We Build Systems for Better Access

Two hundred and twenty-five years ago, a small community in south London decided the brokenness of their city was theirs to carry. AV Senior Fellow Dr. Steve Garber spent a night and a day where they lived, and it sent him back to a question we keep returning to: what does it take to build a society where people actually flourish, and who is responsible for the parts that are breaking? A reflection on story, vocation, and the culture that runs upstream from politics.

At Access Ventures, we've spent years learning that the framing matters as much as the funding.

Traditional problem-solving locks teams into a scarcity mindset that focuses on what's wrong, what's broken, and what's missing. But designing for change requires the opposite: an abundance mentality that assumes opportunity and builds from strength.

We call this appreciative inquiry and shifting the question from what's wrong to what's strong.

Drawing inspiration from Thriving Cities and Josh Yates’ human ecology framework, we can begin to see cities as more than economic engines or policy arenas. Cities are both beautiful and broken, made up of cultural, structural, and relational “endowments” that form the soil where civic life grows. Funders, then, are not just financiers - they are gardeners, co-stewards of these ecosystems.