ACCESS Leadership College Project on Advancing Leadership in Environmental Social Science

The project, led by Jaya Gajparia and Richard Bridge, tested and explored what effective leadership development could look like within Environmental Social Science, creating space for new ideas, approaches, and practices to emerge through collaboration and reflection.

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Aims

The project aimed to:

1. Develop collaborative leadership skills through practical engagement with real-world challenges.
2. Build capacity to create and facilitate communities of practice and action learning approaches.
3. Foster reflective, values-led leadership grounded in the ACCESS Guiding Principles.

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Method

The project entailed a structured programme of in‑person and online collaboration among a core cohort of 10 Leadership College Fellows (LCFs), enabling shared learning, critical dialogue, and peer exchange across the cohort.

Three in-person meetings were held in Birmingham (November 2025), Reading (February 2026), and Totnes/Dartington (April 2026). These meetings brought together Fellows for approximately 1.5 days of intensive collaborative working, complemented by ongoing online engagement (six additional meetings across the project period).

Outcomes

The main outcome of the project was the development of two detailed theories of change (ToCs), which set out clear pathways from activities to intended outcomes and longer-term impact.

These were developed testing the Conservation Standards process and captured visually using a Miro-based framework, providing a practical and adaptable resource for future work.

Theory of Change 1: Community-Level Environmental Justice and Nature Connection 

This strategy focused on encouraging and enabling community-level initiatives and organisations working on environmental justice and nature connection. The emphasis was on supporting more inclusive and locally grounded approaches to environmental action, particularly for groups that are currently underrepresented or marginalised.

The ToC sets out pathways where activities such as engagement, capacity-building, and collaboration with community organisations lead to:

• Increased participation and inclusion in environmental decision-making

• Stronger community resilience and connection to nature

• More equitable environmental outcomes

Overall, this strategy foregrounds social inclusion, equity, and grassroots engagement as key drivers of impact.

Theory of Change 2: Influencing Public Sector Decision-Making 

The second strategy focuses on engaging public sector decision-makers to increase the impact of Environmental Social Science in policy and practice. This ToC outlines how activities such as targeted engagement, knowledge translation, and relationship-building can:

• Improve understanding and impact of ESS among policymakers

• Strengthen the integration of social science evidence into policy decision-making at both national and local levels

• Support more effective, equitable environmental policies

The longer-term impact is to ensure that ESS is better recognised, valued, and embedded within policy processes.

Summary 

Together, the two ToCs operate at complementary levels:

• Community-facing (bottom-up change, inclusion, lived experience)

• Policy-facing (top-down influence, systems change)

This dual approach reflects the group’s emphasis on linking practice and policy, and on delivering impact across different scales of the environmental system.

These Theories of Change will be published here shortly

Core project team

The project will be delivered by a core group of 10 Leadership College Fellows:

• Jaya Gajparia (Project Co-Lead)
  
• Richard Bridge (Project Co-Lead)
• ​Becki Jepson 
• ​Elysia Davies 
• ​Jennifer Rudd 
• ​Laura de Vito 
• ​Mandi Bisset 
• ​Pamela Buchan  
• Lewis Winks
• Helen Roberts

Reflections from team members

Key thematic reflections highlighted

• the value of time and space for reflection
• moving from learning (in the earlier Leadership College experiences) to practical plans for change
• enabling existing relationships to deepen, to create trust and a sense of community that the team would like to sustain beyond the programme
• a vision achieved through collective leadership and collaboration
• embedding a values-led way of working
• the Conservation Standards framework was identified as a useful structure which both provided a structured process to contain our thoughts whilst preserving freedom to think creatively
• the aspiration that subject to funding, the work may be the beginning of a new phase of action on our collective journey

“The LCF fund gave us a really valuable opportunity to build on the relationships, learning and reflections from the ACCESS Leadership College, and to explore what continuing to work together might look like in practice. What felt particularly important was the time and space it created for open conversations, shared reflection, and gradually finding a sense of direction together.”

“… the application of the Conservation Standards framework gave us a clear process and clear steps which meant that every time we met we knew what we were going to work on, while allowing us the freedom to think ‘big’.”

“We want to create change by working differently – radical in our processes as well as our practice. We want to be able to challenge each other as well as the status quo. Using the Conservation Standards was the first step as they created transparency and allowed different voices and ideas to come to the fore and be valued. This also appears to be the first use of that framework outside of conservation – we are shaking things up already! Perhaps we can be both mentor and disruptor? Now we just need funding to turn a theory of change into real change…”

“… the LCF Award provided, an opportunity to do something with all that learning [from the ACCESS Leadership College]. An opportunity to make a plan, to take time to reflect, a new way of working and a smaller group of people where stronger relationships could be built. With this group of people I could talk about fixing the world, we could dream big, I could have my ideas and perspective broadened and shaped by those around me, until in front of me there was a plan. This wasn’t just a Big Hairy Audacious Goal, this was a practical pathway to addressing climate change through a social science lens, an opportunity to make change happen.”

“The LCF award provided the unique opportunity of having the space to think: What do we want to do? What do we want to make better?, How do we want to use our collective skillset? This freedom was a new experience for me and enabled creativity of thought and process. The award enabled us to grow from the foundation of relationships built in the leadership college into deeper connections, professionally and personally, and create concrete next steps.”

“The project provided a space where we could raise deeply held beliefs or concerns and discuss and challenge these without fear. The most important outcome for me, is the development of professional and ideological bonds with members of this group… I am confident that these are connections that will persist and that as a group we have a shared understanding that will facilitate future collaboration.”

The Advancing Leadership in Environmental Social Science Through Reflective Practice project ran from September 2025 to June 2026 

For more information on the project and its outcomes, please contact the co-leads: Jaya Gajparia: jaya_gajparia@hotmail.com
Richard Bridge: richard.bridge@defra.gov.uk.