Hundreds of members of the public walk down a residential street looking hopeful

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Unlocking our hidden entrepreneurs

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The people closest to social challenges often have the best ideas to solve them - but the least ability to act. Not because they lack ideas, but because the system was never designed to back them.

Through our Citizen First model we find and back these hidden entrepreneurs , providing a year's Real Living Wage, seed funding and specialist support, and systematically mobilising local civic institutions, businesses and organisations around them.

The result: real agency for communities - citizens turning lived experience into businesses that change lives.

The model

A new type of civic infrastructure

£6.26 of social return for every £1 invested in the first year alone - independent University of Essex evaluation

The UK has built infrastructure for business and infrastructure for the public sector. What's missing is infrastructure for communities to solve their own problems.

Citizen First is that missing layer. It finds the people who've lived a problem — and know how to solve it — and activates their place behind them. Our ambition: Citizen First in every major town and city.

"The principles should be taken as transformational trends for the future of community development.”
University of Essex

How it works

in action

Citizen First is currently transforming lives in the Liverpool City Region

Hidden entrepreneurs were recruited from local communities through our CV-less process. Backed by the Mayor of the Liverpool City Region, University of Liverpool, Fusion21 Foundation and local businesses, each was paid a year's salary to build a business rooted in their lived experience of health and care challenges.

24x oversubscribed

87% of applicants had experience of economic disadvantage

50+ organisations actively engaged

finding, supporting and backing the entrepreneurs

77% of entrepreneurs secured investment or revenue

within twelve months

Citizen First

Our team

partner with us

Bring Citizen First to your community

We're ready to scale Citizen First to communities across the country. Whether you're an anchor institution, combined authority, university, local business, or place-based funder, we'd welcome a conversation about how we can work together.‍

Partner with us

I believe Public Life has the potential to change the way we tackle our country's most pressing social problems.

Dave Allan

Founder, ?WhatIf! Innovation

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Where James leads brave people follow and they and their communities reap the rewards.

Karen Badenoch

Hidden entrepreneur participant and Founder of Trusted Money Confidence

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