What if lived and living experience (LLE) wasn’t a story we heard about but something we built alongside?

This video project was created to help organizations, leaders, and partners understand what happens when we move from inclusion to true co-creation. The “Foundations of Experience” explores what it means to embed LLE across efforts and in systems. LLE should be a structural component and an intentional practice, and Suicide Prevention Resource Center proves that not only can it be done, but it can be done well.

We can’t expect systems to change if we aren’t willing to change who gets to shape them.

The “Foundations of Experience” video highlights the early efforts that laid the foundation for today’s lived experience efforts in suicide prevention. It explores challenges and the current work taking place at SPRC, and considers future directions for more robust LLE work.

Whether you’re just beginning or deep into this work, this is an invitation to reflect:

➡️ How are you designing spaces that don’t just ask people to share, but ask them to shape effective work?

Let’s move the field forward and not just look at people with lived and living experiences as service users or stories to access, but as the experts we know them to be. There’s a version of me from 10 years ago that needed this kind of message, and to know there were people like me pushing for all of us to be at the table. I hope someone else finds it at just the right moment.

The Foundations of Experience, produced by the Suicide Prevention Resource Center and ModernEpic

Note: This project was produced in my role as Director of Lived Experience Initiatives at the Suicide Prevention Resource Center, and I’m proud of the collaboration behind it. The views and content shared on this page are my own and do not represent the views or official positions of my employer or any organizations with which I am affiliated. All content reflects my personal insights, experiences, and perspectives.

#LivedExperience #SystemsChange #CoCreation #TransformationalLeadership #EquityInPractice #NarrativeStrategy #HumanCenteredDesign

If you watch, I’d love to hear:

➡️ What stood out?
➡️ Where are you seeing co-creation done well, or where is it still missing?

I hope we can keep this conversation going.