The first Hull Poverty Truth Commission (HPTC) identified new pioneers, the community commissioners, who called for change in systems that did not meet their needs. They worked with their newfound unexpected allies, the civic commissioners, the people with some power and influence in decision-making who also saw the need for change. This process was supported by the facilitators, people from the voluntary sector consortium whose commitment, skills and experience created collaborative engagement between the two sets of commissioners to build trusted relationships to identify solutions.
Monthly meetings were held over two years, convened by the facilitators. Initially, community commissioners shared how they encountered stigma and unhelpful systems. During this time it became clear that civic commissioners were often frustrated by the constraints they felt when wanting to make changes.
During the project, the group met, shared, chatted, and built long-term relationships based on trust, commitment, and mutual respect between the community and civic commissioners, facilitators and us as evaluators, valuing everyone’s unique perspectives and contributions.
The results and changes were seen at all levels, individual, community, organisational, policy and system.
Dr Gill Hughes and Dr Juan Pablo Winter evaluated the unique two-year-long journey using Transformative Participatory Evaluation, built on the values of Participatory Action Research. Its foundations align with the ethos of the HPTC to amplify often unheard voices. Based on the approach of the HPTC and the Ideas Fund which operate a ‘flipped university model’ (Hughes and Knight 2023), with more equitable community-led approaches, the evaluators began to conceptualise how the elements fuse to create needs-led participatory practices, which shift power and work towards transformative systems change.