At the heart of the Abundance Project is a deep commitment to centring lived experience and amplifying diverse voices. We believe these are not just important but essential to shaping meaningful research and creating real, lasting impact. For too long, marginalised communities have faced systemic neglect. The Abundance Project is working to change that by co-creating spaces where community voices are heard, valued, and lead the way.
Central to this work are our Community Voice Champions (CVCs), or Lived Experience Experts, who are bringing their lived experience into every aspect of the project. From storytelling workshops and focus groups to community walks, exploring perceptions and experiences of nature, culture, and wellbeing, the CVCs have played a vital role in uncovering the complex connections between marginalised communities, access to green and cultural spaces, and the impact on health and wellbeing. Their insights are shaping every stage of the project including the co-design of meaningful, community-led interventions to address the challenges that matter most.
Through co-production, empathy, and a strength-based approach, we’re building a foundation of trust, understanding, and mutual respect. Our goal is to ensure that the outcomes we create together aren’t just effective but that they’re sustainable, and they truly reflect the hopes, needs, and aspirations of the communities we serve.
When we intentionally make space for, include, and truly value lived experience, we begin to transform the traditional research dynamic. Too often, research follows an extractive, top-down model that overlooks the voices of those most affected. By recognising participants as experts in their own lives, we shift that dynamic. This means creating opportunities for people to share their stories in their own words and treating those stories not just as anecdotes, but as meaningful, valid, and powerful forms of knowledge. Lived experience is not just personal – it’s a vital form of expertise.
This journey has also had a powerful, personal impact on our Community Voice Champions themselves as the reflections of our CVCs on the storytelling workshops reveal.
Being recognised as experts and actively shaping the direction of the project has fostered a deep sense of pride, confidence, and ownership. Many CVCs have spoken about how the experience has strengthened their self-belief, expanded their skills, and validated the value of their contributions, not just to the project, but to their wider communities.
Listen as Nkeiruka Samuel, a Community Voice Champion with the Reach Foundation, speaks with Anna Bosher, Community Co-Investigator, about their community walk, part of our Work Package 2 activities facilitated by Pete Garside. Led by the CVCs, these walks offered powerful, place-based experiences bringing to life the green spaces and cultural assets that shape our communities. Through walking, participants connected with their surroundings in a deeply embodied, multi-sensory way, highlighting the unique character and richness of each local area.
In this conversation, Nkeiruka reflects on how the experience affirmed her role as a lived experience expert, the pride it gave her to showcase her community and local assets and to contribute in such a meaningful way. She also describes how being a CVC has imbued her with research skills and made her a more confident communicator.
“Because most times I tend to listen, so I’m that silent person in the room, but then I think I’ve gained that skill of communication – because it’s one thing for you to research, another thing for you to share that information.”
As part of their role as Lived Experience Experts, our Community Voice Champions are also invited to take part in activities across the wider Mobilising Community Assets (MCA) programme.
One of the Community Voice Champions from Kingston Voluntary Action recently attended an MCA workshop exploring the question: What do we mean by ‘lived experience’? Here, she shares her reflections and key takeaways:
“I learned how ‘lived experience’ can be seen as a form of real-world knowledge, just as important as professional or academic knowledge.”
“It’s important to make sure that people with lived experience feel truly involved and valued, not just included as a formality.”
“Hearing others share their personal stories with honesty and confidence really inspired me. It reminded me that sharing our experiences can help others feel less alone.”
“One thing I feel strongly about is that what’s written in official reports doesn’t always reflect the real lived experiences of people. It often misses the emotional, physical, and psychological depth of what someone is going through. I believe it’s essential to develop a complete and integrated educational approach – across all sciences and professions – that teaches students, staff, and service providers to understand the human being as a whole.”
These reflections highlight why lived experience is at the heart of our approach and how creating space for honest, meaningful participation can spark both personal and collective growth.
By fostering leadership, encouraging reflection, and enabling genuine influence, the Abundance Project – alongside the wider MCA programme – is building capacity from within communities. This approach helps ensure that the impact of the work will continue to grow and evolve well beyond the lifetime of the project.
Learn more about the Mobilising Community Assets programme approach to lived experience on the National Centre for Creative Health blog post What do we mean by ‘lived experience’?
Read more about the community walks as presented by Dr Silke Zschomler (Research Fellow, UAL) at the 2025 Livable Cities Conference, Barcelona: Imagining and Co-creating a More Livable City: Livable Cities Conference 2025
This post was written by Dr Silke Zschomler with contributions from Nkeiruka Samuel (Community Voice Champion, Reach Foundation), Anna Bosher (Community Co-Investigator, Reach Foundation) and Kingston Voluntary Action.