NEWS
Dr Jon Paylor and Prof Rebecca Bramall (UK team) report on knowledge exchange workshops held in autumn/winter 2025.
In the final months of this project, we were delighted to preview findings with key stakeholders. We held stakeholder workshops in each case study country, providing the opportunity for participants to reflect on project outcomes and to explore their implications for the fields in which they work.
Over 40 participants took part in five workshops, representing expertise in community organising, digital innovation, tax justice, social policy, public administration and local government, and other third sector fields.
To stimulate discussion, we shared a briefing document in which we presented seven dominant redistributive imaginaries identified through the analysis of our research data. Each redistributive imaginary is summarized in the briefing document using a persona – a character who condenses ideas, beliefs and ways of thinking that we found expressed by many individuals in the research data.
For example, for the redistributive imaginary we have labelled welfare complementarity we developed the persona of Nora. We characterize Nora as a project coordinator at an NGO that supports vulnerable families, and specify that Nora’s organization steps in where state support is lacking, offering targeted aid. Over the years, Nora has seen market and civil society organizations take on a more substantial role in welfare provision. She is convinced that public institutions, non-profit organizations, and private actors must offer complementary initiatives in order for the support system to work as a whole. In the full descriptor, we also characterize how digital tools and platforms form part of Nora’s redistributive imaginary, identifying the values and affordances she associates with the digital.
We began by inviting workshop participants to comment on their familiarity with Nora’s way of thinking, along with the imaginaries summarized using six further personae. Were they familiar with each redistributive imaginary? Where had participants come across this way of thinking, and how did it play out in their field of work?
Lively discussion of the personae validated our sense of the coherence and generalizability of our analysis. Participants found it straightforward to relate to the imaginaries and vividly described how they encountered them in their fields. Some participants identified strongly with particular imaginaries. For example, a participant who campaigns against wealth inequality felt aligned with the welfare state enhancement imaginary summarized by Luka, who believes that ‘ideally, charities shouldn’t exist’.
The most common identifications expressed by participants were with the imaginaries we found most dominant in our research data: Nora’s imaginary of welfare complementarity and Ana’s imaginary of pragmatic competition. Indeed, some participants found it hard to conceive of these ways of thinking as imaginaries, expressing that they simply reflected the world ‘as it is’. For us, this response indicates that these imaginaries are deeply embedded as common sense.
Participants echoed our own theorization of imaginaries when they argued that individuals don’t adopt one singular way of thinking, but move between different, sometimes contradictory perspectives. Moreover, some participants were confident that even when individuals are committed to a particular imaginary, there is always the potential for them to identify with alternative or oppositional ways of thinking.
Next, we prompted participants to explore the implications of these imaginaries. If everyone thought about redistribution and the provision of welfare in this way, what would be the implications for our society? What kind of scenarios for the future of welfare states could they envisage?
The majority of the imaginaries provoked cause for concern. One group of participants envisaged that the imaginary of pragmatic competition – in which competition with other voluntary sector organisations is paramount, and visibility on digital platforms is considered critical – could play a role in reshaping the functions, personnel and practices of civil society. There is a risk, they considered, of organisations becoming disconnected from what ‘really matters’ in pursuit of survival in the cause marketplace.
Discussing the imaginary of welfare consumerism, summarized by Toma, another group of participants saw a risk that this imaginary would intensify the practice of earmarking donations (committing organisations to spend them on specific purchases or outcomes). With donors demanding direct influence, they speculated that many people and causes could be pushed aside.
In the final segment of the workshop, we asked participants to share developments in their sector or area of expertise that might prevent the scenarios that they had just discussed from emerging. We asked, what events, developments or policy changes could disrupt this way of thinking? When it comes to the digital tools and platforms that are increasingly used by those working in civil society, what would you like to see change?
This part of the workshop was exceptionally rich in insight, exposing the core values that participants aspired to realise. In one workshop, for example, participants posited that digital sovereignty, public control over data, and the reduction of environmental impact were principles that must be prioritized.
The discussions also surfaced various frictions, resources and interventions that seemed at odds with dominant redistributive imaginaries and could potentially open up alternative futures for mixed economies of welfare. Stakeholders debating the community empowerment imaginary proposed that the route to disrupting the transactional elements of this imaginary could lie in extending and enhancing practices of participatory democracy.
One theme echoed across the workshop discussions: the majority of participants recognized the limits and risks associated with the widespread adoption of mainly US-owned, profitmaking digital platforms. As one participant put it, ‘Do we just have to adapt to what US platforms want? Can’t we create our own platforms?’. Participants took seriously the potential for digital platforms to enable greater participation and deliberation, but drew attention to the conditions that could activate that potential, including increased funding for public innovation and the development of ‘anti-oppressive technology’ that is co-produced with communities of users and operates according to alternative logics of practice.
The friction, resources and interventions proposed in the workshops remind us that dominant redistributive imaginaries are not unified, stable entities: they are contingent frameworks of understanding that are constantly being tested and elaborated, and can be transformed through the incorporation of new experiences and social demands.
The workshops not only offered valuable insights into the implications of the redistributive imaginaries we’ve identified but also facilitated connections between those who have a stake in such concerns. We’re very grateful to all those who participated and made such as valuable contribution to these events. As the research phase of this project comes to an end, the team plans to build on these conversations and connections. If you’re interested in hearing more about the project and working together, please get in touch.