2020 has presented challenges none of us had foreseen. Now more than ever, it's important that we create a space to share ideas.
When we set about putting together a programme for our first Impact Festival we had a few goals in mind. We wanted to create a genuinely useful environment for people to meet, collaborate and learn. We wanted a creative space to innovate and consider evidence and data. We wanted to foster ideas from inside and outside the sector, to share best practice and celebrate exactly what we have all managed to do in one of the most transformative events of our lifetime. COVID-19 has made our mission even more urgent – we want to help the homelessness sector to take stock, and use the crisis as an opportunity to reboot the entire homelessness system and revolutionise it for the better.
The festival takes on board lessons we’ve learned since lockdown. It’s bitesize, it’s flexible. People can commit as little or as much time as they’d like, and all the sessions will be recorded so you can fit them into your schedule in a way that suits you. There’ll be no barrier to entry, every session is free. It’s important that the knowledge about what works and doesn’t can be shared with whomever needs it.
Spanning the 5 weeks from the 13 July to the 14 August, the Festival will comprise a mixture of events, workshops and panels, representing conversations at a local, national and international level. They will be inquiry based, looking at what is happening in homelessness and related fields at the moment, and what needs to happen next to ensure we build better systems.
Each week of the Festival focuses on a different goal from CHI’s SHARE framework, which offers a birds-eye view of what it takes to prevent, and ultimately end, homelessness. You can find out more about SHARE and its accompanying data reporting platform here.
We’ve collaborated with inspirational organisations around the world to bring together a programme which truly has something for everyone who is involved with, or interested in bringing about an end to homelessness.
The Centre for Homelessness Impact is an independent organisation that supports the use of data and evidence in bringing about a sustainable end to homelessness.
Good decision-making should be informed by the best available evidence of what works. As a member of the What Works Network, we support organisations in the field of homelessness and beyond to make evidence-led decisions and adopt evidence-led practices.
