SHIFT: Trauma conscious leadership for troubled times 

SHIFT is an intensive 10 month leadership development programme being launched by Museum of Homelessness, for 10 exceptional people working in homelessness and housing. Thanks to funding from the Sarah Jane Leigh Charitable Trust this inaugural year of the programme is completely free for participants. SHIFT will run from July 2025 to March 2026 and will include:

  • 2 x 2 day intensives at Museum of Homelessness in Finsbury Park.

  • A 1 day recharge and reflect space

  • A 1 day celebration event

  • Trauma conscious coaching

  • A therapeutic bursary and

  • Access to the museum’s archive and collection, networks and resources.

SHIFT: APPLY NOW

KEY DATES

Please hold all these dates in your diary.

Should your application be successful we will require attendance in person at all dates.

All events and intensives will take place at the museum’s site in Finsbury Park.

  • March 2025 – Applications open

  • 16th May 2025 – Applications close

  • 30th May 2025 – Successful applicants notified

  • 9th and 10th July 2025 – Summer possibilities, 2 day intensive

  • 17th and 18th September 2025 – Autumn intentions, 2 day intensive

  • October – April: Regular coaching sessions for participants

  • 14th January 2026 – Winter check in and care session, 1 day recharge space

  • 18th March 2026 – Spring send off, 1 day programme completion & celebration.

Who is it for?

SHIFT is a leadership development programme. This programme is for you if you:

  • Are working at mid career within the homelessness sector, in a role that directly supports people experiencing homelessness or supports a team which includes people who are working frontline (e.g. hostel manager, outreach manager, project coordinator, commissioning officer, care navigator, area manager, housing manager, service manager.) This will vary depending on the size of your organisation; the most important thing is that you can demonstrate leadership potential.

  • Have demonstrable passion and commitment for developing trauma conscious solutions to structural challenges

  • Are frustrated or tired of facing the same challenges, and are looking for new ways of thinking, practicing and being within your role and organisation

  • Are committed to playing an active part in a learning programme, challenging your own thinking and supporting others.

  • Are dedicated to bringing your learning back to your organisations to influence and support wider practice within the sector.

what will i gain?

The programme will help you:

  • Learn about what trauma is and how it affects the nervous system, endocrine system and emotional regulation.

  • Understand more about how trauma plays out on an individual, institutional and structural level in the UK.

  • Find ways of filling your cup with creativity and compassion, even in the current climate.

  • Connect with peers who are working in similar ways to bring justice and healing led work into a compromised system

  • Develop practices that support you in your work rather than burning out

  • Learn how we can work better with people in crisis: working with relapse, suicidal distress and radical safeguarding

Guest facilitators and speakers will include writers, artists, scientists, community organisers and psychotherapists

Our current confirmed list of contributors includes:

  • Abdirahim Hassan, Founder, Coffee Afrik CIC

  • Aderonke Apata, Founder & CEO, African Rainbow Family, campaigner and MoH Trustee

  • Brad Hardie, Co-Founder of Moving the Human Spirit

  • Christopher Scanlon and John Adlam, psychotherapists, authors and psychosocialists

  • Dan Glass, Author and Activist

  • E-J Scott, Founder, Museum of Transology

  • Gill Taylor, MoH crew and consultant

  • Jacob V Joyce, Artist

  • Dr Lasana Harris, Social Neuroscientist

  • Surfing Sofas MoH Poet in Residence

lead facilitators for the programme are jess and matt turtle, directors of museum of homelessness

In the course of founding and developing MoH, both Matt and Jess have undertaken a lot of development and training focused on trauma. Jess has complex childhood trauma. She also has an MA in Psychosocial Studies and has undertaken the 1 year professional training in Compassionate Inquiry from Dr Gabor Mate and Sat Dharam Kaur. She is trained to Level 1 in Internal Family Systems and is a Trauma Informed Coach (TICC). Matt is also a certified Trauma Informed Coach and has trained with the Polyvagal Institute. SHIFT will be co-ordinated by Miranda Keast who is also a certified Trauma Informed Coach and the programme will be supported by the wider MoH team.

If you have any questions on the programme please contact miranda@museumofhomelessness.org

Content includes:

  • Exploring the importance of a personal practice and its relevance to social action work led by trauma survivors.

  • Working with emotions, memory and the body.

  • Working with personal boundaries, grief and distress.

  • Working with trauma and the nervous system.

  • Structural trauma and the front line; exploring dehumanised perception and how trauma shows up in organisations.

  • Working with coping mechanisms: Fresh and compassionate approaches to working with addiction, self-harm and suicide ideation.

  • Unlocking creative problem solving in your everyday life.

 

THE CONTEXT

We are working and organising in a resource starved environment, with multiple systems in crisis. Pressures from years of austerity, a hostile environment and sharp increases in inequalities of all kinds are shaping our everyday life and work. Whilst navigating this, many of us are holding our own trauma experiences, perhaps that led us to this work in the first place.

Over the last few years, Museum of Homelessness has been responding to this crisis by equipping our internal team and community with the skills and knowledge that can help us respond with creativity and compassion, even when things are hard.

Since our founding nearly a decade ago, MoH has attempted to highlight the problems in this system. We have campaigned, organised, hosted major productions and events and sought to combat the injustices where we can. Now we want to go further with our work in trauma and make new, survivor led solutions. Where we see something missing, we create it. In our new site at Manor House Lodge, we want to help individuals affected by complex and structural traumas but also change a badly drained ecosystem of services. 

Thanks to funding from the Sarah Jane Leigh Charitable Trust we are able to pilot a development programme for people working in homelessness.