Building equitable futures

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About Agora

We help public, private and community-led organisations to improve via meaningful collaboration with members of the public, working through distrust, disillusionment and inequity.

Bridging the gap, we help organisations work with people to create policy, shape strategy and tackle those issues that cannot and should not be solved in isolation. We help cultivate and repair relationships in the process.

Using community development, co-design and other participatory methods, we connect people disproportionately and negatively affected by structural power to people with more access to it, bringing them together to create real change for organisations and communities.

Drawing on our own and others’ lived experience, we are committed to creating meaningful collaboration and democratic decision-making, working alongside people from underrepresented and overlooked groups.

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What we do
(and do well)

A white woman with short hair sits at a table and gestures with her hands as she talks. Next to her is a Black woman in a headscarf holding a cup. Both are engaged in conversation with people outside of the image

Image credit: Centre for Ageing Better

We are experts in public participation, strategy (co)design, policy change, democratic deliberation and community building. We use our backgrounds to provide research-led and practice-tested services.

We are conscious not everyone may have come across some of the terms we use frequently across the website, below is a quick guide with further information available. If you have any other questions, just use the contact page to get in touch.

Co-design is a participatory approach to designing solutions, policies, services or products with the people who use or would be impacted by them.

Public participation can also be referred to as public engagement or involvement. It is the practice of involving individuals in democratic processes such as consultations, voting, campaigning or policy change.

Democratic deliberation or deliberative public engagement is an approach that allows time and space for people to consider information, discuss issues in depth and come to a considered view. This takes place in specific forums, examples of these are Citizens’ Assemblies and Citizens’ Juries.

A good source for information on these terms and public engagement more broadly, is Involve.org.uk’s Knowledge Base.

Learn more about the services we offer in these areas here.

Yellow mosaic tiles against a dark green and dark red background reads 'Inclusão Social' written in capital letters. Light is shining on the tiles.

Who do we work with?

  • Central and Local Government

  • Private sector

  • Civil society and community groups

  • Universities and research institutions

  • NHS and social care

  • Housing Associations

  • Trade Unions

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How we can support your work

  • Strategy design

  • Participatory and deliberative democracy

  • Community and public engagement

  • Advocacy and campaign strategies

  • Mutual Aid, supporter and volunteer development

  • Policy co-design

  • Research

  • Impact measurement and evaluation

  • Culture change

  • Quality and operational improvement

  • Arts-based participation

Learn more about all of our services and how they can support your work here.

All image credit unless stated otherwise: Beth Knowles Casas