Over the last few months, Collaborate Out Loud CIC have had the privilege of acting as a Learning Partner alongside a place-based programme focused on supporting people experiencing economic inactivity.
While every place is unique, many of the lessons we uncovered will feel familiar to anyone working in employability, skills, health, public service reform, community development or systems change.
Most importantly, the work reinforced something we have seen time and time again. Real change happens when we stop asking how to get people into work and start asking what conditions make participation possible.
We don’t act as evaluators. We act as learning partners.
Traditional evaluation often happens at the end of a programme. Learning partnerships work differently. We work alongside places, communities, commissioners, delivery organisations and residents while activities are happening. We capture insight in real time, facilitate reflection, support collective sense-making and help partners understand both what is working and what is getting in the way. Our role is not simply to measure impact. It is to help a place understand itself better.
That means:
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- Listening to residents and practitioners
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- Capturing stories of change
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- Identifying patterns across projects
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- Spotting gaps and opportunities
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- Connecting learning between organisations
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- Challenging assumptions
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- Supporting reflection and adaptation
We often describe ourselves as a mixture of critical friend, storyteller, connector and system sense-maker. So, here is what we learnt on this particular piece.
People are not far from work
One of the strongest themes to emerge from the work was that many people are not “far from work”. They are far from the conditions that make work possible. Across different communities and projects we saw people navigating:
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- Poor physical and mental health
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- Caring responsibilities
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- Trauma
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- Digital exclusion
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- Language barriers
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- Housing insecurity
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- Financial stress
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- Loss of confidence and identity
When these realities are ignored, employability interventions struggle. When they are acknowledged and addressed, people often begin moving towards learning, volunteering, community participation and employment naturally.
Relationships are the intervention
Perhaps the most consistent lesson was that relationships drive change. People stayed engaged because someone listened. They returned after setbacks because someone remained alongside them. They took risks because someone believed in them. In many cases, what changed a person’s trajectory was not a course, a workshop or a referral. It was trust. The most successful approaches were built around consistency, flexibility and genuine human connection.
Progress is rarely linear
Systems often assume a simple journey, Engagement → Training → Employment Real life rarely follows that pattern. People move forwards, pause, step back, re-engage and try again. Health fluctuates. Life happens. Confidence grows gradually.
The programmes creating the deepest impact accepted this reality rather than fighting against it. They recognised that wellbeing, belonging, confidence and stability are not distractions from employment. They are often the foundations that make employment possible.
Identity matters more than we think
One of the most powerful findings was the importance of identity. Many people experiencing long-term economic inactivity described feeling:
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- Invisible
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- Left behind
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- Defined by what they couldn’t do
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- Disconnected from their skills and strengths
Some of the most significant changes occurred when people began to see themselves differently. When someone moves from, “I’m unemployed” to “I have something to contribute” , everything else becomes easier. Confidence, learning, volunteering and employment often followed.
Community organisations are essential infrastructure
We repeatedly saw the importance of community-rooted organisations. These organisations often:
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- Reach people that mainstream services struggle to engage
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- Hold deep community trust
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- Create culturally safe spaces
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- Adapt around people’s lives
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- Support whole-person journeys
Too often these organisations are seen as delivery partners. Our learning suggests they are something much more important. They are foundational community infrastructure.
Learning needs to become system learning
One of the reasons places commission learning partners is that valuable insights can easily remain trapped inside individual projects. Without deliberate learning processes:
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- Good ideas remain isolated
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- Innovation is repeated rather than shared
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- System barriers stay hidden
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- Opportunities for collaboration are missed
A learning partner helps turn project-level learning into system-level intelligence. The question shifts from, “Did this project work?” to “What is this teaching us about how change happens?” That is where the most valuable learning exists.
What we’ve learnt about being a Learning Partner
This work reinforced our belief that places do not need more reports sitting on shelves. They need spaces to reflect. They need honest conversations. They need mechanisms for capturing lived experience. They need opportunities to connect learning across organisations and sectors. Most of all, they need permission to learn while doing. Because meaningful change rarely emerges from perfect plans. It emerges from listening, adapting, reflecting and learning together.
So what?
The biggest lesson from this work is simple. Confidence comes before capability. Belonging comes before progression. Trust comes before transformation.
When places invest in the conditions that help people thrive, participation follows. And when places invest in learning, they become better able to create those conditions for everyone.
