy is about making those goals transparent.

People’s Economy reflects not just what we’re working towards but how we plan to get there — by building power, agency and vision with communities and changemakers across the UK.

Over the coming months you’ll see the new name and refreshed brand rolled out — watch this space.

We’re grateful to everyone who took part in the year-long process to build our new strategy, including past participants, old and new partners, our community ambassadors, staff and trustees.

Embedding Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-Oppression

Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-Oppression Policy is central to our work. We have a policy that publicly sets out how we will work towards our aims of diversity of thought, consensus of purpose, challenging injustice and taking an intersectional approach to dismantling structural oppression.

Our new five year strategy, ‘Communities Leading Change’ answers the question: How can communities across the UK work to build collective power to transform the economy?

It sets out our vision for a democratic, equitable and liveable economy where communities can meet their needs and priorities. It outlines how we plan to make it happen through scaling up our community education on the economy and working in solidarity with people facing economic injustice to create a stronger movement for justice and change.

We see the huge potential to build power with people experiencing economic injustice who are working to create social, political and cultural change but not connecting it to the economy. In five years, we aim to have worked with ten thousand people in communities experiencing injustice across the country to connect what matters to them to the need for economic system change.

Our theory of change sets out our path to achieving this in a way that aligns with our values of collaboration and building power among those affected by economic injustice.

Three strands of work

Our strategy brings together three areas of work:

1: Build deep, long term relationships with communities experiencing economic injustice and work together to achieve economic change

We will develop our outreach and engagement with people or groups who are experiencing economic injustice and working towards change in their communities (we call them ‘changemakers’), facilitate deep learning journeys which are codesigned and responsive to their needs, and build stronger connections between them as well as others within civil society, through communities of practice and regional alliances.

2: Remove barriers and create routes into economic change work for communities experiencing injustice

We will develop demonstration examples of the change we want to see, working with partners in target sectors to develop and test practices for improved public participation and leadership, and build a decentralised community media infrastructure to facilitate changemakers creating multimedia content to become an authentic and trusted public voice on the economy.

3: Invest in the sustainable development of Economy to scale our impact and live our values

We will build the infrastructure and culture we need to deliver our strategy with effectiveness and impact, and in full alignment with our values. We will prioritise organisational development in participatory governance, diversity, inclusion and anti-oppression, monitoring, evaluation and learning, and capacity, resilience and financial stability.

Anything else you need to know?

We’d love to hear about anything in our strategy that resonates with you and explore ways to work together. If you would like to chat about how our work could connect with or support yours, please reach out to our Head of Community, Jo Hiley at jo.hiley@ecnmy.org to set up a time.