What does innovation look like when everyone gets to shape it?
That was the driving question behind Innovation Starts With Us, an inspiring evening hosted by YouthTheGap CIC, Plus X Innovation, and Edge Of Difference.
This was the inaugural event in the collaboration Impact Series, “Walking The Talk 👣”, from Plus X Innovation and YouthTheGap. Designed by Sam Carroll and Kaia Allen-Bevan, this bold Impact Series challenges assumptions, sparks conversation, and inspires action to co-create a world we wish to live in.
To start National Inclusion Week off with a bang, we co-created the questions, prompts and format of the event with the panellists, to ensure diverse voices are truly heard and embedded.
With the tensions of far-right demonstrations across the weekend before the first event, YouthTheGap and Plus X Innovation believed it was vital to hold the community in a safe, brave and authentic space to echo their honest thoughts, feelings and perspectives, rekindling their inner activist flames in allyship to one another.
The event kicked off with Connection Circles – rotating small-group conversations that gave everyone the chance to reflect on how their own lived experiences influence what they build and create. Kaia split the room into two groups, where they all explored in 30 minutes the following prompts:
- Identity: How has a personal aspect of your identity (e.g., culture, upbringing, disability, gender, migration background) influenced something you've chosen to build or create?
- Self-Belief: What does self-belief and silencing our inner critic look like in practice when we innovate?
- Edge Aware (coined, Mo Kanjilal): What’s one belief or assumption you’ve held about “who builds” or “what innovation looks like,” and how has your experience challenged that?
- Humanness (coined, Audre Lorde): What does it feel like to bring your full, authentic self into building—especially in places that weren’t originally designed for you?
- Radical Empathy (coined, Annabelle Woghiren): How do you make space for others whose lived experiences are different from your own?
- Impact: What does Innovation look like with social impact at first instant, not just an afterthought?
Each group had the opportunity to break the ice whilst unpacking these prompts, connecting deeper and forming new, or nurturing existing, community connections.
The highlight of the evening was the “Founding With Fairness” panel, featuring a powerful lineup of innovators, activists, and leaders:
✨ Kerry Lockwood (Deputy Head of Locations at Plus X Innovation)
✨ Naqeeb Saide (Hummingbird Project Ambassador)
✨ Calliope Wood (Activist, poet, and host of Spoonful of Laughter)
✨ Alex Young (Managing Director at Projects, host of Favourite Positions)
Together, they unpacked big questions like:
💡What does a culture of belonging look like to you, with psychological safety at the heart of it?
💡What role do privilege and power play in shaping who gets to innovate, and how do we counterbalance that?
💡 How do we avoid tokenism when talking about diversity and inclusion in innovation spaces?
💡What does success in innovation look like, with inclusion, ethics and community at the centre?
💡 What does innovation mean to you personally, and how has your lived experience shaped your definition?
Not only did our panellists answer questions from our “Innovation Starts With Us” Pack, but audience members were engaged in an open dialogue to ask questions along the way to widen our scope on what innovation truly means with diversity, equity and inclusion in practice, not just in theory.
The energy in the room made one thing clear: innovation isn’t just about shiny new tech or disruption for disruption’s sake.
It’s about equity, inclusion from the edges, ethics and community.
It’s about recognising that our lived experiences are not barriers to innovation - they’re the blueprint. It is a calling for us to analyse our own biases and see how we can be the ally in the room for the unrepresented or misrepresented communities, so innovation isn’t just scaling for those with disproportionate power…that’s hoarding assets, exploiting communities and exacerbating already existing inequalities in the name of profit.
“I loved how we challenged the idea that innovation belongs to a 'tech bro' demographic and instead reminded ourselves that we all innovate in small and big ways every day. It felt powerful to reframe it as something accessible and human, rather than distant or exclusive.
I also came away thinking a lot about how support is just as much about people as it is about money. While funding can help accelerate ideas, it’s the connections through our networks, and then through theirs, that often make the real difference. I’d love for us all to keep asking people who are building things who we can connect them with - it feels like such a simple but impactful way we can support each other more.” - Alex Young, Managing Director at Projects
Thank you to each and every single attendee; through our numbers in allyship, community and social impact, we fundraised £170 for The Hummingbird Project. This will directly support the building of their “Young Women’s Empowerment Project”. Thank you to everyone who attended to truly Walking The Talk 👣 with us - if we don’t innovate with inclusion first, we build on the inequalities that exist. Let’s be the cycle breakers that change that for good.
✨ A shout-out to Meral Alizada (Founder of Results Of Kindness, Originator of Kindness as Infrastructure), who couldn’t make the panel but shared their support from afar!
We were delighted to announce the next event in the series, “The Theory Of Change In Innovation 📐” in collaboration with Found & Flourish. Kaia and Sam are beyond excited to see this series grow, flourish and take shape with the Brighton and Hove community.
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