About
Participation People

Young minds, fresh perspectives, better business decisions

What we do in the words of our team

Our purpose

Participation People believe services are better when you work creatively with the people who use them. We are proud to be award-winning youth engagement, participation, and co-production experts working across the UK. 

Our vision is a world where young people are consulted on the decisions that impact them, giving them the power to become a positive voice for change within their communities.

Our superpowers

We consider ourselves brokers of conversations and translators between decision-makers and young people. Participation People’s #YouthVoice approaches (our superpowers) help organisations understand young people’s trends, habits, and life choices. 

To accomplish this, we have three distinct approaches to enhance, enable and empower your organisation to make better business decisions, with young people.

Our superheroes

Participation People’s superheroes are our youth community; our team of Young Consultants. This group of young people will bring an entirely fresh perspective to your organisation. They offer unique insights which can change thinking, in real-time. 

Work alongside young people to enhance your projects, strengthen governance and boost the fun.

Our team

At Participation People, we’re fortunate to have a team of high-energy, enthusiastic, and engaged facilitators who bring fun and playfulness to the workplace, every day.

Get to know our team by heading to our meet the team page. They’d love to hear from you.

Our history

Participation People started, as all good plans do, on the back of a napkin after an excitable conversation with a group of family and friends. This napkin plan contained 4 BIG circles:

  • Young people
  • Potential clients and partners
  • Communities
  • An expert staff team of facilitators and project managers

Each circle highlighted how intrinsically linked each audience was to the other, and how working collaboratively as equal partners can improve business decisions and young people’s lives. All circles were interlinked and included words such as ->

  • Playful

  • Creative
  • Innovate
  • Evidence-based
  • Money saving
  • Profile raising
  • Problem solving 
  • Positive
  • FUN!

Our founder and Chief Executive, Antonia Dixey, started a small consultancy with the aim of creating a team of youth participation experts – to work with partners, clients, communities and of course, young people!

Antonia previously had roles with St John Ambulance, as their National Youth Participation Lead then going  on to work for the London Borough of Tower Hamlets as their Involvement Manager.

Both roles taught her that listening was the key to youth participation, youth engagement, co-production and consultancy. Providing safe, fun and engaging spaces for each audience to speak their truth and share their insights, thoughts, feelings and perceptions on different topics and business challenges. 

Antonia has since developed an organisation that puts listening at the forefront of innovation including:

  1. Listening to Participation People’s staff team. Exploring barriers and challenges to facilitating youth voice and engagement programmes in real time
  2. Listening to our clients and partners about their today and tomorrow business challenges. Finding ways to help solve those challenges with young people’s insight and perspective  
  3. Listening to the communities young people are a part of. Working together to understand emerging and current trends and habits.
  4. And most of all, listening to young people, especially those who don’t often speak up and are often overlooked

Participation People has developed and changed over the years. Listening remains at the heart of everything we do – to understand and explore before we and our partners act. 

Listening remains at the heart of everything we do – to understand and explore before we and our partners act. Ultimately creating better long-term solutions with young people as our equity partners.

Download Our Brochure

We’ve compiled all of our helpful services into one single brochure to allow you to distribute it to decision makers and within meetings to show what The Participation People and Youth Engagement can do for your organisation.

Find out more about our services by downloading our completely free PDF brochure.

Want to work with us?

Get started by talking to us. 

Whether it’s a problem or an idea, we would love to hear from you.

Email Us

[email protected]

For all press and media enquiries, please reach out to [email protected]

Talk to our team

03333 556 438

Mon – Fri: 9:00 – 17:00