Building stronger lives and fairer futures, together.
This is an adaptive strategy.
Grapevine responds to community issues as they arise. Rather than focusing on one problem to solve, we hold to our vision, mission and ways of working, and stay flexible about the routes we take.
We listen to the people we walk alongside, our team and our partners, and let what we learn change what we do.
For us, this strategy is a set of working hypotheses to test, not a plan to deliver.
Every year from 2027-31 we will review this strategy, asking three questions:
“Are we still moving towards our mission?”
“What have we learned about what works?”
“Has context changed in ways that demand a different approach?”
Jump to:
The context we work in
Across Coventry and Warwickshire, poverty and inequality have left too many people without enough money, support or say over decisions that affect them.
Support services have shrunk, trust in institutions has weakened and communities have fractured.
More people feel lonely, more struggle to cope and more feel powerless. Over the next five years, these trends are likely to continue – though exactly how much, where and for whom, is difficult to accurately predict.
Communities have carried these pressures with extraordinary strength. But their capacity to endure is not endless. Nor is it a substitute for resources, support and real power.
But there is opportunity for change.
Power over local decisions is moving closer to home and new funding is reaching places long overlooked. People are looking for connection, purpose and a real say.
Power must continue to transfer from institutions and into neighbourhoods and communities themselves.
Our vision and mission
Our vision is places where people have greater control over their lives. Where they have room to grow and reason to hope.
Where their communities are stronger and more connected.
Where power has shifted to people and communities most affected by institutional decisions.
Our mission is helping people lead change in their lives, their community and the systems around them – this work remains rooted in our disability-led origins.
We help them build the relationships and collective power that strengthen their lives and make others’ futures fairer.
What we hold to and what we flex
We hold to our:
- Vision and mission
- Beliefs about how change happens
- Three strands of work
- Commitment to relationships, strengths and local people leading.
We flex on the:
- Specific issues we take on
- Projects and partnerships we build
- Places and communities we work most intensively with
- Balance of effort across the three strands.
Our three strands of work
Three strands, one mission. These strands describe how we work. They are where our flexibility lives.
People move between the strands, in different directions, often more than once.
Strands have multiple entry points, reflecting the reality that people’s actual lives are messier and more diverse than plans can capture. Below we explain these strands.
Strengthening Lives
Leading your own life
We meet people where they are, often (though not always) at the hardest, messiest moments of their lives. We sit alongside them, listen closely and start from what they care about and are good at – the strengths the world too often misses. From there we help them build natural networks of support: networks that strengthen them, open opportunities and help them take charge of their lives for good. This builds capability: strengths, confidence and relationships that keep working long after any project or funding ends.
By 2031 we will have made strengths-based support the front end of community power, not just a service. We will have built a clear leadership pathway from this support into Sparking Community and Shifting Power. And we will have moved away from crisis-based, high-output contracts that prevent this depth.
Sparking Community
Leading together
We help people bond around the things they share – like experiences, causes and passions – and then to find their role as creators, supporters and leaders. Together they build their own solutions, grow friendships and make their communities more joyful places to live. Problems get solved, everyone’s prospects improve. We try to do this most in neighbourhoods where polarisation and tensions are highest.
By 2031 we will have revived this strand, significantly growing ambition, investment and action. We will have initiated, convened and stewarded at least five communities or groups around the causes, places and futures that matter to them. Leaders from Strengthening Lives will have participated and there will be a clear onward pathway into Shifting Power.
Shifting Power
Leading systemic change
As people and communities grow stronger, their potential to tackle the root causes of their problems becomes within reach. We help them realise their collective power and use it to take on the systems, decisions and processes that hold them back. We help them win change that improves everyone’s lives.
By 2031 the communities we work alongside will be helping to shape local decisions before priorities are set, budgets are decided and policies are hardened. They will have been involved as leaders from the start, not consulted at the end. That is our test of whether power has shifted. People and insight from the other strands will have been at the centre of making this happen.
Stories of our work in action
Read more about the people and communities we have supported and problems we’ve helped them tackle:
- Strengthening Lives: From housing and health issues to hope
- Strengthening Lives: From unexpected unemployment to training peers on digital skills
- Sparking Community: One spark crafts kindness across a whole city
- Sparking Community: Alex turns idea for sensory library into reality
- Shifting Power: Residents get their bus shelter back and set sights on playground next
- Shifting Power: Willenhall residents power up park campaign.
More about our strategy
Choose a link below to explore our strategy in further detail.
- Grapevine’s beliefs – these ground how we implement our strategy
- Our learning habits – working with an adaptive strategy
- Our reports – our impact on people, communities and systems
- Meet our Board of Trustees.
