This chapter will detail the challenges and practicalities of developing a new collective, how the APLE Collective emerged, their journey and how they developed into a network. The chapter will also discuss how the APLE Collective have responded to activism during COVID-19, addressing their activism on the digital divide. This chapter, drawn from sections of the APLE Collective website, sets the background to the work of Thrive Teesside, ATD Fourth World and Expert Citizens within the APLE Collective. This chapter will document how the APLE Collective went from small beginnings in 2018 to two successful campaigns around the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, and in 2020 adapted to expand, link with new member groups and represent the voices of lived experience during the COVID-19 global pandemic. The chapter will detail the challenges and practicalities of a swift move towards socially distanced activism and the learning taken from this and will conclude with a discussion of how adopting a collaborative approach to sharing the voices of lived experience is imperative to influencing change.

The story of the APLE Collective: small beginnings

APLE Collective began in February 2018, when groups led by people with direct experience of poverty were invited by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) to meet up with the Poverty2Solutions alliance (ATD Fourth World, Dole Animators and Thrive; https://www.poverty2solutions.org/our-story). From the first gathering it was agreed within the group of organisations, all led by lived experience, that there were advantages to joining as a network of voices, experience and stories led by people with direct experience of poverty. The APLE Collective was formed around the notion that ‘it is only when people with direct experience of any given issue are able to have opportunities to affect the decisions that impact on them, that real, meaningful change can happen’ (APLE Collective, 2020).