tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48912805723237655512024-03-05T00:18:07.272-08:00Advantaged ThinkingAdventures in Advantaged Thinking to find the places, people, opportunities, deals and campaigns that harness the talents of all young people. Wherever in the world, the aim as an 'advantaged thinker' is to breakthrough the deficits and disadvantages limiting human potential. And to do so with courage, wit and style.Colin Falconerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09565140261570413700noreply@blogger.comBlogger123125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4891280572323765551.post-33083297048711629562015-02-13T00:17:00.003-08:002015-02-13T00:17:25.354-08:00Libercharity<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
If you were wondering why I've been less active, it's because I've been here:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.libercharity.com/">www.libercharity.com</a><br />
<br />
@libercharity<br />
<br />
And yes, there's even a new blog where I interview myself:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://libercharity.weebly.com/">http://libercharity.weebly.com/</a><br />
<br />
Why wouldn't you be there now?</div>
Colin Falconerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09565140261570413700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4891280572323765551.post-30217376214757011812014-11-15T05:45:00.000-08:002014-11-15T06:05:56.989-08:00Beatcharity<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Autumn is the season between. Things fall away, turn in
colour, reveal otherness in them. Summer is waiting to be wintered out.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Walking through leaves in London’s St James Park, I read the
news on my phone: Beat Bullying is in administration. A man stooped on a bench looks
up from his vain interest in empty larger cans, to register my surprise with a
grim gummy smile.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Today, I’m <a href="http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/beatbullying-dealt-staff-horrifically-financial-difficulties-redundancies/management/article/1320956" target="_blank"><strong>reading stories</strong></a> of how staff at Beatbullying were
themselves bullied inside a ‘business’ careering out of control. Like the Roman
Empire facing barbarians, this seemed a leadership imperious to the idea of loss.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It kept on killing because it had the power
to make others submit. Until, flagless in the field, a golden eagle gone, bodies
begin to speak from the carnage.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">We look to the hollow centre, choking on disgust.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How could a charity responsible to fight
bullying, appear to bully others? But lynching crowds miss the real story. Beatbullying
is all of us. Whatever gets proven, those wielding its power had
reached a point of truth: for in the darkness of our modern Charity is a brutal
void. All Beatbullying did, perhaps, was occupy its empty heart.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span></o:p><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Once upon a time, the word Charity equated to love. Then, it
was alms for poor people - <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the
deserving, the undeserving. We became an industry; companies; the business of
doing good with contracts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now, there
are more innovators employed to develop fundraising campaigns than those creating
ideas to eradicate the issues we are meant to address. Charity has moved from the
‘giving’ of love and solutions, to the ‘getting’ of funds and the delivery of
project plans within structures of work, pay, and governance that are devoid of
love. Where the most precious resource, the staff who work with direct relationships
on the ground, are paid and supported the least.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><o:p>The adverts, the impact stories, the speeches and tweets; we are the science that has learnt to sell disadvantage for itself. We are the graffiti makers of trickledown compassion.<o:p></o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Charity is a muddied, constrained word that loses value each
time it is spoken. I don’t believe it anymore. I want to beat its hurt. Beatcharity
for something else - a feeling, a being that can make intelligent love breathe
among us again, from lost city estate to lonely field. I imagine a revolution led from
the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid, taking back its assets
from the hands of those who have vacated the responsibility to believe in a different shape.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I’m walking in St James’ Park. There are less leaves now. Couples
seek comfort in clutched hands. I wonder, how many of them know this place is
named after a leper colony, dedicated to a man beheaded for his beliefs?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s what it means to love.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Prepared to lose everything, prepared to live
everything; in pure integrity. Not the compromise of another bullied year
to survive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
The martyrs die in silence among us, beaten by our life.</div>
</div>
Colin Falconerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09565140261570413700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4891280572323765551.post-4435526115486530532014-11-13T12:27:00.004-08:002014-11-13T12:27:58.631-08:00Radio reality<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Logic models face a challenge when they touch the human face
of feeling. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No matter what the fidelity
system <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>- <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the values, the intentions, the authentic
purpose – their words exist only in the agile interact between a model and the
matter of experience from which our lives are drawn. Like sandpaper against a fresh scar.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The most interesting leaders are those that thrive in the conflict
of play between our internal and external world. It’s where the pearl of
learning resides. How we shape and are shaped. The humans that do are
preciously rare fragile angels of ice holding molten iron to heat our
hearts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">We are receptors for feelings that stretch back generations,
mixing within our identity, our senses, our taught responses, our instincts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Radio reality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The best we can do is embrace each aspect of
being and know its use: those to be left behind; those to explore; those we are
not ready for yet. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While it is true we cannot
be defined by our feeling, our feelings are acts of becoming.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I write a lot about ‘complex’ emotions because within their sharp
figurines are transformations. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The decision
points of our spirit. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m not afraid of
the past negative, because I know it can be remade a brilliant diamond. It’s
one of the amazing traits of the young people I’ve witnessed; their capacity to
blossom out from pain. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The up-cycling of
human courage. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Advantaged thinking,
therefore, is not just about pinning up gold stars to smiles. The philosopher's stone needs blood too. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">In the East, they believe in the laws of the universe; the
cause and effect that threads through life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Our propensity is to code the feelings we see in young people as a
sickness to be cured. We fail to see the signs of the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OInIVGeRzE" target="_blank"><strong>coal-mine canary</strong></a> in the
cage of youth, pointing back to us. We are the cause of the effects around and
inside us; while we live out effects from the cause-line we have been born from.
And we do it in rigid silence. Adults luxuriate in the knowledge of a system
flawed to the core of executive office chairs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Confined in such models, we rationalise ever new structures,
to hide from our inability to love each other as the people we really are…...........scared
of.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Colin Falconerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09565140261570413700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4891280572323765551.post-37204428434377042272014-11-12T14:05:00.000-08:002014-11-13T12:23:16.493-08:00Cat-snake-moth-frog<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Feelings never go away. They are cat paws in cement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some nights, they chase you down
and mug you.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The lights through a train window flicker back years. You
are running out of the pub in a purple blue hippy dress. ‘You don’t
care,’ are the words crushed under a falling wall of tears; letters left to
hang in the air like a child’s floating balloon tied to my dumb head. I’m sitting
alone, fingering a cracked glass. Even its slice of lemon is shrivelled,
gin-less. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">All I remember was, you said you were going to do a PhD, and
I replied – ‘oh, on what?’ <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was the broken
spell; the moment a thread that held our hearts ripped. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What - what - what.... Oh.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I got up to follow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like the film we were in expected something. You’d
run across the road, weaving into the crowd beneath the city castle, until your dress
blurred into too many colours to distinguish a presence. I thought, if I could reach you now, could we go
back to the beginning? Do it all again, without crossings out? In the street at
night, by a grilled shop-front, hugged together to the touch of cold metal
– that was the moment. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The sky begins to rain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
O</span>utside the pub, someone I don’t even know is weeping <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>under a grey hoodie. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘Fuck you,’ I hear them say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their face lifts, with eyes so burnt with red,
it’s as though someone has scooped them out infront of me. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I watched myself walk home, like when I was so small, I
watched myself watching someone hit someone else - in front of me. I found a distance to be outside my body, so whatever happened to me, in that moment, I wouldn't be there to be hurt by it. Maybe that's why the feeling keeps coming back. Because it couldn't get me. And it wants to, each time someone cries and looks at me, it wants to. The
hit; you running away. The hit; you running away. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Under the tears, the e</span>yes keep saying ‘Fucking fuck you.’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">We used to take the hand-outs at the back of the lecture
hall, slip out to play pool, plot mad schemes, dance by the riverside, listen
to Bob Marley with the phone pulled out from the wall. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Jammin. </span>You seemed so happy when
you got your son back. We’d present him to the crèche in the morning, the worst
parents in the world as he wailed the endless snaking bus journey through tutting stares. It was when you had to
give him back, all the drugs started.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘You don’t mind,’ you asked, explaining how
you’d moved in with the dealer. We were eating soggy lasagne in your room, in front of the TV news so no one could hear us say nothing. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When we met in the corridor, a week afterwards,
I didn’t breathe a word. I wanted to pretend that I couldn’t feel anything at all. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> 'I've hurt you,' you offered, trying </span> to hunt my gaze; but I shook my head, lost in the peel of paint
on a rusting radiator. </span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">It’s the purple blue dress I remember the most: the one she
wore when we were happy with each other. I hadn’t seen her wear it again, before that last
day atthe pub.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It's always
running away from me in my mind. A moth that won’t stop haunting the lampshade with tears. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><o:p>A few years later, when I was emptying a room, I discovered a beautiful green frog. I meant to give the smiley face to him but he vanished before I ever had the chance. I took it to the charity shop. 'Please,' I asked, 'make sure someone good gets this.' A last touch of velvet left my hands with love.</o:p></span></div>
</div>
Colin Falconerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09565140261570413700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4891280572323765551.post-59054731421165840232014-11-03T16:17:00.003-08:002014-11-04T08:22:01.049-08:00Toxic - How charity has become the wrong Monty Python joke<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">When Monty Python were in rehearsals for their comeback this
year, one wonders if they reflected on how some of their sketches would stand
the test of time. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If they did, then
their confidence in performing The Four Yorkshiremen sketch <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>– a parody on narratives about difficult
childhoods – seems sadly well placed. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">In the charity sector there is a techincal term to describe
the Four Yorkshiremen sketch – it’s called research-based fundraising
narratives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The basic principle is to
paint as negative a view of young people as possible, sprinkle a few
connections to the inspiring works of the charity publishing the report, and make
recommendations which will validate the charity's own needs for further funding.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Following The Prince’s Trust’s ‘Youth Index’ – <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>an annual event of self-serving misery – now we
have Centrepoint’s ‘Toxic Mix’, a report on the health needs of those they continue
to stigmatise as ‘homeless young people’. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Centrepoint has published some useful things in its time,
but this report marks a low point.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have
to confess, I didn’t have enough wellbeing to read beyond the executive
summary leaflet, which limits my views. But there is plenty here to get upset about. </span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Let’s start with the pictures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Centrepoint has made a name for itself in recent
years as a campaigner offering black and white images of young people
looking sad for us to donate 40p to. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At least
we are treated to colour pictures, though their penchant for using actors
or posed images remains. One can only assume the young person with a
smiling face reading a book in the library wasn’t looking at a Centrepoint report
that has hardly a positive word to say about them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I had harboured the hope that Centrepoint’s successful
fundraising was investing in innovation. Indeed, I know that their health
work is meant to be pretty good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It and the people
they serve – and let’s not forget that word– deserve far better than a report
whose negative language and understanding adds little to the pressing need to
address the health inequalities experienced by youth in homelessness contexts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not that this is a summary which even
mentions the word ‘health inequalities’, or can find in its heart to suggest
that young people might also possess the health ability to shape their own thriving futures.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">We are told that within Centrepoint, ‘working
with young people to address their health needs is a fundamental part of the
process…’ But strangely it doesn’t appear to be one that stretches to recommending
that anyone should actively involve those young people in defining their experience of a
healthy life and how its supports can be shaped. Clearly, young people’s role in this bleak view of charity and
health is to ‘get’ rather than to ‘give’. It makes for a thin set of recommendations.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Ironically, the report highlights the important issue of ‘the
ongoing stigma associated with mental health’. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I quote: ‘staff reported that
young people still hold negative views about mental health and are nervous of
talking about problems they may be facing because of the associated negative
stereotypes.’ Just exactly how are Centrepoint contributing anything positive
to this by continuing to use deficit-based marketing
collateral to sell homeless services? Why produce a summary report that offers nothing positive in its analysis to address the idea that mental health has anything other than negative needs-based connotations with this particular group of young people? I can’t understand how a charity could
possibly fail to realise that its own choice of language fuels the general stigma
that young people face in our sector and society. As Martin Seligman notes, to flourish, you also need the right words and associations to connect with in your environment. Are we really so ill equipped that we can't identify those things in our health assessments and interviews? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Page 4 of the executive summary produces a little image of a
person surrounded by circles explaining the various negative health needs of young people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is room on the
page, but no attempt to offer any of the qualities that young people show in
dealing with their health challenges; in the assets and strengths that they do possess;
in the many things that they bring to their community; in their personal goals and resilience to
keep going in the face of such misrepresentation. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Despite talking about a ‘young person focussed approach’, young people have actually become a set of ‘needs’ in which they are utimately a ‘homeless’ stereotype first and foremost, an actual person second (See how the <a href="https://www.teenagecancertrust.org/who-we-are/about-us/" target="_blank"><strong>Teenage Cancer Trust</strong></a> talk about <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>who they work with ‘as young people first, cancer patients second’ for an alternative).</span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Like the Monty Python sketch, this becomes an executive summary in
which you can almost hear the writer salivating over the worst data they can find
to support a cause demeaned by its presentation. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Young people deserve a better future – one they
can create themselves when they have the right investments and belief. A toxic mix of disadvantaged thinking about health needs is no remedy.</span></div>
</div>
Colin Falconerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09565140261570413700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4891280572323765551.post-7533224370076844792014-11-02T12:55:00.002-08:002014-11-02T12:55:56.418-08:00Vision on<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Eyes strain through new glass. Thin wire frames hold a different
way to blink in bi-focus. If only I could look a straight line ahead, not be so
distracted by cruel, beautiful jewels of experience.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I watch the blurs between people grow; gaps, edges, the way
things don’t blend into each other at all. How colours burst the heart. My head
has become a camera, endlessly filming for an empty cinema of thought. Someone
will edit out the cuts that don’t fit: people wearing the wrong trousers, talking
to themselves, not fitting in; a figure menacingly staring at an empty can of
larger. My gaze has got lost in the background story; become too attached to
sketchy figures in the corner. An old woman, stooped under her load of
unbearable time. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Like an out of control receiver, these glasses of mine pick
up alternative channels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Programmes that
would never make the radio times:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>break-up-fast;
lunch hate; the sweet nothing show; scream until dawn. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">What if one could reach beyond the suitcase of each person’s
eyes, inside to their packed up feelings, stuffed memories? The witnessing-place
of narrative exposed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The guts of our concealed
existence x-rayed out. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I hide in the supermarket from my sight, creeping wearily
between shelves, squinting at serving suggestions on tins to escape from too
much vision, watching lost souls executed with credit cards they didn’t come to
shop for.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">When I went to the opticians, the lady instructed me to look
to the bottom of her right hand ear as she inspected my left eye. Manicured
finger nails pointed me towards a brilliant diamond stud. I tried to stare, but
its showy glisten and needy twinkle made me shift. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">‘What’s wrong’, she said, ‘Can’t you focus?’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">From her diamond, I could see the bottom of a mine: a
mouth choking without air in the dark.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></div>
</div>
Colin Falconerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09565140261570413700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4891280572323765551.post-88695886050966167482014-11-02T12:52:00.001-08:002014-11-02T12:52:30.344-08:00Wrong John<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I sat down in an empty train carriage at night. The ghosts
of littered newspapers, food wrappers, the lonely signs of busy lives returned
to home. Then, as the metal and glass cranked forward through shadowy
stations, he emerged. Sharp brown eyes in a canvas of pale skin. The
suspicious young person sitting beside me, like a modern Ancient Mariner with
hooded fixed stare: ‘I know it’s not a nice thing to ask really…. Would you
have 80p?.’ <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"> I glanced at bitten-nail fingers, the pleading look of
a different type of salesman to those who had left the train. Someone
worth at least a smile, which I gave while weighing up the exactness of his
amount. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"> ‘Yeh, 80p’ he said, reading my mind, ‘I’m that skint
man.’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">80p for something that was probably not a great thing,
though how much worse than what I spend all the 80ps of my life on. A
kitkat? Between one need and another, mine felt far less.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I searched in my pockets, fingering through a chaos of keys
and pens for what was only a single 20p coin. ‘It’s all I have on me,’ I
said. ‘What’s your name?’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">‘Jon.’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">‘I’m sorry, Jon, it’s not enough –‘<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">‘Don’t be, it’s appreciated.’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Taking the coin from my palm, he touched-in with a quick
handshake. The ritual of exchange.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">‘At least,’ I said, as he made to go, ‘it’s half what
Centrepoint ask for…’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">‘What’s that?’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">‘The Centrepoint advert. You haven’t seen it? It says, just
40p could give John a safe place to live.’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">‘Well, they’ve got the wrong Jon mate. I need twice that,
and I don’t know anywhere I’d call safe.’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">‘You should give them a ring. There’s probably a poster on
one of the carriages back.’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">‘Fuck that - It’ll cost me more than 40p to call.’ He
stuffed the coin into his trousers and abandoned me to my thoughts. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The wrong Jon…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">When the real world collides with us, we feel somehow
diminished and poor of love. Or more aware of the fault lines and cracks
in our image. If only there was an advert that could actually give Jon
something, instead of asking us to give to someone else who claims to know him
– because who is ever going to trust jon. I started to imagine a train filled
up with Jon’s, with people like us walking up and down asking for
something of value. What would Jon give us, I wondered? Probably a lot
more than 40 or even 80p’s worth of experience. Though, like me, we
wouldn’t know how to ask him for it. We are so far down the wrong track
of value and exchange, we don’t even know what the journey is anymore. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">At that point, I realised I had missed my stop …<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Colin Falconerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09565140261570413700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4891280572323765551.post-86563813267310142372014-10-26T04:42:00.001-07:002014-10-26T04:42:25.924-07:00Doing charity differently<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">'Charity begins at home’ has long been a refrain associated with
selfish detachment. Of ignoring social and international responsibilities to
focus on ourselves and our personal economic wellbeing. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a hackneyed expression, but one that has
a hidden truth to be cherished. We have, for too long, mistaken charity as an
act of giving alms, rather than its original association with acts of love. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are many things to be said against
piling up the pennies for one’s self, as an individual or a country; but the absence
of love in our own home is something which makes us all less able to shape
a thriving world.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">As I reflect on my own career in charity, and look over a Berlin-wall
of branded fences into the living rooms of other youth charity families, I am
left with a horrible feeling that we have become homeless through the disassociation
of our love from the causes we are meant to be working for. We develop our
skills as project managers, budget holders, communication and relationship
experts; we become coaches, counsellors, trainers, mentors; and we all want to
be entrepreneurs, innovators, the next big thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We go on team building days, we explore our
Myers Briggs and other personal and team profiles, we develop a culture and a
way of working, we express our values. All this, while we work on programmes
and campaigns to improve the lives and prospects of the young people we care
for, with the promise that they themselves are the opportunity to transform the
narrative of disadvantage which has challenged their lives.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">What we don’t do is open up the engine to look into the
deeper reality of who we are, where we have come from, and the potential that
exists in and between us to recycle and transform our personal narrative into
something that can create a different future.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>While we might be moved to consider that as a programme to invest in for
young people, we are less likely to consider that as worthwhile for ourselves.
Which is where the problem exists: we are not authentic, and can never be so
while we grapple with or blankly ignore our own inner narratives of being and
conflict that we project out through our work onto and with others.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Until we realise that, we will forever be
talking about making a breakthrough in the changing paradigm without achieving
it, free-falling through space without realising the parachute cord is held
between our hearts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Charity does not do charity, because it is lost in a model
of working and organising that is from a different world. Walk
into an office, look around the people inside it; see beyond the
computer-screen eyes to a hidden place of feeling, experiences, ancestral
conflict, secrets, and the huge possibility to connect and shape all that into
a new energy to thrive from. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How can we
be so complacent to miss that; how can we not see the obvious connection
between who we are and the challenges we are trying to address in our society? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">There is a fusion to be had, within the home of charities,
and between the homes of different charities, that would profoundly change the shape
of the sector into a revolutionary community. Just imagine – a charity that is
a home for human development; that authentically lives how to transform
narrative and maximise personal potential through others in itself; that has
abandoned the restrictions of replication for the abundant energy of continual innovation;
that can be a philosophers stone to turn disadvantage into advantage.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Perhaps I feel this more strongly than ever in a week when
the past has collided with my mind in the form of Lorna Sage, the wonderful
teacher and writer who was the subject of one of my former <a href="http://advantagedthinking.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/lorna-sage-bad-blood-into-good.html" target="_blank"><strong>blogs</strong></a>. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>
Her name came up this week in conversation, and with it memories of something important she was
trying to tell me one night in 1992 about the concept of ‘bad blood’. Lorna’s turned
on its head the idea that we were left to hand down the bad blood of our
ancestors - because the power of language and literature for her was something that could genuinely transform
personal and social narratives into something new. In the book that idea would became
in 2001, Lorna left us a well of good blood to nourish the future.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She also left us, perhaps, something of a
challenge; not to neglect the personal history of who we are, and the importance
of taking back control of one’s story in order to escape from it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">That is a challenge which charity is to busy 'doing alms' to begin to see. Charity is failing in its responsibilities to begin charity
at home. It urgently needs to wake up and start again, reclaiming its narrative
from campaigns and contracts into
something more beautiful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like the young
people our sector is meant to represent, we are in danger of becoming a lost
generation of missed potential to change and transform the story we all own
part of in our self.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Let’s spill some shared
blood and paint the canvas differently.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Colin Falconerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09565140261570413700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4891280572323765551.post-24017528214118763602014-10-19T12:29:00.002-07:002014-10-19T12:30:12.176-07:00Factory <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
There is a large vault with 5 discrete spaces. You are led
into the vault, through darkness, hearing the sound of heartbeats, breaths,
crying, laughter, the mingling of life’s sensations.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You arrive to be left alone.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Space one contains all the feelings of young people we
signify as undesirable: their anger, their suffering, their cynicism, their
apathy, their violence, their self-harm, their otherness.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Then you are taken away, and left alone.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Space two contains all the feelings about young people we
signify as undesirable: our criticisms, our blame, our fear, our frustration,
our low aspiration, our victimisation, our confusion.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Then you are taken further, and left alone.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Space three contains all the feeling that young people have
we signify as positive: their dreams, their love, their community, their
creativity, their generosity, their risk, their intensity, their innocence.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Then you are taken further still, and left alone.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Space four contains nothing but an invitation for your
feelings to be shared, in whatever shape and form is possible among the
blankness, games, interaction, skin, mind, soul.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You are led to the last space, where others are waiting for
you. It is a full of what has been performed by each visitor of the fourth
space. You join an audience watching as your feeling is brought in to be
displayed with the others, connecting with and changing everything about it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
When the time ceases, everyone leaves through a narrow door,
alone and together, recycling what has been felt back into the world. This is a factory.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
Colin Falconerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09565140261570413700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4891280572323765551.post-9163884591029163352014-10-18T08:06:00.001-07:002014-11-04T08:24:27.978-08:00Feel-in <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p> </o:p>I am receiving feeling. A numb communion. The dilapidated building
with graffiti tears, the child’s empty face, a couple arguing over a black sofa
on credit they can’t afford, the cracked lipstick of a tired supermarket lady,
my reflection shimmering in a mirror I want to break. The distinction between me and these pulses
of pain is a misplaced sense of being. For there is nothing here but the
connected hurt of this moment, channelled through a heart beating with beauty into
death. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p><br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The feeling is bigger than myself. The ghosts of experience have
unlocked the windows to come in. Their ashen eyes hide from trusting anyone’s
view of the pity they carry. They whisper in cuts and coughs and curses. There
is no squeezed middle among them; these are the ones who walk with broken legs
up squalid stairs. The bottom of the
pyramid, gesturing for attention with its slit throat.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am fighting with feeling, because it’s not allowed to be
expressed. The illicit underground of emotion barricaded into frail submission,
opened like a forgotten daisy blossom into the burnt sky. I have become a
feeling of all the feelings we are working for, and it suffocates my ability to
be of worth. Through Smithfield’s market, the agony of a martyr’s ripped bowels
kisses me goodbye.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Feeing has enchanted me. There is a room full of what it is
not to be loved, of disappointment, betrayal, frost bite in summer, full of too
many words to cram into a language; of the yearning to be touched, of wanting
to belong as the crowd disappears over the summit, of almost runs, dreams left
to be wrecked, swallowed memories of violence, introspections spidered into the
web that hangs me; of knowing I am nothing but a figure in the spreadsheet,
contained, zeroed into gossip. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Feeling is receiving me. Like a body burnt on the river, a tattoo
mesmerising my soul. The desperate need
to speak through stammered worlds throttles my normality. Passion’s cried-out mouth bites on cotton
pillows from the hunger of embracing shadows.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Think away, with your missions, values and ambitions. Don’t
think with me. Don't feel with me. I’m a thought of feeling that has gone. <o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
Colin Falconerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09565140261570413700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4891280572323765551.post-11826725201712822332014-09-28T06:32:00.000-07:002014-09-28T06:44:44.131-07:00Back to the knitting <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
The ‘stick to your knitting’ down fall of another hectoring
politician has an important message. Far more than what Marx described as history repeating itself as tragedy
and then comedy, what we face is the ‘blind spot’ of a humanity unable to
recognise itself in the drama.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My thesis is this: the issues that ‘civil society’ are
engaged with are all ‘canaries in the mine’ that point back to a source of
poison gas within ourselves. If we could
deal with the gas in the mine, the canary wouldn’t keep suffering. And young
people are our biggest canary, most reflective of the chaos by which humans
fail to love, communicate with and bring out the best in each other – whether in
families, organisations, or communities. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If I look back on my working life, at least a third of it
has been spent trying to solve inter-relationships that have got in the way of
offering effective services to people.
And if I look across the charity sector, I see organisations that are
hosts to so many human dramas, within a tragi-comedy where charities are competing
against or trying to work with other organisations with the same character
flaws. All in the name of a charitable mission that is lost under the Game of
Thrones battle for sustainable funding and ‘recognition’.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The HR, change management, partnership, governance, funding,
and workforce development approaches we use to shape our civil society are all unfit
for the position we are in. None of them come from a position of how to love
and work with each other in a shared community of purpose. They are rational systems, but the human
emotions we are dealing with defy their logic. What we face are the paisley pyjama
bottoms of fallibility. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When Newmark said stick to the knitting; when Major famously
talked about back to basics; both unintentionally touched on a deeper truth:
that the knitting and basics are the messy human flaws and vulnerabilities we
like to blame others for – problem families, feral youth, etc – but are best
personified in the everyday actions of ourselves. I wouldn’t like to imagine what
pyjamas the cabinet and its shadow wear each night, let alone who paid for them. The point is that it’s irrational for us to believe
that we are led by saints whose only intent is to serve. Just as it is
irrational for those in power to criminalise others for being in positions of
poverty.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
In my experience, charities deal with the faulty ‘knitting’ of
family systems, politicians, social class and gender structures, and personal
conflicts between ourselves, that have ‘stuck’ various people with intolerable challenges. We must to get back to that fact. The laws, values and habits that define the
knitting patterns of our society and ego all need urgent renewal. If pyjama politicians, sting-obsessed
journalists and funding-obsessed charity leaders are not up to that task, then it’s
time for someone else to take a lead. Who wants to shape a different tribe? I so dearly do...<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
Colin Falconerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09565140261570413700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4891280572323765551.post-55778077877428019342014-09-21T03:31:00.000-07:002014-09-21T03:31:00.785-07:00A trip to Kangan Foyer, a home for Advantaged Thinking<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="color: black;">At the immigration museum, in Melbourne, they talk about the symbolic power of the suitcase - something a traveller takes with them (if lucky enough to have one) in hope or fear of the journey ahead. Since my bag had got lost in transit, it seemed rather appropriate to ponder its significance. Rather like a home, the suitcase is a material <span style="color: black;">comfort zone, and to be without it has its own sense of displacement. But what was more important to me – the clothes in the bag, or the memories, feelings and ideas in myself? We pack stuff in the suitcase, when the important thing is what we unpack from ourselves through our connection with others. </span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<div style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: black;">I have been lucky on my third trip to Melbourne to be in the
company of the wonderful people from The Brotherhood of St Laurence and
Hanover. Friday, I got my first chance to visit the Kangan Foyer in
Broadmeadows, about 30 minutes outside the city centre, which last time I was
out here was just a concept and a set of drawings the organisations were
working on together with me. It was truly magical to see its bold, vibrant
colours rise up in the landscape, and then open the front door to the </span><span style="color: black;">sign
‘welcome home’ hanging in reception. <o:p></o:p></span><u1:p></u1:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><o:p> <span style="color: black;"></span></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><o:p><span style="color: black;">The Foyer is the only service that has been fully shaped through Advantaged Thinking and Open Talent concepts from the very outset, so what you see in the building design, the staffing, the programme, and the community of young people, is an expression of the philosophies in practice.</span></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglM_BDsr3i8j-zfZYxqspC5Fy-Tn2psORxUqq105pU6vQZDlxqDpAlLI2gWmbI47tAtWkGdn9vs4EW-JaYjMWdzWMmfTLKeJJTgyZKQ-WhV_Y4iXI8pOwYXoSjTEeGvzY-LvkHhUexwjOQ/s1600/kangan+foyer+2.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglM_BDsr3i8j-zfZYxqspC5Fy-Tn2psORxUqq105pU6vQZDlxqDpAlLI2gWmbI47tAtWkGdn9vs4EW-JaYjMWdzWMmfTLKeJJTgyZKQ-WhV_Y4iXI8pOwYXoSjTEeGvzY-LvkHhUexwjOQ/s1600/kangan+foyer+2.png" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrLECs5ohGWXxB9lkszs4kgneYysYhEv0qkWrGhHMtiNgxWHXYQ6Dq39_rUePfgVzWNJd6F4jcW2FH6OvCrBCAQCNIAq4U6IXQtDIpGzrq8N1eyu1rcTHGknORU7iQqwqR-pcfrtfOPz0o/s1600/kangan+foyer.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrLECs5ohGWXxB9lkszs4kgneYysYhEv0qkWrGhHMtiNgxWHXYQ6Dq39_rUePfgVzWNJd6F4jcW2FH6OvCrBCAQCNIAq4U6IXQtDIpGzrq8N1eyu1rcTHGknORU7iQqwqR-pcfrtfOPz0o/s1600/kangan+foyer.png" style="cursor: move;" unselectable="on" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="color: black;">And what a sight it is: space, light, colour, welcoming faces,
bundles of activity, places to do things, and all the vibrant chaos that makes
a community alive and real. With a huge kitchen area as the hub of the
service, a beautiful patio with views of the hills, and a mixed group of young
people from different backgrounds, you immediately feel part of a positive
family setting. Only the young people here are all called students – and the
point becomes very clear that this is about a collegiate environment to learn
and develop in, with access to all the facilities of the local college that
shares the same land area.<o:p></o:p></span><u1:p></u1:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span><br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="color: black;">I was able to join in a session with the students talking
about what they thought the values of the Foyer are. I’ve always judged a
Foyer from how the people living and working inside interact with you as a
person, and I was gripped by the quality of the exchange in the session just as
much as in the informal conversations over a barbecue. The values recognised ranged
from being bold, aspirational and imaginative, to strength, consistency and
honesty, to teamwork, approachability and respect, to diversity and kindness,
openness and intuition. It was an amazing choice of words from an amazing group
of people. Who wouldn’t want to live among them?<o:p></o:p></span><u1:p></u1:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="color: black;">One of the messages I am here to share on my trip is the
importance of using our values to invest real value in young people.
Adult institutions often think they are the guardian of values, but the reality
is that we lose sight of what our values mean, until we become their antithesis
in what we do and how we behave to each other. Look at some of our mean
spirited social policies, and the competition between organisations in the
charity sector, and you see exactly what happens when we lose our grip on what
defines us as humans. Maybe it’s the young people, the students of the Kangan
Foyer, who can best remind us of what we have lost in the baggage of growing
up. If values mean anything, they are defined in how we create
communities where we all feel at home.<o:p></o:p></span><u1:p></u1:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="color: black;">For further information, see:<o:p></o:p></span><u1:p></u1:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.hanover.org.au/youth-foyer/"><span style="color: blue;">http://www.hanover.org.au/youth-foyer/</span></a><o:p></o:p></span><u1:p></u1:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.hanover.org.au/youth-foyers-making-a-difference/"><span style="color: blue;">http://www.hanover.org.au/youth-foyers-making-a-difference/</span></a><o:p></o:p></span><u1:p></u1:p></div>
<br />
<img height="65" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrLECs5ohGWXxB9lkszs4kgneYysYhEv0qkWrGhHMtiNgxWHXYQ6Dq39_rUePfgVzWNJd6F4jcW2FH6OvCrBCAQCNIAq4U6IXQtDIpGzrq8N1eyu1rcTHGknORU7iQqwqR-pcfrtfOPz0o/s1600/kangan+foyer.png" style="filter: alpha(opacity=30); left: 293px; opacity: 0.3; position: absolute; top: 451px;" width="96" /></div>
<!-- Blogger automated replacement: "https://images-blogger-opensocial.googleusercontent.com/gadgets/proxy?url=http%3A%2F%2F1.bp.blogspot.com%2F-XUFTOkL_N-w%2FVB6n9nEa0oI%2FAAAAAAAAAEU%2FlzPFGMbPqlY%2Fs1600%2Fkangan%252Bfoyer.png&container=blogger&gadget=a&rewriteMime=image%2F*" with "https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrLECs5ohGWXxB9lkszs4kgneYysYhEv0qkWrGhHMtiNgxWHXYQ6Dq39_rUePfgVzWNJd6F4jcW2FH6OvCrBCAQCNIAq4U6IXQtDIpGzrq8N1eyu1rcTHGknORU7iQqwqR-pcfrtfOPz0o/s1600/kangan+foyer.png" -->Colin Falconerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09565140261570413700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4891280572323765551.post-40203699448959325292014-08-09T07:31:00.000-07:002014-08-10T03:37:03.423-07:00The Adventures of tATa-man - post show reflections<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOeAFD8oy1kT0cYbjZmjuPyY_EdZ84si-vSCRSN5zJpDnbSW-1w2FzTLAQkIKhwFn7TJPJuQgBMBSyVhIH1zLMb6nPF2mWt5QzjPswl_oZhRvyXVQzb7MGq3WKPbC_iF1riWMN2MiL-EOJ/s1600/cockpit+4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOeAFD8oy1kT0cYbjZmjuPyY_EdZ84si-vSCRSN5zJpDnbSW-1w2FzTLAQkIKhwFn7TJPJuQgBMBSyVhIH1zLMb6nPF2mWt5QzjPswl_oZhRvyXVQzb7MGq3WKPbC_iF1riWMN2MiL-EOJ/s1600/cockpit+4.jpg" height="320" width="316" /></a></div>
<a href="https://storify.com/c_falconer/adventures-of-tata-man-in-a-night-of-bananas">https://storify.com/c_falconer/adventures-of-tata-man-in-a-night-of-bananas</a><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The performance is over. I’m reminded of something Fassbinder
wrote: what happens when the credits finish rolling, the audience leaves, and
you are left with yourself in shadows.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>You realise that, while you may - hopefully - have left an imprint on
others, you can only feel emptiness where the words and images had lived in
your heart, slowly filling up like a dam with the next emotional current to
feed on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a bit like wandering into
a desert where the eye of a lake has been burnt out, feeling the horizon sun
brand your lips with its memory.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">There is nothing you can ever do to feed the hunger of
‘remedial child’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m not brave or
courageous at all; I’m just a car driven by a memory of pain that is
remorseless in its desire to voice all the things it sees a connection with and
wants to reclaim. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">4 years ago, on my first visit to Japan, I woke up in the
early morning, crying in abandonment, with the memory of my grandfather choked
in my mind. I had no idea why I was crying or why I was thinking of him. On my
return home, I discovered that the man I never saw in my life or previously
gave any consideration to, would walk through Farringdon meat market every
morning, just as I do now, and his first name was given to me as my middle name
– the one I like to use with my friends. So there I was, thousands of miles
away in a country he never visited, thinking of him as though the closet person
in my life had died. I suddenly caught a <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>glimpse of the deep DNA link we have with our
ancestors; a water well, frozen in space in time, while we stagger in thirst. And
so, the performance was dedicated as a gift to him, just as the ideas in it
were gifted to the audience in whatever way they wished to receive them, to
generate an energy that might break through the ice, a ‘source’ banana to feed
new action.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">It’s time to finish writing the script now – or at least to
say there way one – and put it away in a box on the shelf. What next, my
friends ask? Social shiatsu, canary freedom and fusion, are all dear to me though
perhaps beyond the remit of Foyer Federation. Of course, there are many ideas still
to come, just as there will be many other people running down different tracks
with fresh vision. I only know that I’m moving on, flourishing with my remedial
mind…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Check out the story from the 6th August show:<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<a href="https://storify.com/c_falconer/adventures-of-tata-man-in-a-night-of-bananas/edit"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;"></span></a><o:p></o:p><a href="https://storify.com/c_falconer/adventures-of-tata-man-in-a-night-of-bananas">https://storify.com/c_falconer/adventures-of-tata-man-in-a-night-of-bananas</a><br />
</div>
</div>
Colin Falconerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09565140261570413700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4891280572323765551.post-13296299288575688882014-06-05T23:19:00.002-07:002014-06-05T23:21:51.462-07:00People First<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">After two interesting evenings spent at a YMCA London
celebration at City Hall, and a Lankelly Chase hosted conversation about the
concept of ‘Housing First’, I feel compelled to ponder the question of why the
charity sector has not been able to translate its work with young people into a
more urgent issue of social justice. Looking out over the view from City Hall,
what one is faced with is one of the worst poverty gaps in the western
world; but what one sees is just more housing developments along the river.
We don’t seem to be getting the message.<u5:p></u5:p><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">At the YMCE event, Chief Executive Denise Hatton identified
that YMCAs were brilliant at getting on with the ‘doing’, but not always very
good when it came to talking about the significance of what they did. It
would be easy to see that as just a challenge for a communications and
fundraising team, or another reason to bemoan why the media and Government are
more obsessed with headlines of far less significance. There is something more
fundamental at stake though: that somehow the charity sector gets easily lost
in the wrong narrative of what we are meant to be doing as charity. On
the same YMCA platform, we were treated to a fascinating story about a young
person who had benefited from a YMCA, who chose a telling quote from Nelson
Mandela to illustrate the importance of the YMCA experience: ‘Overcoming
poverty is not a task of charity, it is an act of justice’. Reminded of
the City view, I wondered for a moment if it was not the purpose of charity
today, in filling the gaps in our society, to fight for the ‘act of justice’
required to overcome poverty in a more sustainable way. Is that not what we
should be ‘doing’?<u5:p></u5:p><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Which is where Housing First becomes interesting, as a
‘model’ developed from the principle that access to housing should be a
fundamental human right. Housing First seeks to find a way to put that human
right into practice for people experiencing homelessness, so that housing
becomes the initial bedrock around which other services can be connected and
support issues addressed. At the Lankelly Chase event, I was fascinated
in the language used by the experts sharing their work on Housing First. They
went out of their way to explain it was not of course just about the housing.
It was, as I would describe it, more of a ‘people first’ approach, in which the
concepts of empowerment and choice were the fundamental touchstones brought to
the surface by putting a focus on housing first into the support dynamic.
However, the word I kept hearing, again and again, was that Housing First was
for ‘homeless people’. Not people experiencing homelessness, with a whole
set of characteristics and issues wrapped around who they are and why they are
in that context; but the dehumanising stereotype, ‘homeless people’, with the
usual array of problem and negative-based language attached to it. The ‘people’
at the very heart of the empowerment and choice process, by that very
language of 'homeless first', were unintentionally being imprisoned within a narrative where they can
never find their rights as a ‘person first’. Which is not to diminish the
importance of the Housing First model, or criticise the experts sharing its
important insights; it is a signification that the rights we need to talk
about are not just those associated with housing, but our very concept of what
it is to be a ‘person first’.<u5:p></u5:p><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">If you have heard me speak, you might know that I like to talk about the work of Thomas
Spence and Thomas Paine, both associated with the concept of ‘the rights of
man’. Looking at their arguments about the rights to have somewhere to live and
some way to earn a living, one can see a gap in their 19<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">th</span></sup> Century
thinking that we can add to today: the right to be seen as a person of value.
Or what you might call the right to be seen as someone who has assets, ability,
talent, positives, character – whatever society will value and invest in. If
that was a human right, what would it mean for the touchstones of empowerment
and choice so lacking for some people in our social system? <u5:p></u5:p><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">In 2009, The Foyer Federation began to take what I now
realise was a ‘talent first’ approach: to try - in a similar way to Housing
First – to change the conversation and approach on how services work with
people based on looking at their potential first instead of just their
problems. Where we have reached in that process, is realising that the
answer will never be found alone in workforce development, service design,
commissioning, impact evaluation, another innovative programme with funding,
etc. The answer is in what all those ‘doing things’ can add up to; how they can
create the ‘act of justice’ to alleviate the issue that lies at the heart of
why YMCAs, Housing First, and Foyers exist. That ‘issue’, I believe, is how we
think about, understand, talk about, involve, and value the people who we work
with and for. <u5:p></u5:p><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">At the Foyer Federation, we call this Advantaged Thinking,
and we are launching a <a href="http://foyer.net/2014/05/06/a-movement-for-change/" target="_blank"><strong>Movement</strong></a> to attract those ‘doers’ who want to develop
the cause. Where will it go? Perhaps one day, we will be able to rewrite
the words of Nelson Mandela, and say: Charity is an act of justice to overcome
poverty in everything we do. That’s the type of charity I want to keep ‘doing’.<u5:p></u5:p><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><strong>Shape the future in a night of Taking Advantaged Thinking Action at</strong> </span><strong><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">The Cockpit, Marylebone, on 6th August at 7.30pm. Tickets now on sale </span></strong><a href="http://thecockpit.org.uk/show/the_adventures_of_tata-man_in_-_a_night_of_bananas" target="_blank"><strong><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="color: #2288bb;">HERE</span></span></strong></a></span></div>
<u5:p></u5:p><br /></div>
Colin Falconerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09565140261570413700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4891280572323765551.post-20690130216767205972014-06-01T05:04:00.003-07:002014-06-01T05:33:22.324-07:00Dis-feratu<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">‘Nosferatu lands on British shores’ is becoming a
predictable headline to the UK’s irrational arguments on immigration. In the
1920’s, German society’s fears about eastern migrants were famously evoked on
film through the vampire caricature of Nosferatu. The migrant perceived as a source of
plague , someone who sucks people’s blood and brings terror to local
communities, is now all too familiar. Today, primeval concerns against
‘otherness’ are played out through debates about the impact of migrants on
British jobs and the welfare state. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However
the political elite try to portray Ukip, the language of ‘swivel eyed loons’
carries far less potency than the image of the so-called ‘illegal immigrant’
stealing our jobs and national identity without being able to speak the
Queen’s English. Ukip might look and sound a bit odd, but the Nosferatu they
have conjured up into public consciousness is a far greater magnet for people’s
loathing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">What we are seeing are the laws of Disadvantaged Thinking in
full play: you remove someone’s humanity under a classification such as
‘immigrant’ or 'homeless'; you tag the stereotype with negative associations until they all
become ‘illegal’ and 'feckless'; you narrow understanding of the issues at stake into a limited
dialogue<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that distorts reality; you
invest time and resource disproportionately on controlling a problem that is
part of a bigger issue you choose to ignore; you focus on the deficits you see rather
than work on harnessing the potential assets to society; you apply a different
set of values than those you would in your own personal life; and you don’t
challenge yourself to question what your attitudes and behaviour add up to as a
human being. Bingo. The Dis-feratu of Ukip and the Coalition Government; one blaming immigrants, the other young people.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Thus, we end up in a 'doublethink' position where, while people migrating
from EU states pay more tax than they receive in benefit, and are less likely
than UK nationals to claim out of work benefits, we accuse people from Eastern
Europe of holding back the UK economy and swindling the system. Indeed, far
from stealing our livelihoods, 17.2% of foreign nationals have set up businesses,
creating 12% of current British jobs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
Similar disparities in belief and reality exist for young people tatooed by policy makers with the letters 'NEET'. </span>In both cases, the facts count for nothing against the images that populate our
consciousness. Migrants are the new ‘disadvantaged youth’ of our cultural
imagination – a bin to recycle our social challenges and failings into an enemy
we can hold responsible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Who cares that
even the Governor of the Bank of England thinks capitalism needs to invest more
in the social capital of others, when the creakings of the social contract can more easily be
blamed on the refugees and yobs of our distorted imagination. We are a society
in denial to its abuse of values.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">There is something, though, positive about this: British
Politics might just be beginning to wake up from its addiction to stereotypes
and sound bites under the threat that it has lost the power to touch
our soul more deeply than a xenophobic argument.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
It is becoming hoist by its own media petard, and it knows it. </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Reacting to the success of UKIP
in the council elections, Overseas Development Minster Lynne Featherstone MP
described to the BBC;<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘</span><span lang="EN" style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">All
of us have got to the point where we are so guarded, so on-message that we seem
to have started to lose our humanity and I think it’s a very human thing that’s
happened.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">For some time, the status quo in the UK has been more about controlling
society to cope with the perceived threat of negative forces, than creating a
fairer, equitable world in which we can all thrive. Not used to galvanising
people’s power to shape a positive future, our politicians don’t seem to know
how to stop Nosferatu from stealing their shadowy soapbox.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If they, like us, can push back the
stereotypes of Disadvantaged Thinking, and focus on the humanity of what we can
do together, then we are all more likely to see the light of tomorrow’s dawn -
where Nosferatu 'dis'-appears in a puff of smoke.</span></span><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><strong>Shape the future in a night of Taking Advantaged Thinking Action at</strong> </span><strong><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">The Cockpit, Marylebone, on 6th August at 7.30pm. Tickets now on sale </span></strong><a href="http://thecockpit.org.uk/show/the_adventures_of_tata-man_in_-_a_night_of_bananas" target="_blank"><strong><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">HERE</span></strong></a><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</span></div>
</div>
Colin Falconerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09565140261570413700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4891280572323765551.post-65245506113316247752014-04-27T02:44:00.000-07:002014-04-27T02:58:11.380-07:002021: a space for odyssey<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">By 2021, the first cohort of young people born in this millennium
will reach their transition threshold. What we already know is that a significant
number will not be in a position to harness their talents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the 21<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">st</span></sup> century, we have
become the social parent lacking the leadership skills to equip the generation
growing up under our watch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How do we
create a different environment that enables all young people to thrive?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">We have a world of diminishing resources, we have an ageing
population; we simply can’t afford not to have our main social asset – young people
– fulfilling their full potential. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nor
can we pretend that their failure is just the fault of the individuals
involved.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When our millennium turns 21
in 7 years time, it needs to face up to its responsibility as an adult by accepting
the challenge to shape its own future. One in which all young people can be
connected with their talent potential by the age of 21, and know where and how
to take the next step in their life. A future where we begin to be more clever
about what we invest in to make change happen throughout people’s lives. </span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"> Our millenium needs to make space for a new odyssey in thinking - by reimaginging the face and voice of
charity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They say charity begins at
home; and perhaps the truth is that the home of our social challenges is reflected
in the way that charity works.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because
charity is not always working as it could.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The type of charity that has to raise money by peddling stories of
despair and competing against each other to support problems is no charity to
human potential.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a disadvantaging
voice, locked in a narrative where we never learn how to bring about an end to
the issues that charities are meant to resolve.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Too much charity in the 21<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">st</span></sup>
century is in danger of becoming like reality TV – you can’t always be sure what
its authenticity is, the format is stale, and few people can be
bothered to track what happens next when the audience has switched over to the
next big thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">So what does the home of our charity need?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A refreshed vision: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>clarity to look ahead to see what needs to be
done to live a life that is more advantageous for more people; relentless
energy to reach out to work with those who can best help our society achieve that
change. It needs the courage to replace our trade in deficits and disadvantage
with the ‘know how’ to transform talents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Above all, it must mark a ‘shift’ in defining what we believe is
possible, and take us on an epic journey to embrace how we can choose to live our lives.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">On the 30<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">th</span></sup> April, Foyer Federation will be
celebrating its 21<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">st</span></sup> birthday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Among the memories, it will offer up a 7 year vision to
create a different story for and with young people by 2021.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What chapters that story will contain, and
how exciting the narrative might be, will depend on who wants to write its future.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m looking forward to finding out… </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><strong>Create the future with me in a night of Taking Advantaged Thinking Action at</strong> </span><strong><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">The Cockpit, Marylebone, on 6th August at 7.30pm. Tickets now on sale </span></strong><a href="http://thecockpit.org.uk/show/the_adventures_of_tata-man_in_-_a_night_of_bananas" target="_blank"><strong><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="color: #2288bb;">HERE</span></span></strong></a></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Colin Falconerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09565140261570413700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4891280572323765551.post-45185323044724302772014-03-29T07:18:00.002-07:002014-03-30T02:30:31.237-07:00Social Harmers <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Pick up the knife. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
posters, speeches, research, headlines, campaigns; its slash marks a vein of
problems that dis-ease our humanity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
is how we cut young people up and down: as feckless, untalented, without grit, thuggish,
disadvantaged, homeless, soft outcomes, at risk – Neets, Not Etonian or Easy Enough
To Save, undeservingly poor. These are the people we stab with our images. Just
so many charity cases to hide capitalism’s collateral damage in. Labelled like
oversized luggage to carry the body bags of our market economy's age into another poster asking
for 40p to help kill again and again.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Is it the self-harm of teenagers that cuts so deep today, or
the social harm perpetuated by adults to feed their pain? Our policies, our irresponsibilities,
our ignorance of what it takes to inspire and engage a generation, boomerangs
through history. Specialists in failure, we are qualified to strip hope away to
replace it with blame. And so young people become our scars lined up in
prisons, gangs, A&E, welfare queues, systems of neglect, locked in
disinvested rooms, whatever stereotype we can house them in - except a place to
become themselves. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">We must scar our youth so they can express our failure to
lead. We must disadvantage them to give us an excuse for failed dreams. They
must carry the reason we can not harness the resources of our planet. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For we are the real harmers - the ‘social
harmers of the self’ – addicted to cutting, punishing, manipulating, hurting
the wellbeing of those who will not behave as we wish they would, to suffer in
silent passivity to the conceit of adulthood.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Our social harm has turned the language of support into an anthem
for doomed youth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hear its miserly
abuse, see its squalid PR graffiti, and turn your heart away. Fresh words will
sing elsewhere.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Colin Falconerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09565140261570413700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4891280572323765551.post-86386694306703318722014-02-28T10:50:00.000-08:002014-03-03T00:14:51.008-08:00A Bridge for Young People's Future<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
A speech given for Bridge Foyer's 15th Birthday:<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">"I’ve come all the way from London to be at this special 15<sup>th</sup>
birthday celebration, because the Foyer Federation holds Bridge Foyer and the other
Foyers of Your Housing in high regard. And at a time of great innovation in
Foyers in the UK and overseas, represented by programmes such as Open Talent
and Healthy Conversations run with Your Housing, I want to try and understand
why it is that a beacon Foyer like Bridge could be put in a position where its vital
service is under threat through the current commissioning climate.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I’d like to begin that by looking at a quote:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">‘ Tomorrow’s leaders, artists and innovators are busy growing
up but they can only achieve their potential with our whole hearted and expert
support. That is why we need a director who’s not just skilled but driven and
not just capable but passionate. In short, we need a true leader who
understands why this job is so important.’<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">So marks the introduction for a job at Haringey Council as
Director of Children’s Services – an authority trying to move on from the
legacy of the Baby P scandal to put in place a culture of high aspiration for
children and young people. They are using what we call at the Foyer Federation
‘Advantaged Thinking’; to start with what is possible –tomorrow’s leaders -
and develop services to ensure that young people can create the possible in
their lives.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">What about Cheshire West and Chester?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What vision is being expressed in its strategic
commissioning consultation document?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If
you look at the outcomes, there is no sense that the young people of Chester
are being prepared as tomorrow’s leaders, artists and innovators. In Chester,
young people are not being equipped to thrive; they are being given an offer of
‘Housing Related Support’ that is only prepared to help them cope. Because all
the evidence shows that services, such as Foyers, designed to do more than
housing related support, enable young people to navigate a world that is far
more complex that the choices suggested in the consultation document. Instead
of the Advantaged Thinking approach in Haringey, Cheshire West and Chester start
with what is not possible, the suggestion that young people cannot do more than
sustain a tenancy, and then they propose commissioning services that ensure people
can never achieve anything else. It’s what we call Disadvantaged Thinking –
seeing young people in terms of problems instead of possibilities.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The difference between Haringey’s job ad, and Cheshire West
and Chester’s consultation document, is like the difference between the story
of the good and the bad parent. When a child is learning to walk, the good
parent holds out the aspiration that the child crawling on the ground and
falling down will be able to do something that is beyond their current ability.
They encourage the child to keep trying, because they believe that they can and
will be able to walk in the world. Compare that to the story of the bad parent <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>- who, when their child falls down trying to
walk, says – I’m sorry, but walking is not for you, you are best crawling, and
we’ll help you develop the skills to sustain your crawling for the rest of your
life through ‘crawling related support’ so you can cope with not having the
talent to walk like the rest of the children in town.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Why does Cheshire West and Chester only have the vision to
offer young people the Housing Related Support options to help them crawl
through life, instead of learning how to stand tall to find their talents
through talent-building services?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Just imagine if the people responsible for the consultation
document had been tasked with managing the GB Olympic team.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A team of athletes, prevented from breaking
any bones, supported to sustain their tenancies and behave in in the Olympic
village – but not equipped with the skills and experiences to win any medals at
the games. At the Olympics, the GB team succeeded in winning its biggest medal
haul through 3 key lessons: giving athletes access to high quality coaching;
providing flexible, personalised budgets for athletes to navigate their life
needs so they could focus on thriving; and creating a culture of high
aspirations that believed in success, instilled confidence, and encouraged
peer-to-peer positive support. Where are those ingredients in the Cheshire West
and Chester consultation document?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In Chester,
the service best placed to offer young people access to those 3 things, with
the experience of doing so successfully, is now in danger of being axed because
it doesn’t fit the strategic commissioning model being proposed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Where is the Olympic legacy in that?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The Olympic Games opening ceremony was memorably kicked off
by a local Cheshire lad, Daniel Craig, famous for James Bond – a character associated
with standing up against those who threaten our freedom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wouldn’t dream of comparing the intensions
of Cheshire West and Chester with those of SPECTRE from the early Bond novels
and films, but they do share one thing in common: an attempt to impose a system
of control over the world that we know in our hearts is wrong, that we know
only benefits a few, and that we know needs someone with the courage and
determination to fight against.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
logic behind the Cheshire West and Chester consultation amounts to this: that
there are some young people who we should only offer a minimal Housing Related Support
offer to because they don’t have the talent to invest in their development
through a more specialist talent-building service such as a Foyer. They are
wrong. The logic is faulty. And the implied intent will leave Chester with a
generation of young people with short term tenancy skills but without the longer
term investment in their talent to build our collective future.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">What can we do about it?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">At the Foyer Federation, we are creating a new movement to
tell a different story about young people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>A story that can challenge disadvantaged thinking with the reality of
who young people are, what their authentic voice is, and who they can
become.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a movement for ‘Taking Advantaged
Thinking Action’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And you can be part of
that here, in Chester, by becoming an activist and special agent for Bridge
Foyer.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">You can be 001 – and make sure that the language we use about
young people is focused on who they are, not the negative stereotypes and
deficits that get attached to them by others.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">You can be 002 – and make sure that the knowledge you have of
young people is based on what they can do and aspire to, as we have witnessed in
the young people performing today, not just their problems.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">You can be 003 – and make sure that the way you work with
young people is shaped around the power of coaching as opposed to supporting.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">You can be 004 – and make sure that the future isn’t about
the 20% savings the commissioner needs to make through service cuts, but about
the 80% that will be wasted in just supporting people to cope instead of
equipping them to thrive. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">You can be 005 – and make sure that you express the highest
aspirations for young people as a good parent would.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">You can be 006 – and make sure that we really involve young
people in what we do, enabling their experiences to shape the services they receive
in a more genuine way than the processes used in this consultation. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">And you can be 007 – the ultimate agent - by challenging and
campaigning for Taking Advantaged Thinking Action to secure a better world for young
people.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">So respond to the consultation document. Stand by the staff
and young people of Bridge Foyer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Think
what talent you have to offer to help open young people’s. And<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> whatever happens tomorrow, </span>remember this song, by a music band called
the Manic Street Preachers, from 1998 when Bridge Foyer was being built: ‘If
you tolerate this, your children will be next’…"</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><em>With thanks to all the amazing young people and staff from Bridge Foyer in Chester</em></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><strong></strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><strong>Create the future with me in a night of Taking Advantaged Thinking Action at</strong> </span><strong><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">The Cockpit, Marylebone, on 6th August at 7.30pm. Tickets now on sale </span></strong><a href="http://thecockpit.org.uk/show/the_adventures_of_tata-man_in_-_a_night_of_bananas" target="_blank"><strong><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">HERE</span></strong></a><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Colin Falconerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09565140261570413700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4891280572323765551.post-14207005454067275832014-02-21T12:52:00.004-08:002014-02-21T12:52:57.628-08:00That Feeling...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"> I saw the poster inside the shiny offices of Prince’s Trust
as I trudged through the rain to work from Liverpool Street station. That Feeling
– a big face catching the eye with the sensation of doing something challenging
and exciting to raise money for The Prince’s Trust. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or, in the words of the poster, to support ‘disadvantaged
young people’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or, from a more honest
perspective, to support the Trust’s ongoing communications campaign to
stereotype young people as being ‘disadvantaged’ and other negative labels as
the most effective way to raise money for itself.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">At least the poster was colourful. At least the poster would
motivate thousands of people to do things for others. At least the poster would
stimulate an interest in the future for young people. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">Atleast some individuals would directly benefit from the promise of inspiration.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">But I had a different feeling.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I was walking down a street in East London. One where there
are not-so-shiny housing estates with young people who experience multiple
challenges to harness their potential for life. Directly outside the estate, in
the bus stop normally postered with KFC and drink ads, the Prince’s Trust’s ‘That
Feeling’ image stared back.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It stopped
me in my tracks. Not even I expected this.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">How could they?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How
dare they allow a poster to be put up here? Raising money in the name of supporting
young people like some of those on the estate, who receive absolutely no
service what so ever from The Prince’s Trust?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Using the image of their so-called ‘disadvantage’, in order to raise
money that they never see? I know, because I've lived there.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I wondered how many people had signed up to help the
campaign, thinking their donations would make a difference in their actual locality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Does the Prince’s Trust have a plan to help
those young people on the estate?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> They have great resources to offer, but do they and will they ever reach here? </span>Do
they have an intention to share funding with those local charities working with
young people in the areas where they put up their posters - those who actually have the best expertise to reach out and connect young people with opportunity?</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I doubt it. After all, this is just the way that big national charities meet
fundraising targets to protect their status quo - in a clever, well done, and utterly shameful manner.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">That Feeling…. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Of betrayal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Of broken trust.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">That’s what putting a poster, with that language, with that
intent, in that place, amounts to. For me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">As I walked home, I wondered if I could sign up
to help the Prince’s Trust’s work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> The 'That Feeling' campaign has <a href="http://www.princes-trust.org.uk/support_us/get_involved/active_events.aspx" target="_blank"><strong>four options</strong></a> to choose your challenge, none of which I'm that good at, so I reasoned I could come up with my own. And in the spirit of the campaign, it's a</span>
life-changing challenge - to convince the staff at Prince's Trust to 'Take
Advantaged Thinking Action' in the way they talk about young people; in the way they
invest in young people; and in the way they behave as a charity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because ‘That Feeling’ really really needs to change.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><strong>If you like a challenge, come and explore a night of Advantaged Thinking Action with me at</strong> <strong><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">The Cockpit, Marylebone, on 6th August at 7.30pm. Tickets now on sale </span></strong><a href="http://thecockpit.org.uk/show/the_adventures_of_tata-man_in_-_a_night_of_bananas" target="_blank"><strong><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">HERE</span></strong></a></span></div>
</div>
Colin Falconerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09565140261570413700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4891280572323765551.post-21637498118536773572014-02-01T06:38:00.000-08:002014-02-01T08:43:42.666-08:00Running for never<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">‘Running away together, running away forever…’<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Words from the (in)famous Brotherhood of Man hit that haunt me,
not with the idea of eloping from reality, but the image of charity marathon
runners and the causes they are prepared to hurt for each year.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I usually don’t get too excited by an email asking me to
sponsor another runner for another cause. This week was slightly different.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The runner in question was the Chief Executive
of <a href="http://www.leapcc.org.uk/" target="_blank"><strong>Leap Confronting Conflict</strong></a>. If you don’t know them, Leap is an authentic, well
run and inclusive youth charity, with a value base very different from the
mainstream brands.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of the Advantaged
Thinkers in the pack.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In their own
language, ‘<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Leap supports young people struggling
with conflict (gangs, weapons, in prison, excluded from school) to transform
that conflict in to positive activity, to reduce violence in their communities
and to help lead our society. The young people we work with are amazing.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span>While impressed with the challenge, it
struck me that actually running such a charity ‘the right way’ was its own
mental, emotional and physical marathon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In which case, why weren’t we being asked to sponsor that? Why must a Chief Executive
have to run a more publically acceptable form of ‘marathon’ as well, just to
get money to invest in the work our society depends on?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Then I had a vision – arguably a nightmare – of all the
normal brigade of celebs, well-to-dos, and middle classes looking for a new personal
challenge, dressed in shorts and bursting into the doors of my workplace to
help run the marathon of running a charity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sponsored to achieve various
charity marathon challenges (posted up to choose from via our Run-a-Charity app
of course), such as: how to prove your impact using tools that don’t reflect what
you do; how to build a sustainable future using short-term funding; how to help
young people navigate through a policy system designed to fail their every step;
how to enable poorly paid over worked and under-appreciated staff on the
frontline to pick up the fragments our society disposes of. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thinking about all the time it takes to train
for a marathon there would be more than enough hours to prepare easy-win solutions
for the big Run-a-Charity day. Even better, if we could get the people causing
some of the social problems that charity is trying to resolve, to come and actually run
one, they might see how the true measure of what they do exists in the life of
others they don’t understand. Expect moments of confession by the water-cooler
as hubris finally melts with the polar ice cap. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Ultimately, I am something of a 'rebbit' - a rebal rabbit running to get
away with saying these things while I can. It won't last. The farmer’s gun isn’t
far behind. Every rebel runs the line of a different race, knowing that the
only finish line is the end of something or the end of themselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They don’t want to go home in foil, a sticker
with a fastest time on the fridge, so they can come back to do it next year. They can't keep hiding in their hole. They want out.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Looking at the repeated programmes and campaigns that seem
to do more to keep their organisations running than to stop our need for them, I really wonder
what we have become. A society in perpetual motion, in perpetual denial. The fact we have a marathon to run for young people at all,
after all these years, all these initiatives, all this knowledge, all our
social wealth, is something to do something about. It’s certainly every reason why
we should sponsor someone who is trying to run two marathons at once because,
like me, they want the race to cease. We all should.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<strong><a href="http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fundraiser-web/fundraiser/showFundraiserPage.action?userUrl=ThomasLawson&pageUrl=3" target="_blank">Sponsor Leap's Chief Executive Thomas Lawson to run the Brighton Marathon here</a></strong><br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong>Find out how the race can cease in The Adventures of Tata-man, a performance of ideas at The Cockpit, Marylebone, on 6th August at 7.30pm. Tickets now on sale </strong><a href="http://thecockpit.org.uk/show/the_adventures_of_tata-man_in_-_a_night_of_bananas" target="_blank"><strong>HERE</strong></a></div>
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Colin Falconerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09565140261570413700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4891280572323765551.post-47432652130812113502014-01-26T07:41:00.002-08:002014-01-26T10:14:23.406-08:00Strange Meeting<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span lang="">Your face stares back at me behind a window. I'm not sure if you are smiling or grimacing; I can't make out if you have cried or laughed. I don't know a thing about you. Except, a strange meeting.<br />
<br />
We were walking back to the Lodge, in a beautful place among the mountains of Nepal. Three tourists, with their guide, paying to enjoy the universe, safely snugged in expensive clothes to keep out the cold. You had spent the day cutting up logs into wood, packed on your back in an impossible load. Dressed in rags, stinking of sweat. Down the winding muddy path, you followed us. Stopping whenever we paused, curious, amazed at a camera lens. You exchanged hand signs with our guide, and I realised, you couldn't speak the same. As we approached the village below, we watched the locals laugh while you tried to sell them your day's work in urgent gestures. 'She's dumb,' our guide said. 'She's mute,' he made sure we understood. 'But she's good,' he added, and I was grateful for that word against the burden of stereotypes.<br />
<br />
An hour later, we had made it back up the final trek. Exhausted, we sat with our mugs of fine tea by the Lodge fire, writing postcards, exchanging stories with fellow travellers. All of us, happy to widen our world through the wonders of Nepal. Then, I saw you. In the corner of my eye, I felt you approach the window from outside, as the night began to grip the sun. Freed from the burden of wood, your mouth hanging open in adventure. Watching us watching you, and watching you watch us, I sensed the room retreat. Someone laughed. Someone turned away. Someone coughed in fear, incase you made it inside. Someone felt compassion for your wide beautiful eyes. And I, amongst it all, felt, in that famous wonderous phrase of Wilfred Owen, 'the pity'. <br />
<br />
There you were, like the picture in every charity poster I hate, dishevelled - but not in pain; poor - but playful; blocking the sunset - but bringing reality to view; without a voice - but saying so much more than the conversation inside; stopping every thought with the fact that you had your own sense of wonder that none of us could include in our self-serving lives. The pity of charity, the pity of pity, the pity of it all distilled. <br />
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The lodge staff went and chased you away, like a dog. So we could get back to our plans for tomorrow's walk, the excitement of what dinner would bring, without interruption. I felt my stomach sicken in revolt. The one thing the room lacked; the one thing charity no longer seems to know how to do; the one thing in that moment I couldn't act on - is this: the ability to break through the glass with love. <br />
<br />
Love, a word dirtier than the smears on your skin.<br />
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The face that stares back at me with a million other unknowns around the world. Like the faces opposite me as I write, hidden in a bleak London estate that not a single charity or service commissioner sets foot in. One day, someone will chase us away instead. Down some profound dull tunnel of disadvantaged thinking and disgust, we will find all the lives and their talents we have killed infront of us. Let's not sleep now...<br />
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<strong>'Strange Meeting' and other encounters will feature in The Adventures of Tata-man, a performance of ideas at The Cockpit, Marylebone, on 6th August at 7.30pm. Tickets now on sale <a href="http://thecockpit.org.uk/show/the_adventures_of_tata-man_in_-_a_night_of_bananas" target="_blank">HERE</a></strong><br />
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Colin Falconerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09565140261570413700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4891280572323765551.post-61616815892446832072013-12-14T04:42:00.001-08:002013-12-14T04:42:51.412-08:00The Adventures of TaTa-man<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju4BoNhEo5vntcVXrOf35P79wYHOH46-R6dGmpDWtErPehGvXIzgS2dbZ1V6zb1uEhlsfd3CAMtvY6YxoTmelkjWME1VlCxLcA2KEOi8T22KaO9CcVGAgXpC25jtHBcFhlGRvXw2ofBOOZ/s1600/tatamanbannanas.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju4BoNhEo5vntcVXrOf35P79wYHOH46-R6dGmpDWtErPehGvXIzgS2dbZ1V6zb1uEhlsfd3CAMtvY6YxoTmelkjWME1VlCxLcA2KEOi8T22KaO9CcVGAgXpC25jtHBcFhlGRvXw2ofBOOZ/s1600/tatamanbannanas.jpg" /></a> <strong>The Adventures of TaTa-man in.... </strong><br />
<strong> A Night of Bananas</strong><br />
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The Velvet Underground’s ‘banana’ album sold only 30,000 copies in its first five years; but legend has it that everyone who bought one set up a band. Can an audience at the theatre find similar inspiration to create a community that ends youth ‘dis’-advantage? <br />
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Find out on the 6th August, 2014, at The Cockpit, Marylebone, London.<br />
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‘The Adventures of TaTa-man’ is a performance of ideas that invites its audience to explore the powers of ‘Taking Advantaged Thinking Action’ through the story of a modern day charity anti-hero.<br />
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TaTa-man’s search for solutions to the challenges ‘dissing’ young people plots an alternative journey from the horrors of the First World War and the origins of Dada, to prehistoric cave-painting and the secrets of coal mine canaries, uncovering the real potential behind Advantaged Thinking as a movement through time and space. <br />
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Offering an anarchic blend of words and images with an urgent social message, this will be a night to ‘TaTa’ on the wild side of the mind.<br />
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Are you ready for your Banana?<br />
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Full details to be revealed in the New Year. <a href="http://www.thecockpit.org.uk/">www.thecockpit.org.uk</a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzq3-qNxhBNIMfh3rcfdn2UzF7e1elkJgD65M_nWve5nW0UQQ1kVvH5kscmDROSWedbrO2sP58Ki3iBDdLL58WqoEIGJM8ZGwgGAvMDiyw_pT9U9wtTPM0rpmI62asFPqd1YLo3RC2j5el/s1600/cock_BLACK.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="245" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzq3-qNxhBNIMfh3rcfdn2UzF7e1elkJgD65M_nWve5nW0UQQ1kVvH5kscmDROSWedbrO2sP58Ki3iBDdLL58WqoEIGJM8ZGwgGAvMDiyw_pT9U9wtTPM0rpmI62asFPqd1YLo3RC2j5el/s320/cock_BLACK.gif" width="320" /></a></div>
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Colin Falconerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09565140261570413700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4891280572323765551.post-70938864504475974282013-11-23T09:23:00.000-08:002013-11-25T00:15:06.566-08:00From Right Here to Right There<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy2j1o1fM0cSFpngxk67nVHDKmtH_YWtpYFoDQVMJJxPs_EBISEIrZkk9E8H0mfTP7T6U4w9M4BAoHAlOZiJVT1bZcxzhZJ7xYp6Wf8pFVHsEUIfAibMZA87pfk7W3rfqFJSnrf8eaAWkO/s1600/righthere.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy2j1o1fM0cSFpngxk67nVHDKmtH_YWtpYFoDQVMJJxPs_EBISEIrZkk9E8H0mfTP7T6U4w9M4BAoHAlOZiJVT1bZcxzhZJ7xYp6Wf8pFVHsEUIfAibMZA87pfk7W3rfqFJSnrf8eaAWkO/s320/righthere.jpg" width="240" /></a><span lang="">On friday night I was attending a celebration event for the ending of <a href="http://www.right-here.org.uk/" target="_blank">Right Here</a>, a joint project by Paul Hamlyn Foundation and Mental Health Foundation. If you haven't been paying attention over the last 5 years, Right Here is a £6m programme to radically change how we look after the mental health and wellbeing of young people aged 16 to 25 across the UK. Or, more simply, 'creating responsive services that provide young people with the mental health support and advice they want, when and where they want it.' As one of the brilliant Right Here ambassadors put it, 'If young people are not part of the answer to their mental health, then what questions are health commissioners asking?'<br />
<br />
Right Here is likely to be most remembered for its youth-led work to influence commissioning approaches and develop practical tools for young people to advance their mental health. These are important outcomes, and the Foyer Federation is working with Right Here's group of expert youth ambassadors to apply that positive focus in its own <a href="http://foyer.net/what-we-do/projects-initiatives/healthy-conversations" target="_blank">Healthy Conversations</a> initiative to 'bring health to life'.<br />
<br />
But there is something else in Right Here which is equally as interesting - and worth much more than the cupcake provided at the end of the night. Over the last 5 years, Right Here has created a network of ambassadors who have grown together from teenagers to young adults whilst participating in the project's activities. It is a 'transition community' in all senses of the word: a group that has supported individuals to navigate a complicated life period, with a set of professional adults both learning from and supporting the learning of the young people involved. Like all effective communities, its success has been based on a common relation between individuals associated with something of personal interest, and the ability to maintain those connections through ongoing activity that has meaningful impact. The power of the group is that its value will keep giving back in years to come way beyond the funding ever imagined.<br />
<br />
At the end of the event, Rob Bell, Head of Social Justice at Paul Hamlyn Foundation, set a challenge for young people to find a way to 'self-mobilise' around powerful issues to create social change where it is needed most; and to learn from where ever this has been achieved in other cultures and periods. Which set my mind thinking about how pioneering innovative action stimulates the growth of different communities of influence. While the mass mobilisiation of individuals around political campaigns (such as Obama's first election) and popular artists (such as Lady Gaga's 'little monsters') are common phenomena, less attention is paid to how single actions of real inspiration create their own future communities through applied thinking. <br />
<br />
A popular example of this is the 'myth' of how the Velvet Underground's 'Banana album' sold only 30,000 copies in its first five years, but each person who bought the ablum would set up their own band inspired by it's ground breaking approach. If you look at some of those bands, they were teenagers and young adults creating their own micro 'transition networks' based around music, which in many cases grew into popular communities such as Punk. The 'Banana album' and its band was the 'source' of action which stimulated the growth of various communities of cultural influence over decades to come. <br />
<br />
Why do I cite this? Because, while Rob Bell was rightly pointing people's attention to more socio-political examples of self-mobilisation, what the Charity sector desperately needs is to refind a 'community of innovation' within its soul to be a better source of inspiration at the local and national level. Something not owned by one brand, one body, one set of adults, one hub group, one funded opportunity, one great project; but more flexibly and fluidly lived and shared between different organisations , individuals and age groups, young and old, stimulated into creativity through the right mix of 'source' influences. <br />
<br />
For those source influences to exist, we must find and nurture pioneers to 'Take Advantaged Thinking Action' (TaTa) that will bring people together over products and happenings rich and free enough in ideas for others to flourish from. It doesn't need glossy research reports or stategic plans; it doesn't need platforms to applaud the status quo. It is about giving away ideas through innovation 'performances' that stimulate people to think. <br />
<br />
Which, in a sector built on competition for funding, is hard to pull off. And given most source innovators never reap the benefits their followers gain, it is also hard to advocate for within most organisational structures where impact is too closely linked with self-survival.<br />
<br />
That is why I am launching a 'performance' in 2014 (<em>The Adventures of TaTa-man and the Night of Bananas</em>) to invite a mixed community of people with the ability to grow thinking from various sectors to share in my 'source' of Taking Advantaged Thinking Action. It's a performance on a stage in the theatre (dates and venue to be announced), because the theatre is one powerful example of community experience where we engage in reflective connection through a dramatic source. I am trying to create a 'theatre of charity' that looks for radical breakthroughs in the same way as the 'theatre of cruelty'. A TaTA that applies a new type of DaDa to drive positive social change. It's about putting into one performance the same 'Banana album' thesis: if you are in the audience, then the mobilisation offered in the moment of sharing an experience might enable you to grow your own community of action through whatever inspiration you express through yourself afterwards. I want everyone to take a Banana away.<br />
<br />
The project developed by Paul Hamlyn Foundation and the Mental Health Foundation might be drawing to a close, but so much is still beginning from all the lives touched through it. Right Here is when we keep building right there into our future. It's the capital of life.</span></div>
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Colin Falconerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09565140261570413700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4891280572323765551.post-7683962151170449832013-11-16T07:47:00.000-08:002013-11-18T01:49:25.503-08:00The Launch of Thinking Class<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Over a year ago, I
came with an idea to create ‘Thinking Class’ as a way to revolutionise travel
and contribute to the development of social innovation. You can read my
original blog on the concept <a href="http://t.co/5IEvScVlzx" target="_blank"><strong>here</strong></a>…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So,
what happened? Umm, apart from some interesting and productive journeys by
myself, not much.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Until now.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">This Monday, November 18<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">th</span></sup>, Thinking
Class is launched on a train travelling between London to Birmingham and
back.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a pilot flash-mob approach, although
maybe that’s too strong a word. With four people involved, it’s more of a secret cabal. The train selected is on a Virgin route because the original idea for Thinking Class came from reading <a href="http://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/books/screw" target="_blank">'Screw Business as Usual'</a> whilst travelling on Virgin Atlantic. The Virgin brand is a bit 'thinking class' too. It's also cost effective - great customer service in a moving work space that costs less than hiring a meeting room. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Armed with Thinking Class identity lanyards, and a menu of concepts
to explore from the Foyer Federation’s excellent <a href="http://foyer.net/files/2013/08/Investing-in-Our-Future…Creating-a-Different-Story.pdf" target="_blank">strategic plan consultation document</a>, my special group of Advantaged Thinkers will be testing out the rules
behind Thinking Class to see if it works on a limited scale of travellers from the same organisation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Let me explain.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Unlike traditional class systems of travel, Thinking Class
is not something you ‘buy’. It’s not about how much income you have to purchase
privilege for yourself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thinking Class
is designed for people who have something to give to others. It’s about how
many ideas you can generate to invest in social change.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Membership of Thinking Class has a simple A-B-C set of rules.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Thinking
must be:<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><u>Advantaged</u> We focus on positive opportunities to generate
practical ideas that can contribute to a particular challenge instead of being
lost in problems and philosophies<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><u>Brave</u> We dare to disrupt the accepted norm and look for
what would be really innovative to make a ‘break through’ in practice now<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><u>Collaborative</u> What we create is shaped through other people’s
voices in an authentic conversation that can be shared and developed with
others<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Together, A + B + C = TATA (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MojYZ32ThmI" target="_blank">Taking Advantaged Thinking Action</a>)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><strong>Thinking Class is travel with a social purpose by giving ideas through powerful conversations.</strong></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">If you can’t do that, you’re in the wrong seat.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">If you want to glorify in talking about what’s wrong in the
world, if you want to promote the status quo of what you are already doing, if
you want to disseminate or develop your own IP rather than create something new
that is not only yours – you are not a fellow traveller. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">But if you get it, the only limit to membership is how many opportunities
we can find to journey together. We can share plane flights, railway lines, walks
to work, even hire a wedding bus for a day to ‘marry’ ideas between people from different
sectors. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> What's stopping us? </span>The ticket to ride is ours to
define.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">At the end of the journey, those involved in a conversation can complete and
return together a Thinking Class 'Ticket' - or Tickets - to share the currency of their discovery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Thinking Class Ticket DATE..................</span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Advantaged:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What was the
challenge and what were the positive solutions you came up with?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Collaborative: Who was involved in the conversation, who could be
involved next to take it further, and what role do you want to play if any?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Photo this form and send to </span><a href="mailto:colin@advantagedthinking.com"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">colin@advantagedthinking.com</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">,
sharing any other contact details below for follow up:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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What will happen to Thinking Class after the 18th? I'll be announcing something a bit bigger and more external in a few weeks time. Meanwhile, watch out for #thinkingclass on twitter and drop me a line if you'd like a 'ticket to ride' the future (and you care). If Richard Branson can screw business as usual, we can screw charity with even more inspiration.</div>
Colin Falconerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09565140261570413700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4891280572323765551.post-64137583423340701362013-11-10T06:26:00.000-08:002013-11-11T00:05:12.468-08:00The Big Picture<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span lang="EN-GB">Back in March, I went to New York to speak at the 10th anniversary of the Chelsea Foyer. I was waking up over my coffee, waiting for the audience to arrive at BNY Mellon on Wall Street, when I was approached by a smartly dressed young man called Christopher. I was struck by the kindness in his welcome as much as his history as an ex resident from Chelsea Foyer - and his knowledge of London restaurants I had never eaten at. He told me a story about how learning to cook had freed him to travel Europe. He ended up working at some of the best restuarants in the US and Europe, including <a href="http://www.theworlds50best.com/list/1-50-winners/per-se/" target="_blank"><strong>Per Se</strong></a> and <a href="http://elevenmadisonpark.com/" target="_blank"><strong>Eleven Madison Park</strong></a> in New York, and <a href="http://www.theworlds50best.com/list/1-50-winners/el-celler-de-can-roca/" target="_blank"><strong>El Cellar de Can Roca</strong></a> in Girona, Spain. For Christopher, the transition to adulthood became a real journey of discovery. He was only disappointed not to have made it all the way to the Aberdeen Foyer restaurant before it got closed down. I was blown away by that determination. We talk alot about encouraging young people to be more mobile. Well, here who was someone who used his talent for hospitality to find himself in the world. I was struck by the power of the words, and Christopher's generosity to want to share them with me. </span></span><br />
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This is my 100th blog. I started writing Adventures in Advantaged Thinking back in December 2011 on my first trip to Australia. A lovely women who organised the conference I was speaking at in Sydney said, 'You'll find it harder keeping it going when you get back.' That fuelled my heart. When I feel like giving up, I remind myself of the passion of all the people I met on that trip, what Open Talent meant to the young people who rushed to the front row after my speech because they 'felt' what I was saying. I wanted my 100th blog to be a little special. I can't think of a better way to do that than to share what 'living the dream' means for someone who finds their voice. So, this is Christopher's story below. Story by story, our world gets reshaped when we piece together the journey to ourselves. Just look for the big picture in every person's step, including your own...</span><br />
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<strong>Living the Dream - a Journey through Hospitality</strong> <br />
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">'I was introduced to the culture of the hospitality industry at a young age while paving my way to a future at the Chelsea Foyer. A journey that has multiple steps forwards, as they do backwards: put up for adoption at an early age, having a disruptive high school education, introduced to the Chelsea Foyer program, and finally aging out of the foster care system. Then, finding comfort in the most uncomfortable environment of the kitchen. <br />
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Throughout my career I have found the kitchen to be a constant challenge that does not allow for failure. Similar to life experiences, things aren’t as planned and you have to adapt. To be able to recognize and overcome this is what makes all the difference. Having found countless hours and years in the kitchen, and to this day continuing my education at Cornell University Hotel School of Administration, is all proof a tree can grow in Brooklyn. <br />
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Hospitality to me can be defined simply as a set of experiences, both in and out of the kitchen. Whether it’s providing a seven course meal at a wedding; serving a birthday cake in an elegant environment surrounded by loved ones; teaching kids the nutritional value of fresh local products; or explaining to young adults the importance of purchasing whole ingredients and utilizing them for budgeting purposes: all sum up an experience. Through hospitality, experiences of culture, travel, discussion, and trying just about anything, developed the confidence for me to do those things.<br />
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A career in hospitality is one of few industries that truly involve all the senses and tastes. Constantly learning, constantly tasting, constantly reinforcing a technique. A word any young professional must accept is 'repetition'. Repitition to the extent that Albert Einstein defined as 'insanity'. Hospitality is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results. The results being different experiences because senses and tastes are so subjective to each and every individual. Accepting that life does not get easier, we just get better, is a pleasurable thought. <br />
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For myself it started with the discipline and commitment in the kitchen working alongside the most talented chefs, servers, and food industry professionals. It wasn’t until I was told, 'Christopher take a step back and look at the bigger picture' that hospitality truly smacked me in the face. I was being selfish for my own gain of being greater at the trade, rather than learning to give to others through it. Taking the leap overseas and living between Paris and Girona taught me true humble cooking - and being able to look at that bigger picture.'</span><br />
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Colin Falconerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09565140261570413700noreply@blogger.com0