Steps to Success

Recently Gayle and I, alongside Eilaine from Hot Chocolate Trust, ran a workshop at the Scottish Institute for Residential Child Care (SIRCC) “Steps to Success” conference in Glasgow to explore “preserving and promoting positive relationships”. This was off the back of IRISS’s Relationships Matter project and the same workshop I ran at the Parenting in Scotland Conference earlier this year.

Personal Stories

It was wonderful to attend an event that embraced the importance of personal stories wholeheartedly, with young people reflecting and sharing their personal experiences with the delegates in the most beautifully, heart wrenching way – I’m not sure there was a dry eye in the room. I have so much respect for the young people for sharing their stories with everyone – it’s difficult to share your life story with anyone, let alone a room full of strangers. Wonderful!

Recognition of the importance of sharing and highlighting personal stories appears to be growing at events I’ve been attending lately. Scottish Care; Parenting Across Scotland and The Co-Prodction Network (and now SIRCC) are just a few organisations that have made this the primary focus of their events and it’s wonderful to see. Long may it continue! (as long as it continues to be done in a person-centred and non-exploitary manner!)

Preserving and Promoting Positive Relationships

Our workshop was in the afternoon of the first day of the conference.

We started by inviting delegates to list what they hoped to get from the session.

Through this key themes of interest emerged:

Learn/Understand
Give Young People an Understanding
Hear from Young People
Talk About Relationships
See Evidence of the Impact of Positive Relationships
Raise Awareness of the Importance of Positive Relationships
Hear Some New Ideas

This allowed us to capture people’s expectations and to reflect on these throughout the session. We hope this helped to shape a session that had something for everyone!

Following an introduction to IRISS and the Relationships Matter Project, we showed delegates a video created with a young person at Hot Chocolate Trust. In this video the young person reflects on how Hot Chocolate supported them by demonstrating positive loving relationships.

We then invited the delegates to reflect on this video by asking them to respond to three questions: 1. how the video made them feel; 2. Listen to what the video is saying; and 3. Think about how the video makes them react.

During this process the group worked in pairs to reflect and discuss how the video made them feel and react.

We then invited discussion through the wider group so that learning and experiences could be shared.

Following this we invited them to return to their pairs and think about love. Where was it shown in the video? How does love translate in a professional context? and What is their “pledge for love” in 2015.

This allowed the group to think about how love (and loving relationships) can take many forms and, importantly, that you don’t need to say ‘I love you’ to let someone know how you feel.

We captured the discussion on activity cards on which delegates wrote their responses including their pledges to make love their big focus for 2015.

Some of these ‘pledges’ are detailed below:

To treat people as I wish to be treated myself!

Tell the people that I love, that I love them!

It’s ok to show, demonstrate and tell young people that you love them!

Free hugs!

When the going gets tough be there no matter what!

Encourage my team to be confident in their actions/showing love!

Untitled

Think about your own ‘pledges’ to make love the big focus for 2015 and share them with us on twitter @irissorg #RelationshipsMatter.

Thanks, Fiona

May 13, 2015September 4, 2018

It’s Time to Walk the Talk – Making Co-Production the Way Scotland Works

Yesterday I attended the 4th National Co-Production Conference in Glasgow’s Royal Concert Hall. I was joined by colleagues at IRISS and Hot Chocolate (who are involved in IRISS’s Relationships Matter project).

This event was hosted by the Scottish Co-Production Network:

The Scottish Co-production Networkis free and open to anyone who is interested in co-production in Scotland. As a member of the network, you will be invited to learning events, network meetings and be able to take part in discussions and information sharing on the website. In order to ensure the network is effective in developing practice around co-production in Scotland, members are encouraged to contribute to the network by sharing their learning and experience through the online discussions, attending meetings and sharing useful information and case studies.

If you would like to join the network you can sign up here – it’s free and only requires basic information.

Across Scotland people and communities are continuing to work with local services to achieve positive change through co-production. This event sought to bring it all together, allowing delegates to learn from each other and plan for the future.

It was an energetic and inspiring event with evident passion for change from the people in the room.

Welcome

The day started with a welcome from Catriona Ness (co-chair of the network) who set the scene for the day by discussing the importance of involving people who use services if we are to make positive changes in Scotland!

This was followed by discussion from Fiona Lees (Chief Executive East Ayrshire Council) about positive examples of how co-production approaches are working locally with great outcomes.

There was a buzz in the room and everyone was clearly excited about the possibilities as they went to their first workshop.

Workshop 1 – What Can Scotland Learn From International Approaches to Co-Production: What to do and What to Avoid? – Governance International

The first workshop I attended was facilitated by Tony Bovaird of Governance International.

In this session we were split into 8 groups to explore key questions around co-production and share learning amongst our groups.

Some of the topics we explored, and may be useful for you to consider in your own work, were:

Do we have more power as a group to collaborate and co-produce? Is this due to more confidence when working as a group?
Which of the “four Co’s” [co-commission; co-design; co-deliver; and co-assess] are strongest in our areas?
Is the focus of co-production right? How can we get the best feedback on citizen priorities?
What tools have you used to successfully co-design in your area? How have you found the right people for co-design?

Discussion in our group focused on a need to move from just co-designing to also co-assess and involve people who use services throughout our work as equal partners – not just in one of the four “co” phases.

Facilitated Debate

Following this session we had a facilitated discussion from Gerry Power (Deputy Director, JIT) about the frustrations we all face when working together on co-production projects.

Common themes included: fear; money; time; only working with those who are already ‘converted’ to the idea of co-production; not being able to engage the “unusual suspects”; undervaluing people’s skills and expertise.

Lunch

Following this session, it was time for lunch were I was pleased to catch up with a number of people who had been involved in IRISS’s Plan P, Hospital to Home and Experience Labs projects. It is encouraging to see they are all continuing to embrace co-production!!

Comedy

After lunch we were in for a treat with a hilarious session from Gillian Grant from Universal Comedy. It was brilliant, clever and funny! It was a pleasant surprise to be at an event that values this kind of input in their program! It was certainly well received by the delegates!Workshop 2 – From Patchwork to Supportive Net; Developing a Future pathway for Respite and Short Break Provision in Dundee

For my second workshop I wanted to learn from the work in Dundee by Animate who were discussing their evaluation of Dundee Carers Centre’s decision to provide short breaks/respite for adult carers in Dundee.

This was brilliant discussion about Dundee Careers Centre embracing the voice of their carers in deciding what ‘respite’ meant to them. We heard from one young woman whose ‘respite’ was a pair of waking boots that she can now use whenever the person she cares for is being cared for by someone else. She spoke with passion of the difference this had made for her as she can keep benefiting from them in a way that a standard one day trip wouldn’t have allowed.

We spent the second half of the session discussing all the people involved in co-designing a service of our choice. With my suggestion, the table I was at chose to explore the pathway from hospital to home for an unplanned admission.

It was really useful to map all the people involved in the pathway and how the pathway would change if one person was removed – i.e. a carer, or district nurse for example. I found this process really thought provoking and useful and would definitely use it again with others.

Pilotlight

During the afternoon two of my colleagues at IRISS, Kate Dowling and Judith Midgley also presented a workshop about their project Pilotlight.

Pilotlight set out to lead thinking on designing better supports for people across Scotland. Pilotlight co-designed four pathways to self-directed support focusing on mental health, risk, self-employment and young people in transition. The co-design teams involved people who access support, unpaid carers, local authorities and support providers. Together they tested and refined a model for successful power sharing, produced tools and resources and developed solutions for the implementation of self-directed support.

Judith and Kate have created a digital resource to share their learning, resources and tools. In the workshop they introduced participants to this digital resource, focusing on the co-design methods and tools. They also facilitated some activities to let participants test out some of the tools and critically evaluate their use in practice.

Final Plenary

The day concluded with an overview from Dr Margaret Whoriskey (Director, JIT) and Sir Peter Housden (Permanent Secretary to Scottish Government). They spoke about the discussions and sessions from the day with hope for co-production in Scotland and the Network as a whole.

Catriona Ness summarised the day with reference to Mother Teresa and the notion that, by all working on our own co-production projects, together we can make a difference in Scotland for the people who use and provide services.

We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.

Mother Teresa

Thanks, Fiona (@fkmunro)

**You can read the Co-Production Network’s Case Study about our Hospital to Home Project on their website**

April 1, 2015September 4, 2018

Creating Loving Relationships – Parenting across Scotland 2015 conference

On 12^th March I was fortunate enough to attend Parenting Across Scotland’s 2015 Conference “Creating Loving Relationships” – don’t you just love the title?! – alongside colleagues from Hot Chocolate to present the Relationships Matter project I had been co-leading with Gayle Rice [*].

The PAS 2015 conference, Creating Loving Relationships, focused on relationships.

Increasingly, the importance of relationships within families is being recognised. Children don’t come alone; they come as part of a family, with complex and intersecting relationships. We need to recognise this, and support the whole family.

Being a parent isn’t so much a job as a set of intersecting relationships. Like all relationships, being a parent has its good times and its bad times, and most families will have times when they need some help. It’s important that the relationships between families and professionals are nurturing, and help families to forge loving relationships within the family.

**Charis Robertson (Assistant Director, Hot Chocolate) beautifully summarised the presentations throughout the day**

When arriving at the conference I was welcomed by an array of stands displaying how we can all work together to support young people in and leaving care. There was a general buzz of happiness in the air as people discussed the inspiring conference theme.

The conference was opened briefly by Clare Simpson (PAS Project Manager) before she handed over to Fiona McLeod (MSP, Acting Minister for Children and Young People) to welcome everyone to the conference.

Fiona focused her discussion on the need to support families (and Dads!) to provide loving relationships so that Scotland can become the best place to grow up for children.

“We want Scotland to be the best place to grow up…we’re gathering the evidence of what works so that children have the best chance” Fiona McLeod (MSP).

Following Fiona’s welcome we were in for a wonderful and inspiring presentation from Dr Suzane Zeedyk (University of Dundee) about “Our human need for love: why it’s a the problem and why it’s the solution.”

Screen Shot 2015-04-01 at 14.42.34 This presentation was genuinely one of the most moving presentations I’ve seen and I’m sure I wasn’t alone with many people wiping their eyes throughout.

Suzanne spoke openly and honestly about the need for us to focus less on policy driven agendas and more on what matters to the young people that these policies are in place to support.

“I’m worried, worried that we care more about policies than relationships” Suzanne Zydeco

She raised concern for the ‘second skin’ developed by workers when working on difficult cases and the need for them to remember why they got into their line of work in the first place.

“Nurseries are scared to cuddle ‪children in their care for fear of inappropriate contact. This needs to change!” Suzanne Zeedyk

Next Dr John Coleman (OBE, Research Fellow, University of Oxford) spoke about “New knowledge about the adolescent brain” and how, if we really want to be person-centred and meet the needs of young teenagers then we should start understanding what works best for them. For instance did you know that teenagers would actually function better at school and obtain better test scores if classes started at lunchtime and finished later? No – me neither!

After this series of inspiring speakers it was time for a break and some reflections about all we had learnt so far before hearing from Dr Judy Corlyon about “A reversal of misfortune: who are the poor relations now?”

This presentation focused on the shift in recent years to grandparents having more money than parents and the struggles faced by young families as they work hard to support and care for their families.

“It is not long ago since many retired parents relied on their adult children for financial and practical help. Now it is the adult children who are more likely to find themselves

needing help as they struggle with benefit cuts, low-paid employment and expensive childcare” Judy Corlyon

Next we had a round table discussion to help us reflect on what we had heard so far. Screen Shot 2015-04-01 at 14.43.25

The table I was at focused on concerns that fear and policies were driving change when really we just need to think and act in more caring ways towards the young people we work with and support.

There was a focus on the need for evidence* to champion more person-centred approaches in practice and, of course, we thought hugs are great!

*there is a selection of evidence available on the Relationships Matters Website.

Then it was time for a quick (and super yummy!) lunch before setting up our workshop: “Where is the love? Thinking about what love looks like for professionals”

During our workshop we discussed the JAM event we ran in January as part of the Relationships Matter project and what Hot Chocolate would be doing in 2015 to champion loving relationships with the young people they work with and support.

We then asked our participants to reflect on this before completing prompt cards that questioned how they would translate ‘love’ into a professional context and what their pledge would be to make 2015 the year of love.

Participants were very engaged in this activity and there was a lot of group discussion about how they we could all champion love in 2015:

“being able to connect with others in a positive way”

“give something of yourself”

“more hugs and cuddles”

“I want to be courageous about making love my priority”

“not being afraid to talk about love”

Following the workshops Professor Phil Wilson (Centre for Rural Health, University of Aberdeen) gave a presentation about “Challenging the inverse care law: Can parenting support be fair for everyone?”

This presentation focused on evidence which suggests that parenting support isn’t always offered and taken up in proportion to need.

“The higher the risk/need, the lower the likelihood to access it” Phil Wilson

The conference concluded with an amazing presentation from John Carnochan OBE QPM (Independent consultant and expert on violence prevention) about “It’s relationships, that’s all, relationships”.

This presentation was especially moving and an inspiring way to end a great conference. John focused his discussion on the need for us to (re)connect with each other as fellow humans and to care for and protect children, young people and adults.

“We are wired for connection…sometimes it’s as simple as putting your arm around someone” John Carnochan

He spoke of his concern that we focus on policies rather than care and support and asked a very thought provoking question that seemed to resonate with everyone in the room:

“Why do we need a policy to ‘get it right for every child’ surely that should be obvious and we should just do it?Maybe we don’t really like kids, but simply tolerate them…we’ve professionalised the whole bloody world and we’ve abdicated our responsibility as humans” John Carnochan

I found this conference one of the best I’ve been to. The selection of speakers were inspiring and thought provoking and I am so pleased to see a conference that bravely focused it’s theme on love and loving relationships. I am hopeful for 2015 and a new focus on love over policy.

The answer to fear is love…this needs courage but we can do it together!”

Thanks, Fiona Munro

[*] This project is now being taken forward by Gayle and Ellen Daly in 2015.

March 19, 2015February 3, 2017

Contemporary Coproduction: theory policy and practice (guest blog: Dr Stuart Muirhead)

Contemporary Coproduction: theory policy and practice

Wednesday 18th March, Iris Murdoch Building, University of Stirling

A reflection on the day

The day started well for me with a morning walk through the rather picturesque grounds of the Stirling University Campus. It sits in a prime location at the bottom of the Ochil Hills, and it looked particularly nice on a crisp, sunny morning. This stroll was followed by arrival and a welcome hot coffee, while happily bumping into Claire Lightowler of the Centre for Youth and Criminal Justice on the way into the room.

Richard Simmons introduced the day as we got settled and we went straight into a couple of presentations by folk from the University of Birmingham. Catherine Needham explored what we consider as evidence, reminding us of the importance and value of lived experience and practice wisdom, as well as the more formalised evidence we are all perhaps more familiar with. Two things really hit home to me here. Firstly, coproduction must be additive and not substitutive. In other words – we must add value from coproducing, we can’t just fill gaps. Secondly, processes and ways of coproduction can’t just be copied from context to context. These processes shouldn’t be replicated but they should be assimilated into different places.

Next up was Tony ‘Tornado’ Bovaird from INLOGOV and Governance International. He gave a fantastic overview of where value sits in our society – is this in the formalised economy, or is it in the informal and social interactions that we take part in every day? We must re-balance service outcomes, personal outcomes and social capital outcomes. He also highlighted that we have a rich resource base in this country and it is not a lack of resources that we suffer from but a resource matching problem. We need to work with who is up for working together and not ignore the real strengths that exist.

After the break, when I had the chance to talk to Claire Brynner of What Works Scotland, we had two more presentations around the theme of ‘disrupting coproduction’. The first from Julie Christie who is exploring dementia in resilience in her PhD project. She ended with point that really seemed to resonate with the room – is coproduction done with active citizens or does coproduction help in activating citizens? Do the loudest voices get heard? Are these the white middle classes with loudspeakers and a voice this is disproportionately heard by those in power (a point highlighted by Peter Matthews)? Julia Fitzpatrick from Horizon Housing Association was our final speaker of the day and made some extremely pertinent points. The one that hit home with me was that we must not “equate a place at a table with involvement” – there are always power issues being played out and we must recognise these, and address them. In the following discussion, power came out as a central theme, and there was a reminder given that coproduction should be about increasing social justice and equality – just as public services should be.

After our impressive lunch of bento boxes and fruit we started enacting a bit more coproduction during the day. We went into a World Cafe with groups moving about the room. Each group started with a question and the discussion was recorded by a scribe. As the groups moved round every ten minutes, the scribe stayed put. Every time the group did move on, they left a provocative question for the incoming group. I scribed and you can see the direction of the discussion below:

Questions	Broad discussion journey…
Group 1 – Opening questionCan coproduction allow for resources to be redistributed to create more equitable outcomes?	Can we make communities more equitable by having a more unequal distribution of services? Why do people get involved in causes – anger, passion, love Is politicisation useful – start with something small and mobilise from there
Group 2 – Prompt questionDoes coproduction help people frame and influence issues that are important to them?	People are too easily marginalised from certain areas and backgrounds – too easy for them to go from being a person with a problem, to a problem person… We should strive towards an even playing field There is disproportionate middle-class voice Coproduction should be a power to break these barriers and inequalities down – this should be through building confidence and self belief We have became too individualistic as a society
Group 3 – prompt questionCan we use coproduction to become a more caring society, increase empathy, and to understand each others problems and perspectives?	Coproduction should be underpinned by respect – do good services respect people? Should be more linked in with implicit democracy Move people out of comfort zones Understand motivations for why people take part in coproduction
Final question How do you address different perspectives, motivations and values in coproduction?	…

After hearing from the other group scribes we had a quick break followed by different engaging activities designed to prompt discussion and group cohesion. My own group had a wide discussion around coproduction and began to build up a mini-lego community (see below). We actually started this hour session by getting to know each other and exploring what each other had to say, as opposed to beginning with a specific question. I found having the lego in front of us, and building our own little projects, meant there was more time for us to sit in comfortable silences and take time in our interactions. It was only in the last ten minutes that we started physically putting all our creations on the board and linking these up with lego pathways. We praised and prodded each others creations, ranging from an allotment/garden (top right), to the oriental/ MC Escher building (top middle), to the unicorn towers (middle left – unicorn is unfortunately hidden), to the burrowing octopus of cause/effect tentacles (bottom left), to the rather prosaic co-prod letters (which was my own stilted creation!)

We then heard what the other groups had been up to, with one using a circle to subvert the Brooks Newmark quote: “The important thing charities should be doing is sticking to their knitting and doing the best they can to promote their agenda, which should be about helping others.” Experienced knitters and complete novices came together to chat and support each other to produce a wonderful collage of squares (see below).

In the following discussion we started to explore themes of creativity, improvisation, innovation and support that had really exemplified some of the aspects that were coming through this final session.

Thanks to everyone there on the day, Stirling Uni, and especially Peter Matthews (@urbaneprofessor) for organising the day – let’s keep on prodding each other to work in more effective and thought provoking ways.

Cheers,
Stuart Muirhead, IRISS

March 6, 2015March 13, 2015

Space Unlimited – Changing Schools

On Wednesday I attended an event run by Space Unlimited about their work ‘Changing Schools’. I did so with great interest and enthusiasm as working with young people is a key part my background and continues to be a strong passion of mine.

Location: The event took place at House for an Art Lover in Glasgow (nice venue!) and lasted about 4 hours.

Attendees: There were about 30 people in attendance. This group included Space Unlimited Staff; Teachers and pupils from some of the schools involved in the project; and a selection of guests (i.e. people not involved in the project from IRISS (me!), Education Scotland, Care Inspectorate and so on).

Layout: Space Unlimited had drawn two large (4m+) diagrams of their process and pinned these along the wall. As they presented they added key aspects to the drawings so that they were built up by the end of the day. I found this really useful for visually bringing everyone in the room up to speed with their process from the point of planning to the point of action.

Very quickly I felt like I had a grasp of the work they had done, the process they had gone through and their outcomes.

Program: They started the day with an introduction to their ‘Changing Schools’ project.

In summary, Space Unlimited had been visiting schools to bring together teachers and pupils over three days to enable them to work well together and develop pupil/teacher committees.

The facilitators split the group into 4 smaller groups and sent them to separate rooms. Each group consisted of two people from Space Unlimited (facilitator and note taker); two pupils (min); one teacher (min) and three guests (min).

On the floor Space Unlimited arranged quotes from teachers and pupils involved in the project. They then asked those involved (teachers and pupils) to select one that resonated with them the most, followed by the guests.

Each person then took it in turns to talk about the quote they had chosen (40 mins total).

I really liked this method. It gave everyone a voice and something to talk about. Having a chance to read all of the quotes was very valuable also and a garret way to give the guests insight into the project from the participant’s perspective.

I was encouraged to hear quotes about feeling empowered, respected and listed to. The young people (age 13-14) were extremely confident and vocal about their experience with Space Unlimited. When I asked them about it they said they weren’t this confident until they worked with Space Unlimited and were able to see that their teachers cared about them and wanted to listen to them.

“Working with Space Unlimited allowed me to see my teachers care about me.” pupil.

There was a lot of discussion about how the schools could get other teachers/pupils engaged. There was concern that without Space Unlimited returning that it wouldn’t be possible. Pupils felt that they had become so confident that they were at the same level as the teachers and so new pupils would need to repeat that process. They referenced this as being similar to asking English speakers to join a group of Spanish speakers – you need someone to teach you both a shared language. That was what they thought Space Unlimited had done.

There was concern from the teachers that if they left the school they were currently working in that the learning would go with them but may not remain in the school they left.

After this session was a break, during which everyone was invited to write a topic to discuss in the next session. These were stuck on the wall and then everyone had to write their name next to one topic that interested them most.

Only 6 people wrote cards. Three of the people were pupils. I joined the group who had selected my card “how can this approach be embedded”. I wrote this based on the discussion at the start of the day as I felt it hadn’t been resolved and was a key part of the process.

Each of the groups were joined by one person from Space Unlimited (note taker).

Unfortunately there were no pupils in our group. In fact, most of the pupils ended up in the same group.

Our group talked a lot about how to build on and embed the process without Space Unlimited. There was talk about it being difficult to motivate teachers on the value of working with pupils in this way and having to give up their lunchtime or after school time to facilitate the pupil/teacher discussions. Workload was also discussed a lot.

I tried to bring the conversation back to outcomes for pupils and teachers and also (from a policy level) how this approach meets the outcomes of the Curriculum for Excellence. Although the teachers and guests in our group all agreed that enabling teachers and pupils to work together as equals was key, they were concerned again about the views of their colleagues. We did not resolve how this could be embedded.

After this session we returned to the larger group and one person from each group was invited to feedback their discussions.

I was really pleased to see that the pupils wanted to speak first and did so with great confidence.

The event ended with lunch and an opportunity to speak to the people involved. I spent this time with the group of pupils and two of the teachers. The group was extremely positive about their experience with Space Unlimited. The pupils all took the opportunity to talk to me with one telling me they were surprised someone outside of their school was also so interested in their story as well as their teachers.

“I’m surprised that someone other than my teacher would want to hear about what we are doing.” pupil.

This was a fun and engaging event and was really successful in quickly bringing everyone in the room to the same level of knowledge about the project – or at least to a level where the guests could happily engage with the participants. I really like the approach Space Unlimited took. In particular I like the large-scale visuals of their process and the quotes from participants and, of course, the opportunity to speak to everyone involved about their experience.

January 19, 2015

Guest blog: Claire Carpenter, Managing Director, The Melting Pot

What’s the creation story behind every social innovation?

Social innovators are often the disrupters, the ones who swim against the tide and question the status quo. We may find them uncomfortable and challenging but these people are also inspiring, determined and resilient.

Take the Social Innovator personality test. How many of these needed core skills and qualities do you have? Making connections, causing disruptions, having persistence and a critical mindset, clarity of vision, courage of your convictions, an ability to learn and reflect, to take risks and experiment, question results, have focus but also openness, and of course – the ability to “sell”.

During 2014 The Melting Pot initiated a collaborative enquiry process into social innovation and how it might flourish in Scotland.

Gatherings took place from Inverness to Edinburgh. Using ‘The Art of Hosting’ participatory processes, we dived into understanding the cultural conditions that help or hinder people, communities and organisations of all sizes who have a passion for creating solutions to our pressing eco-social challenges.

You can read more about our findings here. For fun, here are the recommendations turned on their head.

How to kill social innovation in 5 easy steps!

First – spot those disrupters and put them down – go on, tell them their mad ideas won’t work. These non-conformers who wish to do something different are a nuisance with their radical notions. Their dreams are too big, too complex. They don’t know what they’re doing and it will certainly never make any money!

Second – don’t assist those disruptors, or offer them a chance to collaborate. Keep yourself to yourself. Don’t move out of your comfort zone, talk to, or, help anyone! Don’t go out of your way to make connections or introductions, you might catch something – like a scary new proposition…

Third – seek out the answers to our societal problems from another place, somewhere like London, New York or Shanghai. Those disruptive ideas under your nose, on your doorstep, the ones that take account of the cultural fit can’t be any good can they? And anyway, it’s more fun to go on international jollies (sorry I mean learning journeys).

Forth – never accept anyone else’s wisdom, or seek to learn form them. What do they know anyway? There’s no point taking time out of your busy schedule to reflect on your learning – you’ve just got to keep doing – at all costs.

Fifth – work from your bedroom, alone – you can’t afford anywhere nice and professional to work anyway, not on what is invested into the social innovation pipeline. Yes we need jobs, but they can only be produced form companies that focus on economic growth not social capital.

Now forget all that. For social innovation to thrive in Scotland, we must create a culture to:

Encourage – literally lend courage and support to – those seeking to address inequality, those who are questioning the status quo, creating disruption and taking risks.
Foster connections, creativity and the generation of ideas amongst innovators in all sectors. Enabling genuine participation and collaboration across sectors releases socially innovative ideas.
Cultivate local solutions where social innovators can work with communities to define and co-design solutions within their community context.
Create safe places and spaces for learning, reflection and sharing all the stories: the successes, the tricky moments, the failures, the highs the lows of experience.
Invest in social innovation – provide the physical resources to enable social innovators to work with focus, purpose, determination and persistence.

The Melting Pot would like to thank the Scottish Government for commissioning this work, so that our policy makers can better harness our people’s talents, energy and ideas to make Scotland flourish.

Find out more about The Melting Pot, Scotland’s Centre for Social Innovation, and our Social Innovation Incubation Award programme (all disrupters PLEASE APPLY!).

http://themeltingpotedinburgh.org.uk/how-can-we-put-social-innovation-work-people-scotland-collaborative-enquiry

June 30, 2014

Super curious

A couple of weekends ago, I popped along to TEDx Glasgow. I loved every minute.

One of the talks really caught my attention – Will Mitchell’s ‘super curious’. Will is a Design Director of 4C Design Ltd, a graduate from The Glasgow School of Art and has spent 15 years working in a wide range of industries as a specialist engineer.

Will’s message was to stop ‘do-ing’ and to stop looking for ‘solutions’. This was difficult message for me to hear. In my day to day work I attend a lot of meetings and am often itching to get out and go get things done, or to support others to get things done.

Listening closer, though, there was a subtly in his message. He focused on learning through constant questioning – in essence, continuing to be ‘super curious’ about the challenges and issues that present in our day to day lives. He explained that in order to move forward and achieve your goals you have to constantly question everything that you encounter. He explained that no matter how much you think that you understand about the issue or challenge that you face there is always something new that you can learn. He suggested that getting to know a problem well enough, is in itself an achievement.

Now this, I can relate to.

It got me thinking about the application of this idea in practice – particularly for social services. I think we know broadly what the challenges are. But we are unable to be specific enough. This is because we don’t face problems. We face dilemmas.

Problems can be solved, but dilemmas only managed – this means the problems that we face are not clear cut with cookie cutter ‘solutions’, the dilemmas facing social services instead have grey areas and require responses that will support the issue to change in that particular context. This means that the closer we look and the more specific we become in our analysis – the more the ‘problem’ or ‘issue’ will change and become clearer. Lets also not forget to be ‘super curious’ about what is working too. Understanding what makes something a positive experience or service is just as important as focusing on the negatives.

In a different context (energy), the RSA (Royal Society of the Arts) have also been looking at the power of curiosity. Their research found that modern lifestyles could put the curiosity we need to drive innovation at risk. It highlights that modern technology is having an impact on our curiosity as it encourages short-term curiosity about a wide variety of topics, but doesn’t promote focus. The RSA argue that both types of curiosity are necessary to stimulate innovation.

In response to the findings, the RSA champion three key recommendations for learners of all ages to cultivate curiosity by:

Teaching for competencies like curiosity, as explicit educational goals, rather than as beneficial off-shoots of knowledge-based learning.
Encouraging forms of mental attention, including mindfulness, that make people reflect on things that might not have been noticed.
Having the opportunity to learn something in considerable depth.

Can we make the space for these kinds of activities in our sector?

April 8, 2014April 11, 2014

Reviving the art of practical wisdom

I read ‘the tyranny of recipes’, an article in Prospect magazine the other day that really resonated with me. In the article, the author explains how our increased reliance on recipes has impaired the intrinsic development of judgment – he argues, that we’ve lost trust in our own ability to understand and know what is working in the kitchen – and I think this analogy transcends this particular context.

The author writes … “Our tendency to describe courses of action as “recipes” or “formulas” suggests we believe problems are best solved by following step-by-step procedures that lead to guaranteed results. I think there is something deeply problematic in this ….”

I tend to agree with him – and it got me thinking about my own work in social services. We see ourselves [at IRISS] as facilitators of others’ creativity; we try to create safe and reflective spaces to encourage people to try things out, to have a go, and to see what happens. Time and time again we come up across the same old barriers in that people want to know what the outcome will be, by when and for whom. When we work together to co-design or co-produce the outcomes much of this cannot be known at the outset – because we are not following a prescriptive path. We do use a variety of processes (of course!) but these tend to be very flexible to allow for what might emerge in conversation and practice.

So, how can we revive the art of practical wisdom? It will likely demand that people who are supported by services, practitioners and those in senior management have a certain type of mindset which is comfortable with ambiguity (i.e. there is not a set ‘way’ to do things) and that is not afraid of failure (i.e. we will get things wrong, but in the process of figuring things out, we’ll try to minimize this risk by working alongside you).

This speaks nicely to another article I read recently about ‘Generation Flux’ – the new generation of workers whose underpinning values are creativity, impulsiveness and willingness to experiment. This is a generation of people who are learning to occupy unknown space and navigate through (negative capability) – and it’s the idea that any body of any age can operate in this way (i.e. it is not a demographic).

I’ve heard it said that innovation is based on wisdom – and wisdom comes from information synthesis (from your practical experience as well as things you’ve read and written etc). So we shouldn’t blindly follow process, we should embrace our hunches and the practical wisdom that we accumulate!

Do you follow your hunches? Are you comfortable in a generation of flux?

December 4, 2013February 3, 2017

Let Them Eat Cake

On 16th July 2013 the Guardian raised the important question:

“Is food the future of philanthropy?”

This was as part of their report on Free Cakes UK – a service that matches keen amateur bakers with families struggling to provide their child with a birthday cake – delivering its 1,000th cake. Proving that perhaps, in this case anyway, cake is the answer to big questions.

Meanwhile, somewhere else in the world (Glasgow), on the same day, I (Fiona Wood) was starting my journey as a new IRISS employee.

I came to IRISS from a series of academic research posts in collaboration with various Scottish Higher Education Institutes and NHS Boards but I don’t have a healthcare background. In fact my background is as an academic researcher specialising in designing programs of activity for children’s outdoor play and learning.

So what’s it like for an academic/designer suddenly finding they work in the field of social services after years of working in education and health care? Well, let me tell you….

IRISS is different from any other place I’ve ever worked before. The office is large and open with all staff (including our director) sitting in the same space. At one end there are three sofas used for meetings, chatting, eating, reading and so on.

At the other end there is a bright pink wall with the words “learning, partnership, creativity” embossed in white across it. Below this phrases like “you are what you share”, “an essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail” and “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough” inspire the organisation.

There is bunting on the ceiling and always a fresh supply of chocolates, biscuits, lots of fruit and, of course, cake!

But, does this style of working work I hear you ask? Well, a colleague, also new to IRISS, summed it up pretty well I think when they said:

“Happier workers are more productive. Get the environment right and everyone functions properly and you produce some nice work”.

So yes, I think it works.

Now, how does this compare to other organisations I’ve worked for? Well, before IRISS I worked as a researcher in a hospital. There were not open offices, there were not sofas or relaxed spaces for staff to interact with one other and there certainly weren’t any pink walls with inspirational quotes. But there was cake.

However, in the hospital the cake wasn’t shared across hierarchies because there were doors in the way. The doctors had their cake; the nurses had their cake; the researchers had….well we would steal everyone else’s cake. The point is, everyone had a specific role and they stuck to it. They didn’t share ideas, they didn’t listen to one another, and they didn’t know what was going on with each other’s work. Instead, day in, day out, they came in and did their work and didn’t stop and think and question one another. This is not co-production.

At IRISS, there is a lot of listening and asking colleagues what they are working on; there is a lot of sharing ideas; and a lot of engaging with one another and openly questioning each other in a friendly way. Each of the staff members have a broad range of skills that they creatively feed into the organisation. This supports the wide variety of projects currently taking place within IRISS, allowing a spectrum of social service issues to be addressed and considered from a wide perspective.

The resulting difference is that in IRISS there is no room for egos or hierarchies.

I am reminded of the striking difference between these two approaches when I attend meetings with external partners. I’ve observed Health and Social Care professionals pointing the finger at one another and complaining about the ‘arranged marriage’ they are facing at the start of 2014. There is no conversation, no listening, no questioning, no engaging – instead I see more closed doors, more talking, more blaming.

It is clear more needs to be done to create a happy and collaborative relationship between these groups.

Perhaps they could learn from IRISS.

But what is the solution I hear you ask? Well, it’s been 9 weeks so far and I’m not yet sure, but as a starting point I suggest that if we really are going to work together to make a difference for people in Scotland receiving care through Social Services then we have to be willing to listen to one another and actually hear what the other parties are saying.

In short, if you’re going to have your cake and eat it, at least share it with your colleagues too [and that includes your external colleagues and those from other sectors].

September 27, 2013October 4, 2013

What do we mean by design?

I’m afraid it is quite difficult to explain, is something others struggle with, and others ignore the need to define.

“Design is a particularly fertile and challenging subject for the historian because it occurs at a point of intersection or mediation between different spheres, that is between art and industry, creativity and commerce, manufactures and consumers. It is concerned with style and utility, material and artifact and human desires, the realms of the ideological, the political and the economic. It is involved in the public sector as well as the private sector. It serves the most idealistic and utopian goals and the most negative, destructive impulses of human kind. The task of a design historian is a daunting one requiring as it does a familiarity with a multitude of topics and specialisms.” (Walker 1989).

This fertile ground is illustrated by the use of the word design in the English language. It is used as a noun and a verb, and its use in English vernacular takes on common and descriptive meanings. For example, when referring to the look and desire of something – ‘I like the design of those shoes’, or being used as a preprocessor and therefore having some kind of cultural significance – ‘designer jeans’, ‘designer brands’, ‘designer babies’.

In the field of designer, designers themselves find it difficult to agree on a definition of what design means and so many develop their own interpretations, definitions and meanings of design (Ralph and Wand 2009). Unsurprising really when the breadth of how design is categorised in design libraries ranges from: the history of design, materials, styles, fashions, the evolution of products, systems, environments and structures, theoretical perspectives, design movements, schools and institutions, design from different continents and countries, fashionable or popular designers, design groups, organisations and businesses, conferences, manufacturing companies, brands, journals and magazines, as well as different design fields, subjects and disciplines – which in themselves can be hard to categories or distinguish between in their purley textual, pictorial or a mixture of the two formats.

So with all this confusion it’s a wonder that anyone is able to design at all! Not so suggests one design researcher,

“…definitions serve strategic and tactical purposes in inquiry. They do not settle matters once and for all… Instead, they allow an investigator… to clarify the direction of their work and move ahead with inquiry in a particular thematic direction.” (Buchanan 2001)

However in this instance a perspective of design what resonates with the I&I programme is that:

“Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones. The intellectual activity that produces material artifacts is no different fundamentally from the one that prescribes remedies for a sick patient or the one that devises a new sales plan for a company or a social welfare policy for a state. Design, so construed, is the core of all professional training; it is the principal mark that distinguishes the professions from the sciences.” (Simon 1996).

At IRISS our relationship between design and innovation and improvement (I&I) in the social services sector is evolving.

Part of our role is to test and reflect on what design can offer those in contact with social services. The blog posts I am writing will focus upon design, participatory design, visual communication and service design which all take a human centered approach but are rather large an ill defined areas. So to support understanding around the perspectives I am engaging with check out my other post – So who designs and what are we designing for?

References

First image sourced from – http://www.nngroup.com/articles/tag-cloud-examples/

Second image sourced from – http://www.123rf.com/photo_16578812_abstract-word-cloud-for-user-innovation-with-related-tags-and-terms.html

Buchanan R (2001) Design research and the new learning, Design Issues, Autumn, Vol. 17, No. 4, Pages 3-23.

Dilnot C (1984) The state of design history: part I, in Design Issues, Vol. 1, No. 1, Spring, pp. 4-23, MIT Press.

Ralph P, Wand Y (2009) A proposal for the formal definition of the design concept, in Design requirements engineering: A ten-year perspective lecture notes in business information processing, Volume 14, 2009, pp 103-136, Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

Simon H (1996) The sciences of the artificial, MIT Press.

Walker J (1989) Design history and the history of design, Pluto Press.