Joel Dunn

I founded Paradigm Project in 2020 out of frustration with the persistent failure to address complex youth issues upstream. After years working across the public and voluntary sectors, including frontline youth work, county lines intervention, prison in-reach, mentoring, group facilitation, and alongside a London hospital trauma unit supporting victims of serious violence, it became clear to me that too much of our system responds only once harm has already occurred. Paradigm Project was created to challenge that pattern and to build preventative, relational, and evidence-informed responses that reduce risk before crisis.

Before entering youth work, I had a career as a close protection officer for high-net-worth families. Following an incident that led to a custodial sentence, my life took a profound turn. While in prison, I gained a mentoring qualification and began mentoring within the education department. That experience fundamentally reshaped my understanding of privilege, exclusion, and opportunity, particularly the taken-for-granted access to education, stability, and pathways that many young people never receive. It also clarified my purpose: to work alongside those most impacted by systemic failure and to help redesign the conditions that shape their lives.

Today, Paradigm Project operates at the intersection of research, practice, and systems change. We work with children, families, educators, community organisations, and policymakers to generate insight, test ideas, and embed preventative approaches within education and safeguarding systems. Our strategic direction is rooted in scaling deep rather than scaling fast, prioritising depth, quality, and lasting change at critical transition points in children’s lives, while building models that can inform wider system reform.

Alongside leading Paradigm Project, I am now undertaking a PhD in Education Leadership and Improvement at the University of Cambridge. My doctoral research builds on my master’s work on school exclusion and the school-to-prison pipeline, scaling this research nationally and centring lived experience, relational practice, and preventative safeguarding. This academic work directly informs Paradigm Project’s research agenda and programme design, strengthening our ability to influence policy, practice, and long-term systems change.

Paradigm Project exists to build the fence upstream, not simply respond at the bottom of the cliff. Everything we do is driven by that belief.