Place-based & systemic change

Shift power and perspectives for sustainable change.

Lots of funding, policy, research, and current practice is designed and structured to focus on issues (homelessness, offending, public health) or cohorts (unemployed people, refugees, young people). That’s a problem if you really want address root causes to drive inclusive, sustainable change.

We use place and systems change approaches to boundary complex problems and identify:

the root causes specific to a problem in a place or system
the way people are experiencing that problem
other relevant people and organisations in the place or system that can help solve the problem.

How we can help

“Our partnership with Renaisi has helped us breakdown systems change into accessible language and supported our women’s networks to articulate what change could look like. We welcome ongoing adaptations and look forward to continuing this work!”
Smallwood Trust

Our team can help you build the capacity to deliver, learn about or evaluate place-based and systemic change. We can also facilitate the change alongside you.

Our expertise is grounded in practical experience of people and places. We have delivered multi-sector initiatives, facilitated learning and built the capacity of organisations doing place-based or systemic work, and evaluated that change.

We recognise that place-based and systemic work is innovative, long-term and complex, and that it often starts with one or two pioneers. We act as a bridge between those pioneers and the people that need to be persuaded to buy into change.

Our bespoke and cutting approach, usually involves six phases:

Understanding the unique context of the place or system
Intention setting to build a shared vision for change
Connecting and developing equitable relationships
Testing the approach and adapting to suit local or system needs
Delivering, facilitating or advising on the change you want to make
Ensuring a legacy that supports continued growth

A tool for systemic change

We believe there are three elements needed to create systemic change for an issue or a place.

We’ve learnt that each of these things is integral to making meaningful and lasting change, but that alone none of these are sufficient. You don’t have to do it all at once – any of these elements could be a good starting point (or next step) for an individual, organisation, partnership or system.

Those elements and how we can help you achieve them are listed here:

Deep and active collaboration	Understanding the system and your role in it	Changing what’s valued and accepted
We can help you:	We can help you:	We can help you:
Bring people in a system together	With training and coaching in systems thinking	Reflect on whose voices are heard in a system.
Map a system to understand how it’s working	Root cause mapping and analysis	Create safe spaces to bring the system together and enable different voices to be heard
Develop collaborative strategies for change	Power mapping and analysis	Understand and analyse the narratives currently held – and intentionally shift these
Develop tools for collaborative learning	Analyse the existing work in your system	Plan new models for power and governance
Develop and implement learning frameworks	Causal loop mapping and understanding system incentives	Codify the changes
	Work with power and injustice specialists to understand embedded causes of systemic issues