Why weeknotes?
I’ve worked for myself since 2015. There are so many flexibilities that come with freelance work and opportunities to be part of different groupings and partnerships. The flipside is that it often feels there’s no-one to support you, to hold you to account. I have seen other people that I know use weeknotes as a way to document their work, their learnings and also personal reflections. There are so few people that will see this website, but this is a space for me to regularly document my ideas, remind myself of what has been achieved and also keep a record of things that I have seen and heard.
10 April 2025
Things I have been working on
- Wrapping up the work on leadership. Reflecting deeply about someone saying ‘care for people and the organisation is at the heart of this work’ and thinking about how I apply that to all of my practice.
- Having less of a foggy brain. Rest and setting a more manageable pace helped. Still failing to do anything without an expressed deadline.
- Setting out a creative approach to telling impact stories across a programme of work.
- Reading papers about how care organisations extract money - a combination of business structures, debt, offshoring - and thinking about the implications for the quality of care, and the finances of the public sector.
- Applying the training I did. My meeting facilitation is completely different. A worthwhile investment!
- Not making enough time to do reflections. Committing to coming back each week.
Things I have been reading/ listening to
- Many podcasts. Macrodose for economics, this excellent episode of Computer Says Maybe on Gen AI and work/ labour, Over The Top and Under the Radar and Pod Save the UK to understand the state of the world without having to read everything. Farmarama had a great few episodes on soil and art.
- The Message
- Let this radicalize you.
7 March 2025
Things I have been working on
- Thinking about leadership, and how that connects to applying principles of emergence in organisations.
- Reading tons of things, promptly forgetting them all. My brain is foggy!
- Exploring how retrofit (housing energy efficiency actions) can be a tool to bring people together for collective action, collective benefit. Thinking about how the private rented sector has the houses in the worst condition, but how do you support upgrades without enriching owners/ increasing rents for those with the least.
- Not finding time to finish a bid, as it doesn’t have a deadline.
- Training - in online facilitation and AI Impacts 101. Both were excellent in content and helping me reset some knowledge and skills.
Things I have been reading/ listening to
- An event at the LSE on the idea of an extreme wealth line (from my colleagues at NEF)
- I went to the Hard Graft: Work, health and rights exhibition at Wellcome, partly to see an exhibit from my friends at the Voice of Domestic Workers
- This is how we fall out of love with the world.
- Disobedient Bodies
31 January 2025
Things I have been working on
- January started busy, had a few middling weeks and has ended in a sprint. Definitely looking forward to the weekend!
- Active travel - outcomes of neighbourhood interventions, links to long-term impacts
- How to do community engagement - planning a series of case studies.
- Case study templates for delivery organisations. And how to use them for learning and reflection.
- An away day with a fellow freelancer to plan how we can work together and create great work this year. Reflecting on our favourite projects, common values and hopes and where we can be most valuable to the movement. Lunch with another - where we might build some deep research this year.
- Adapting proposals myself and a freelancer wrote before Christmas as the brief changed. Hoping we get the more refined work as it’s something we both want to explore.
Things I have been reading/ listening to
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