See the system.
Shared learning in Circles Zero to Six, with coaching and continuing peer triads.
Cugoano / The Programme
A place to learn.
And put it into practice.
An eighteen-month Fellowship for fifteen young adults aged 18–30, with paid Circle days, coaching, peer support and funded project work. Time to explore what matters to you and develop ideas with others.
Rooted at St James’s Piccadilly. Open to young people of all faiths and none, with a deliberate commitment to widening opportunity for people from underrepresented backgrounds.
The Fellowship at a glance
What being part of it involves.
- 18 months
- Time to learn, test ideas and put them into practice.
- 15 Changemakers
- Young adults aged 18–30, bringing different experiences.
- Paid Circle days
- Shared learning, with agreed travel and accommodation covered.
- People alongside you
- Professional coaching, peer triads and later specialist mentoring.
- Funded project work
- Support to develop and deliver a real project through Continuum.
- Open to all faiths and none
- Rooted at St James’s Piccadilly, with a commitment to widening opportunity.
The first cohort begins on 7 and 8 November 2026. Future cohort details will be shared on this website.
How we begin
Come as you are.
There is no pitch to perfect.
You do not have to arrive with everything worked out. Cugoano offers time to explore what matters to you, try things with others and build relationships that can support the work.
People bring different experiences and starting points. We learn by asking questions, making things, listening to one another and returning to ideas with fresh eyes. There is room for uncertainty, creativity and enjoying one another’s company.
The eighteen-month journey
Learning that moves
into the world.
The Fellowship has an eighteen-month arc. Later Circles and practical arrangements are shaped with the cohort, rather than treating the programme as fixed regardless of what participants learn.
Look across disciplines.
Explore how leadership questions appear in different fields, while keeping connections between them in view.
Business & Economic EmpowermentInnovation & TechnologySocial Equity & Civic LeadershipCulture, Arts & MediaClimate & Sustainability
Test what is possible.
Develop a systems map, stakeholder analysis, financial plan and ethical risk statement before making commitments.
Make, learn, revise.
Supported and funded project work, with oversight and space to consider what the work is actually changing, and for whom.
Support around the Changemakers
Opportunity should not depend
on who can afford it.
We pay for participation in Fellowship days and cover agreed travel and accommodation. This matters because everyone arrives with different time, resources and responsibilities.
Professional coaching
One-to-one space to reflect and develop judgement. Conversations are confidential, subject to agreed safeguarding boundaries.
Peer triads
Three Changemakers learn alongside one another, listening, questioning and revisiting commitments over time. They are peers, not a hierarchy.
Paid participation
Circle days are paid. The programme makes room for study, employment, caring responsibilities and different starting points.
Access and care
We work with participants on reasonable access and practical arrangements, and do not expect unpaid preparation between Circle days.
Three connected ways of learning
Think together.
Tell the truth.
Make something real.
Circles, Lens and Continuum deepen one another throughout the Fellowship. Reflection shapes stories; stories sharpen what we notice; action tests our judgement. Then we return, review and adapt.
Circles
Collaborative learning and decision clinics. Work with systems, power, evidence and the everyday practice of responsibility.
Follow the Circles ↓Lens
Creative expression and careful storytelling. Explore how a different way of seeing might change what we understand and do.
Explore Changemaker Lens ↗Continuum
Supported project development and delivery, with attention to feasibility, ethical risk and governance, not just ambition.
Explore the journey ↓Foundation Circles / Zero to Six
A place to practise, question and return.
Each Circle builds on the last. We learn by trying an approach, hearing what we have missed and returning to decisions with more care. Nothing needs to be produced in advance for the opening weekend.
Arriving Together
Begin with relationships, listening and the idea that nobody has to arrive with a polished story or project.
Entering the System
Look beneath the surface of an issue and begin mapping people, power, resources and assumptions.
The First Revision
Return to what we thought we knew. What happens when new evidence challenges the first explanation?
Decide
Practise judgement when information is incomplete, authority is uneven and others carry the consequences.
Resource
Account for money, time, trust and the hidden labour that makes work possible.
Hold
Sustain responsibility and commitments without making personal sacrifice the measure of leadership.
Negotiate
Work across different interests and make honest agreements that people can actually honour.
Try a decision clinic
What do you do when a project promises more than its budget can deliver?
Imagine you have advertised a community workshop for 30 people. The budget can cover a fully accessible session for 20. Cutting access support would make room for more people, but exclude some of those the project was meant to reach. Invitations have already gone out.
What would you do first? Open the possibilities below and consider what each asks of you.
Pause and listen to the people affected
Speak with participants before deciding what to change. Whose needs have not been understood? Listening takes time, but may reveal a better way forward. Be clear about what is still open to change.
Reduce the numbers and explain why
Protect the access support and offer a smaller session. How would places be allocated fairly, and what would you say to people who cannot attend? A smaller promise still needs an honest explanation.
Look for another way to resource the work
Explore a partner, another venue or a later date. What extra work would that create, and who would carry it? Avoid making another promise before you know it can be kept.
An illustrative discussion, not a test. There is no single approved answer; the point is to notice the trade-offs, listen and take responsibility for the next step.
The practice of changing your mind
Revision is a strength.
It matters that people can say, “I thought this, but I have learned something that changes my mind.” Cugoano makes room for uncertainty, evidence and responsible changes of course.
A quick guide
What the words mean.
What you carry forward
Ideas, relationships
and room to grow.
The aim is to leave with stronger judgement, people to turn to and experience of taking an idea into the world, then learning from what happens.
Meet the ChangemakersThe pathway is an outline of the programme design, not a claim of outcomes already achieved. Later learning and project decisions are developed with participants and subject to agreed governance and support.