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Giving survivors a voice: Unseen’s Lived Experience Research Project

Unseen’s new Lived Experience Research Project is creating practical guidance to help businesses engage survivors of modern slavery safely and responsibly.

The Transparency in Supply Chains (TISC) guidance highlights the importance of engaging survivors of modern slavery. Yet it leaves a gap when it comes to practical, safe, and meaningful engagement. Businesses are asking: How can we do this responsibly? The Lived Experience Research Project was created to address this, ensuring survivors’ voices guide every step.  

We are thrilled to announce the launch of our Lived Experience Research Project, in partnership with Bristol University, leading businesses, and Unseen’s survivor consultants group.  

Bristol University brings a wider research perspective, exploring how organisations can engage with people with lived experience safely and responsibly. This research, combined with direct survivor insight, strengthens the evidence base behind the report and toolkit we are developing. Together, we’re exploring how organisations can involve survivors from the very start of policy, process, and training development. 

Project goal

Survivor voices are at the heart of this project. Its overarching aim is to fill the gap in guidance on survivor engagement by developing a publicly accessible toolkit and report with clear guidance. Using insights from survivors and research from Bristol University, the project will show businesses how to bring TISC recommendations to life; safely, meaningfully, and effectively. 

The guidance and toolkit will be tested and refined with our partnering businesses to ensure it works in real-world settings. By placing survivors at the heart of every stage, this project creates engagement that is safe, meaningful, and genuinely survivor-led, transforming guidance into practical, lasting change.  

Active involvement from leading businesses

Unseen is proud to work alongside a group of committed partners who are actively shaping this project. They aren’t just supporting the initiative – they are collaborating with us through workshops, testing approaches, and applying survivor insights in their own organisations. Together, we are turning research into practical action. 

We would like to thank our project partners: Lloyds Banking Group, Marks and Spencer, Unilever, Natwest and LSEG for their commitment and dedication to making survivor engagement meaningful, ethical, and impactful. 

The four stages of the project
  1. Research & Survivor Engagement Workshops – Building the skills of Unseen’s survivor consultants, gathering their perspectives, and capturing insights to inform the project from the very start.
  2. Testing with Participating Companies – Working closely with partner organisations to explore how survivor feedback can be safely and effectively applied in real-world business processes.
  3. Results & Findings – Analysing lessons learned from both survivors and businesses to identify what works, what challenges remain, and how engagement can be improved.
  4. Report, Guidance & Toolkit Development – Translating insights into a report with clear guidance and a practical toolkit to help organisations embed survivor-led engagement into their policies, training, and remediation processes.  

Follow our project as we turn survivor voices into practical, actionable guidance, setting a new standard for survivor involvement and lasting impact. While the project is unfolding, explore what TISC asks of businesses and learn more about the expectations for ethical practices. 

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Justine Currell

As I came to understand more about the issue, including through a visit to an Unseen safehouse, I knew I needed to do more to stop this abuse and exploitation.

For the last five years of my Civil Service career, I was the Modern Slavery Senior Policy Advisor in the Home Office and led on development of the Modern Slavery Act, including the transparency in supply chains provision and business guidance.

I joined Unseen to lead the development of the Modern Slavery & Exploitation Helpline, and Unseen’s work with businesses. I am regularly called upon to present at national and international conferences and use my experience of working with Ministers to influence other governments internationally to take action to address modern slavery and, in particular, business supply chain issues.

In my spare time I enjoy keeping fit, music, reading and travelling.

Andrew Wallis

What ultimately compelled me to act was a report on how people from Eastern Europe were being trafficked through Bristol airport to the USA. Kate Garbers, who went on to be an Unseen Director, and I wrote to all the city councillors, MPs and the Police Chief Constable challenging them on the issue. The challenge came back to us: this city needs safe housing for trafficked women. And so Unseen began.

But we never wanted Unseen to be just about safe housing. We wanted to end slavery once and for all, and that remains our driving focus.

I chaired the working group for the Centre for Social Justice’s landmark report “It Happens Here: Equipping the United Kingdom to Fight Modern Slavery”. This is now acknowledged as the catalyst behind the UK’s Modern Slavery Act of 2015. It was a great honour to be awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours that year. On the other hand, I’ve also been described as “the loveliest disrupter you could ever hope to meet”.

This job has taken me from building flat-pack furniture for safehouses, to working with businesses to address slavery in supply chains, to delivering training, raising awareness and advising governments around the world.

When not at work, I enjoy travelling, spending time with my dog Harley, cooking, supporting Liverpool and Yorkshire CC, music (I’m a former DJ) and endurance events such as the Three Peaks Challenge and Tribe Freedom Runs – which I vow never to do again. Until the next time.