Participative Collaboration – how the Justice and Equity Centre approaches systemic change

How collaboration can power systemic change

For organisations working toward social change, progress often depends on something harder to define: the ability to bring people together, build trust, listen carefully and stay committed over time.

This was the focus of a UTS Social Impact Grant project led by Mark Riboldi from UTS Business School. Working with the Justice and Equity Centre (JEC), formerly the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, the project explored how the organisation holds collaborative spaces to support systemic advocacy and reform.

The Justice and Equity Centre works across five focus areas: First Nations justice, disability rights, civil rights, homelessness, and energy and water justice. Its work spans a broad range of social, health and environmental challenges. It often partners with communities, advocates, funders and other organisations to push for change.

The UTS project looked closely at what sits beneath that work.

Understanding how allyship works in practice 

The project asked: how does JEC act as an ally? How does it create the conditions for collaboration? And how does it support advocacy for people and communities facing systemic disadvantage and discrimination?

Mark says the project began with the idea that the team might uncover a clear model.

“When we started work on the project, we thought that we might discover a JEC style framework for collaboration. Instead, we found a series of principles. Generally, I think this is a more important outcome for the research,” he says.

“People often look for generic models or examples as shortcuts to magically solve specific problems. Rather than cut-and-paste solutions, organisations should focus on embedding principles that guide how they adapt different ideas and tools to their circumstances.”

The project was co-designed with the senior leadership team at the Justice and Equity Centre. It built on Mark’s existing relationship with the organisation, which began when he worked in the community law sector.

That trust mattered.

It allowed the research to look closely at how the organisation works, while also producing findings that were useful to the people involved.

Looking closely at collaboration

The project included document analysis, 20 semi-structured interviews and participation in eight workshops with JEC staff, board members, funders and collaboration partners. The research focused on four key collaborations: StreetCare, the Family is Culture Advocacy Working Group, the Raise the Age Campaign and the NDIS Systemic Advocacy Working Group.

These collaborations involved people connected to homelessness, disability rights, First Nations justice and other areas of social and economic justice.

Rather than producing a fixed playbook, the research identified four principles that guide the Justice and Equity Centre’s collaborative practice:

1.     We are more than lawyers

2.     We are independent, but not neutral

3.     We follow through on our commitments

4.     We are led by lived experience

Together, these principles describe a way of working that is adaptive, flexible and grounded in relationships.

They also show that collaboration is not just about bringing people into the same room. It is about how power is shared, how commitments are honoured and how organisations can continue to listen and respond.

Naming what was already there

The most significant change from the project was that the Justice and Equity Centre could better identify and articulate its own collaborative practice.

This may sound simple. But for organisations working across complex systems, having shared language matters. It helps staff reflect on their work. It helps partners understand how collaboration happens. It can also help funders see why long-term, relationship-based advocacy needs support.

In the short term, the project has helped the Justice and Equity Centre refine and articulate how it works with others. Staff used the interview and workshop process to reflect on their practice. Mark has since been invited to contribute to some of the JEC’s strategic discussions.  

From research to practice

The research collaboration has the potential to inform new and emerging work.

Since the beginning of 2026, Mark has joined the JEC in the Youth Justice Coalition, along with Mounty Aboriginal Youth and Community Services (YJC) and academics from UNSW. The YJC aims to be led by young Aboriginal people in its pursuit of systemic change. 

He has also provided advice to Justice and Equity Centre staff about establishing a coalition around strategic litigation and the social impacts of artificial intelligence.

Sharing the findings more widely

The findings have reached wider audiences too. In 2025, Mark presented interim findings at the Democracy Reimagined Conference, hosted by the Centre for Deliberative Democracy at the University of Canberra. In 2026, he presented the research at the International Society for Third-Sector Research Conference in Lisbon, Portugal.

In July 2026, he was also invited to run a workshop with British civil society organisations at the University College London Policy Lab.

The public report, Collaboration Engines: a Justice and Equity Centre approach to supporting systemic change, was published in October 2026 and launched by the Ultimo Institute at UTS Business School.

This report is slated to be used as the key discussion point for a Paul Ramsay Foundation event in February 2027. 

A guide for future collaboration

Mark and the team are working on peer-reviewed journal articles and, if further funding becomes available, expand the research to look at how other organisations hold and coordinate collaborative spaces.

He believes there is strong interest in this work from civil society organisations, philanthropic organisations and governments in Australia, the UK and Europe.

Many organisations are working on social problems that cannot be solved by one group alone. Collaboration is essential. But meaningful collaboration takes skill, trust and intentionality.

This project offers a clearer way to understand that work. It shows that successful collaboration is not always about finding a perfect model. Sometimes, it is about finding the principles that help people keep moving together, even when the path is complex.

For organisations working toward justice, those principles can become a powerful guide.