Embrace People & Place exists to change how systems work for people who are most often failed by them. We are a project-based charity, incubating, testing and proving new ideas so that better futures are possible for people whose needs are too complex, too human, or too “unusual” to fit neatly within traditional service delivery.
We don’t exist to run services indefinitely. Our goal is to prove an idea works, then pass it on, whether that’s to a partner charity, an independent organisation, or government. Success, for us, isn’t growth, it’s letting go: handing a project over once it’s strong enough to stand on its own. We also succeed when others build on what we’ve learned, even without our direct involvement, because knowledge that travels is impact that scales.
437 Hunter is central to how we do this. Coordinated by Embrace People & Place, it’s a collaborative platform and living lab that brings together people, projects and partners in a deeply local way, while remaining infinitely scalable. It shows how shared infrastructure can reduce duplication, how relationships can accelerate impact, and how capacity building strengthens outcomes for the people who need it most.
We’re based in Newcastle by design, not by accident. It’s large enough to reflect real system complexity, small enough to allow genuine collaboration, and connected enough to influence broader systems. If an idea works here, it can probably work anywhere, and what we learn becomes knowledge that can travel, always with the understanding that other places will add their own secret herbs and spices.
Embrace People & Place is guided by the following overarching pillars:
Our headquarters is a five-level building at 437 Hunter Street in Newcastle including two ground-level shopfronts. All five levels of the building will be utilised by in-house partners supporting and empowering vulnerable people while the two shopfronts operate as social enterprises supporting people to access employment.
