July, August & September 2023

22 September 2023

Event prep: briefings for speakers, wrangling admin, getting anxious, chasing people. Adding things to the list. This took a LOT of time. I need 🫖
Starting a proposal for a project, watching a recording of a Q&A for applicants. Realising there’s more face to face than we have time for. Pivoting. Expanding the team. More writing, some diagrams. Trying to keep it short and sweet.
Admin and auditing in work and life. Settling balances, bring things to the front that need finishing before getting distracted by something new.

A trip to the North East to meet local community groups, civil society support organisations and public sector staff to get a better understanding of what’s happening in communities, what support is needed and how our partnership can best bring our resources and skills to bear. Left completely enthused about all the the people trying to rewire the economy and excited to be a very tiny part of some activities up there.
A workshop with the great team at Future Yard in Birkenhead to look at their vision and their SWOT as part of their strategy development.
Planning an event on the future of transport in the North East. Trying to balance sharing information and ideas with people being able to discuss their experiences and priorities.
Meeting old colleagues to discuss great research they have done on people’s experiences of the social security system and new projects they are working on.
Talking to organisations about how I can support their work over the autumn and winter period, one of whom I have worked for before. Looking forward to pinning that down so I have clarity on my working time for the coming months.
Business admin - accounts, pensions re-registrations etc. All the things that take less time than the procrastination that surrounds them.

Presentations for boards. Using Canva to make them more elegant than in Slides or PowerPoint.
Learning how anchor institutions (like NHS trusts) think about inclusive economic growth.
All the difficult things about freelancing and trying to find balance between work, life, progress and rest

Starting new projects that were then shelved. Looking ahead to the autumn and whether I have enough work.
Regretting not taking a full two weeks off. I am working but not productive. Next year I will plan better.

Clearing my inbox, unsubscribing, deleting, archiving. It’s nice to clean things up.

More thoughts on impact. The way in which performance management is not the only reason to measure impact.
Citizen action against the privatisation of public space (beach edition).

I took almost a week off to read and relax. It was great until I came back to work in extreme weather, which undid all the relaxation.
Trying to summarise what the review of local authority strategies can tell us for next steps for action.
Interviews for new work following all the proposals. None of the three were successful. Still waiting for feedback on all three to learn for next time.
Writing up notes from meetings, working slowly.
Thinking about tree planting, health, economic outcomes.

Moving from ‘what works’ to more complex ideas in evaluation.
Locating Legacies podcast series from Pluto Press and the Stuart Hall Foundation.
Rebecca Solnit on not giving in to climate doomers.
How to grow a garden on builders’ waste.

This seems to be the week everyone wants to set up their evaluation and learning activities for the autumn. I have written three proposals this week. I am EXHAUSTED.
I’ve been working on some planning and behind the scenes organisation for some engagement work. Thinking about how Airtable can aid gathering useful information about who we are speaking to, as well as providing a place for cross organisational saving of insights from meetings. Hard when everyone has different systems. As we discovered when someone tried to use the find a time feature in Microsoft and others were on Google…
Sitting in on meetings with people working in local authorities who are leading on Inclusive Growth (and all that it may entail). Being reminded of all the amazing work they are trying to do - either directly through their work, or through leveraging their influence.
Sitting in a steering group about wellbeing champions - learning from an evaluation that has been done in one part of an area, before we start data collection in another.
Taking some days off next week and trying to make sure everything is done before then.

This Guardian podcast on the impacts of gentrification in central London on schools (spoiler they are closing due to lack of children)
New research from the What Works Centre for Wellbeing on how improving agency and control in communities can increase community wellbeing
Elton John and Dua Lipa on repeat
The Vatican has partnered to release a new handbook on AI Ethics