Introduction: The Activating Lived Experience Leadership (ALEL) project was a South Australian participatory action research project that aimed to improve the ways lived experience is recognised, valued and integrated across mental health and social sector systems. ALEL was completed during 2019-2021, where it engaged 182 participants in generating community action and research knowledge.
Objective: Our paper discusses the project's processes of building a collective partnership among lived experience leaders and other leaders from within the sector, so that the actions and strategies identified through research could be implemented by systems-level impact.