Co-creating policy solutions to end the need for food banks

In June, Trussell hosted a participatory democracy event that explored opportunities for policy change to help end the need for food banks. 

What is legislative theatre?

Legislative theatre is an innovative, human rights-based method of participatory democracy where a variety of people come together to make change. 

The event was attended by food bank staff and volunteers, people with their own experience of seeking support from a food bank, and colleagues from across the anti-poverty sector.

What happened at the event?

The audience watched an insightful play created and performed by a team of people with lived experience of using a food bank. The play was based entirely on the group’s experiences of housing, social security and barriers to work and found humour and community in some difficult situations.

After the play, the audience were invited on stage to create their own solutions to the problems presented and test new policies in real time or write down any other policy solutions they had for each area.

What were the outcomes?

Representatives from Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Independent Food Aid Network, Southwark Council, Shelter and Trussell all formed part of a policy team who helped sort and group the policy ideas generated. Each member of the policy team then made a commitment to help take the ideas forward and bring about real change on these crucial issues. 

The commitments included ensuring that these co-created policy ideas were shared with new and re-elected MPs in post-election briefings. The team also committed to discussing the proposals in meetings with Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) officials, as well as acting where they could to bring council services back into community settings to make them more effective and accessible for the people who need them. 

This performance and the co-created policy ideas will continue to inform Trussell’s policy influencing and campaigning work to help end the need for food banks. 

Find out more

Read the report from the first wave of this project.

If you'd like to find out more about this type of research and our findings, please get in touch with our research team.

Trussell would like to thank Flora and the participants from Pecan community charity, as well as the facilitators Katy Rubin, Dan Boyden, Laura Braddock and John Kempton.