There is a groundswell of activity across Australia to increase the involvement of people with lived experience in social and systems change efforts. This report describes in-depth conversations with lived experience and community leaders across Australia, as part of a national project exploring lived experience leadership and the possibilities it creates for social innovation and systems change. The On our own terms project creates space for reflection on what it means to lead from lived and living standpoints, including the opportunities this creates, the tensions it surfaces, and the personal and political costs it can carry.

The project builds on the deep historical and foundational advocacy, activism and vision of movements focused on justice and liberation. The project report seeks to surface insights, challenges and provocations about how lived experience leadership is practised, sustained and often constrained, and what it might take to better support and scaffold this work within systems change efforts.