Case Study: Shifting power in policy-making

Name of project: Legislative Theatre

Led by: Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA), with Katy Rubin, Legislative Theatre Practitioner

Summary: Through legislative theatre the GMCA and people with experience of homelessness co-created the Greater Manchester Homelessness Prevention Strategy which guides practice and spending across 10 local authorities, with over 2.8 million residents combined.

The approach: In a drive to embed co-production into its policy and decision-making ecosystems, the Greater Manchester Combined Authority commissioned, and collaborated on, several legislative theatre projects which placed those with lived experience of homelessness at their heart.

The detail: Thirty-five residents came together to create original plays based on their experiences of homelessness services. This creative process, including games, dialogue and scene development, was also facilitated by people with experience of homelessness. The group developed three plays exploring ‘Multiple Disadvantage’, ‘Funding and Commissioning’, and 'Structural Racism in Housing and Homelessness Services'. These were performed in front of a total of 300 audience members, including people with experience of homelessness, front-line staff, local officers and elected officials, advocates and residents. Becoming ‘spect-actors’, audience members were invited to suggest solutions to the problems presented in the plays. The suggested solutions were trialled by running through the relevant scene again with their modification. This process was repeated several times, after which the actors and audience discussed the merits and possible issues of the solutions presented in the performances. During this phase, called the ‘forum’, the solutions were developed into more concrete policy suggestions and voted on by the audience to determine popular preference.

After the performances, the actors, facilitators, and key decision-makers came together to make the policy suggestions as clear, focused, and actionable as possible. Overall, more than twenty proposals gathered through the project were included in the strategy. These focused on a wide range of issues, including harm reduction and dealing with traumatic experiences, relationship building and co-operation, joint commissioning, valuing lived experience, and inclusivity.

This project subsequently won the International Observatory on Participatory Democracy 2022 Award for Best Practice in Citizen Participation.

Challenges: Pre-existing personal and institutional networks were used to bring together people from a wide range of communities who could lend their personal experience and expertise to the process. This had many positive elements - the project relied on relationships built between and through the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, Street Support, Greater Manchester Homelessness Action Network, Mustard Tree, Elephants Trail. However whilst the legislative theatre process helped nurture and deepen these connections, it was not best placed to gather voices from unconnected communities within the time-frame. Allowing extended periods for participant recruitment has been recommended for future projects.

Top lessons:

Creative methods can help level the power playing field - Legislative Theatre dispenses with the safety of taken-for-granted organisational and bureaucratic roles, meanings and practices. It also demystifies the mechanisms and language through which decisions are made and implemented. Ultimately this helps level the power playing field and break down some of the barriers for people with lived experience in policy-making spaces.

Sources: