About Us
Beth and Amy met at the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, with Beth co-designing policy with underrepresented groups and Amy establishing the Public and User Engagement function.
Bonding over our research, policy change and activist backgrounds, we advocate for and implement participatory-led change.
Over the course of the last 15 years, we have both developed networks, groups and collectives focused on tackling social injustice and resulting in long-term impact.
We are experts in bringing communities together with public and private institutions, creating space for deliberation and co-designed solutions. We work with groups and organisations facing difficult issues to embed improvements into systems as new policies, strategy, practice and culture.
From and based in Liverpool and the Midlands, UK, we work locally, nationally and internationally.
You can see examples of our work below and more information on the Work page.
We are independent practitioners in public engagement, Co-Design and deliberative democracy
Agora is
Agora comes from the forum in Ancient Athens where democracy was practised. The precursor to citizens assemblies, with citizens chosen to participate at random (sortition), the Agora fostered discussion, disagreement and democratic decision making. Traditionally women, slaves and non-citizens were banned from the Agora and unable to take part in democracy. We are reclaiming the concept of the Agora by inviting everyone to participate in contemporary civic spaces. Agora also means ‘now’ in Portuguese and Galician, with current threats to democracy we are working to renovate and rebuild spaces for debate, discussion and common understanding, now.
Meet the team
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A background spanning research, public engagement, advocacy and strategy, Amy consistently brings underrepresented voices to the fore, whether in academia, the NHS, charities, campaigns groups, central government or trade union roles.
Obsessed with stories and the power they hold to build empathy, she believes that qualitative data and making changes based on lived experience is crucial in tackling social injustice.
Her work in people participation and advocacy, mainly around women’s, LGBTQIA+, migrant and worker rights showed her first-hand what changes can be made when communities come together, while demonstrating the need for a more participatory democracy.
Growing-up in the midlands, Amy experienced intimate partner abuse from late teens to mid twenties and, in discovering activism, began to view these experiences in a broader, intersectional and systemic context. Amy loves writing, cooking, strength training and playing pool.
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Beth has worked as an elected politician, a Mayoral Advisor, researcher and lecturer, in trade unions and local and international NGOs. In all of these spaces she utilised community development to bring people together to understand and develop solutions to issues, most prominently around homelessness in Manchester.
As part of this, she created the Greater Manchester Homelessness Action Network for Mayor Andy Burnham and helped to found Arts and Homelessness International, the international network of arts and homelessness organisations.
She completed her MPhil thesis in 2023 on Democratic Devolution; A Whole Society Approach to Tackling Issues of Social Justice in Greater Manchester, building an evidence base for the participation work she was part of under city-region devolution.
Beth grew up in the North West of England and after working across the UK and internationally now lives in Liverpool, with her wife and their cat, Yoshi. Beth speaks English and Spanish and lives with the joys and differences of being neuro-queer, having endometriosis and being a woman in the world.