Citizen Leadership Stories & Learning — IMPACT Network

Story and experience-gathering online sessions (2025).

We were commissioned by the IMPACT Network to capture and share new learning on citizen leadership from across the UK. We aimed to gather stories about citizen leadership and use them as a resource to inform the network’s discussions and overall learning.

We worked with a diverse group of people from across the UK, including carers, disabled people, older people, activists and professionals. We captured 10 in-depth stories exploring what citizen leadership looks like in real life. Each story was individually reviewed and carefully summarised to ensure the learning was accessible and useful.

The final written report brought the voices together and highlighted key learning across all ten stories. The report explored:

• What citizen leadership means in practice
• Who takes it on
• What helps it flourish
• What gets in the way
• The concerns that must be addressed if it is to grow and thrive

A central message was that citizen leadership is not a neat or fixed concept. It is not a formal role or job title. Instead, it is something lived and practised — often emerging from everyday acts of care, resilience and responsibility.

This piece of work demonstrates our ability to capture authentic voices, turn lived experience into meaningful insight, and create practical resources that support organisations to strengthen their understanding and approaches across a variety of topics within social care.