People's Economy

Who we are

People’s Economy aims to build the agency and power of people facing injustice and working for social change so that they have the expertise, capabilities and resources to develop their own analysis of how the economic system is a root cause of the injustice they face, develop strategies to change it and then take action with others. Our vision is for a world with economies that meet the needs and priorities of people currently experiencing economic injustice.

Through short training, longer courses, community building and facilitation we work with changemakers embedded in communities experiencing economic injustice to imagine, analyse and plan the economic change they want to see, and to take action to empower themselves and their communities, build alternatives and influence dominant institutions. We also work to create better conditions for changemakers to create economic change. 

We have programmes working with groups in North Wales, Birmingham, Hartlepool and London and with the migrant justice and youth organising sectors and an emerging community of practice to connect people across areas. We’re just about to start a 12 month action inquiry looking at how to increase the quantity and quality of collaboration between the grassroots groups and the professional new economy sector. 

We are 18 months into our five-year strategy and in a strong position to continue to deepen and scale our work across different regions and themes. We’re currently recruiting for a number of vacancies to support us at this stage in the strategy. These new posts, working alongside the existing team and our trustees, will be a crucial part of overseeing this work and ensuring that we are carrying out our mission in the best possible way.

You can find out more about our current work and team by visiting peopleseconomyuk.org.

Our culture and values

At our heart we’re a relational team, we make space to support and encourage each other and celebrate the small wins. We try to imbue our interactions with a genuine sense of care for each other as whole people. We think carefully about building relationships, especially with the team working remotely around the country - we gather in person every six weeks at our team days to connect with each other, talk about strategy and eat some good food together. 

We know that being a flexible and supportive workplace is what enables people to do good work. We work to build trust with each other and offer this flexibility where possible through remote working, core working hours, enhanced leave policies, and flexible, supportive approaches to line management.

Our team is much bigger than the staff. We know working collaboratively is the only way to achieve our mission. Our team is also formed of community partners and grassroots groups up and down the country, our trustees and many other freelancers and collaborators. We’re all connected by a deep investment in our work and a desire to work strategically to achieve our mission. 

We know a big part of this is investing in people’s development and leadership, working to give people a sense of autonomy over their work and providing opportunities to develop skills and experience accordingly. We provide a £1000 staff annual personal development budget to support this.

We’re thinking actively about what it means to be building a culture we’re proud of and that embodies our mission. We want whoever joins our team to take part in exploring that. Here’s some of the questions we’re holding: 

How do we balance a commitment to gain input and team consensus with empowering people in their roles - moving quickly when needed and giving enough clarity about how decisions are made?

How do we keep ensuring flexibility and support for staff whilst ensuring consistency and enough clarity through formal policies and processes?

With the team working across the country, how do we make sure people don’t feel isolated and continue to offer enough spaces for relationship building and connection?

How do we make more room and build the muscle for conflict that is generative and enables us to challenge each other with care?

Equality, diversity and inclusion policy

We aim to make diversity, inclusion and anti-oppression a central part of how we do our work, within our organisation and in our programmes, and this applies to how we do our recruitment. You can read our diversity, inclusion and anti-oppression policy, and our linked recruitment policy, here: https://peopleseconomyuk.org/anti-oppression/.  

Economics is underpinned by a way of thinking dominated by white men who have studied and worked in a small number of institutions. We are looking for people that bring a different perspective. To this end, when candidates are of equal merit, we will prioritise selection and appointment of people with identities and backgrounds that are currently under-represented in People’s Economy, economics and the charity sector. 

We are particularly keen to receive applications from people who are:

women and non-binary people

from Black and Asian backgrounds or are other people of colour

from a community experiencing economic injustice, for reasons including being from a working class or other economically marginalised backgrounds

working for change as part of a community that has experienced economic injustice - we refer to people doing this as ‘changemakers’.

We also strongly welcome applications from people who are members of other marginalised groups for example due to disability, religion, gender identity or sexuality.