The adventure ahead

It’s the simple things in life which fox me. Like trying to open Masterfoods squeeze-on tomato sauce without looking like I’ve been shot.   Too late.

I’m in the last hotel of my stay, on a floor with the ‘General’s Suite’.   I expect the person who stays there has a Condiments Officer to avoid culinary embarrassments.

It’s also my final night in Australia, the ending of the tour. There won’t be a wild party at the bar. Tonight is a period for reflection, for saying goodbye, and – like an episode in Southpark – for working out what the learning has been.

I began my last day with a visit to Mark Bolton at The Ladder project in Melbourne. Mark is an ex AFL player, and his outfit adopts the values of sports performance to empower and mentor young people.  They work in tandem with housing and support to offer a Foyer-like approach. I like what they are trying to do. Once the ‘support’ agency they work with allows them to integrate their work into case management, and the 20 young people accommodated are all part of the service, they will have the beginnings of an exciting Foyer. I particularly like the way they have worked with the young people to choose a set of values – commitment, respect, and inspiration – which the young people use to reflect on their behaviour and goals.  Like Carl Miller’s Lookup to Yourself in the UK, Mark Bolton’s work has a natural synergy with Open Talent.  Mark leaves me with a book on improving leadership and team performance , written by Ray McLean, who was a big influence on teams in the AFL.  A perfect addition to our Open Talent library.

My final speaking session is a workshop with Hanover managers. As always in Melbourne, the conversation bounces around like a tennis ball as we tease out strengths and challenges around the Open Talent approach.   Future actions include reassessing the current case management system across their services, and, for myself,  inventing a new way to play videos when the speakers, where ever you go in the world, never work.

Time for one final laugh with Shelley and Tony as Hanover descends into an Office parody around the Xmas party while we sketch out some future directions for Open Talent and Foyer accreditation. Places to open talent should be full of laughter. Maybe there is more to ‘stand up to open talent’ than meets the eye. 

And so, the tour has reached its end. I’ve learned that the people I have met in the sector in Australia – like Michael, Narelle, Tony –have tremendous courage and determination.  I think Michael is right, ‘The community of people working to end youth homelessness has shown continuous resilience over the past decades’.  I’ve learned that the majority of people here are open to new ideas, to challenging the status quo, to seizing the opportunity for change. For Australia really does have a tremendous opportunity – not to replicate the Foyers that were first built in the 1990s, or those that continue to work from a fixed model, but to shape a fresh approach that breaks new ground. Standing on the shoulders of Open Talent, with a leg up from Foyer Accreditation, and the support of business and philanthropy, Australia can create a community of practice that is inclusive, forward thinking, and revolutionary. I hope I have contributed something, in some way, for that to happen. At least as much to match the kindness and hospitality that I have been so grateful to receive here.  It won’t be a revolution overnight. It won’t be led by one service or organisation. It will open when the talents play together.

Shelley said that Open Talent was still, in some ways, in its nappies. What an adventure lies ahead.

Farc, Art, and Kafka

Today starts out with a morning gallop through the possibilities for Foyer accreditation with Dr Shelley Mallett, who already feels like a kindred spirit - someone who  shares my ‘accreditation is the death of ideas’ philosophy with the determination to do something more radical.  I think we have the makings of an innovative plot. It’s a windy day in Melbourne, so our thoughts are blowing through the air along with the local's 'flat white'.  One thing I’ve learned is that not investing in writing things up in the UK has limited how learning has been transferred into contexts like Australia. We really must take care with Open Talent to get the record straight at the beginning.  Another job for the long flight home.

For some reason, we end up talking about crockery – as you do – and I suddenly see a vision of a Greek smashing plates party, with all the plates decorated with the language of ‘disadvantaged thinking’. Our next staff party?  I want to watch ‘NEETS’ splinter into pieces, followed by ‘homeless sector’, followed by Centrepoint adverts, followed by… I better stop there.

Then it was the Hanover AGM, where we were serenaded by a young person resident who is going to be a contestant on Australia’s Got Talent. It’s a shame he missed my speech – he gave a lovely description of the ‘talent’ inside us all, before a beautiful rendition of Amazing Grace.  I did my best to follow.  I’m not a big fan of doing the same speech more than once, but it does have its luxuries, and third time round you can enjoy watching the audience react. A member of the board offers a thoughtful response on developing new approaches to the induction into adulthood, and someone asks me ‘which glass I’m drinking out of’ after the positive/negative water story.

However, it’s what follows which matters most to me today: the story of the incredible works of art hung in the space outside the conference room. These were painted by an artist who used to frequent one of the early Hanover projects, capturing the faces and personalities of its users with an honesty and dignity that is completely Open Talent. After a speech mocking the stereotyping of disadvantaged  thinking, this was the best illustration of what an advantaged approach is all about: putting the humanity of the people into the spotlight. I only wish I could take the pictures back with me, beyond the memory imprinted on my heart.

I love the values of Hanover housing: imagination, courage, fun. You can see all those things in the CEO Tony Keenan, and his bubbly staff team.  It feels like a family you want to belong to, just like YFoundations and the SYFS.  I have never enjoyed a report back from a finance, audit and risk committee so much after Tony’s witty intro to the acronym ‘farc’.

After the AGM lunch, I head off with Shelley for a meeting in the Kafkaesque building of the Department of Human Services, which, like the Starship Enterprise, has its own sickbay and a board room with a table big enough for a crazy golf course.   In this strange abode we meet up with architects and the housing and community building division to discuss the design concepts for the first of 3 new Foyers being built in Melbourne / Victoria. It’s a great opportunity to ensure that the key principles of innovative Foyer design are expressed, so I make sure that a focus on community, on flexibility, visibility, integration and interaction, are all emphasised.  It’s a good debate, and after a follow up session back at the architects, (if you are reading this Toby, they have a lovely round table), I’m impressed by everyone’s commitment to get it right – even if the timescale to do so is pressing.  I think it’s going to work.

My day is rounded up with a fascinating meal with the CEO of the Girl Guides and a trustee of a family trust, who kindly invited me out after the Open Talent speech.  It’s a conversation about changing the world through the right investments, connecting the passions of people who are trying to shift the story into a different paradigm. I end up with a guided tour round Melbourne, and begin to realise how much more there is to the city than the view from my hotel.  The horizon of the world opens up through other people’s insights.    Thank you Norman and Wendy.  Catherine Zeta Jones may not have turned up at the restaurant, but you were the biggest celebs in the backyard of your town.

I go to bed feeling a little like K. I wonder what I'll wake up as?  Hopefully, not Maslow...

Diss Off Clothing

Vegetarian breakfasts in Melbourne come with avocado and spinach.   Food is a serious vocation.  A stroll along the block takes in everything from the M word to Sushi.  Maybe I should pop into the barbers for a cut, eat a dirty burger, and hang out with the locals at the liquor store.  I love the fact that opposite my hotel is the slightly on-its-knees looking ‘Elizabeth’ hostel. Nothing is named after Cromwell here. 

Day one of the Melbourne tour kicks off with the wonderful informality of, ‘oh you’re seeing the Minister for housing later today’.  Bring her on.  I like the sense of organised creative anarchy that prevails in a positive way. I join in with a visit from the Oxford Foyer team in Perth, seated around a plate of jumbo muffins. The questions cover the gamut of service provision on what makes an inspiring operational Foyer as we tuck into my six ‘asset tests’.  It’s good to hear that Perth is taking forwards their own version of the Learning power Award. I get the sense that Melbourne likes its ideas, or at least Hanover housing does.  We agree some actions including my suggestion for linking the developing Foyers in Australia with an ‘elders group’ of services from the Foyer Federation’s investor partners, to share practice, offer guidance and work towards some exchanges.  I think that will be an exciting forum.

We head off for what is the first meeting of the Foyer Foundation ‘foyer network’ in the region, where I present Open Talent while John Burger from Anglicare runs through the model for the Perth Oxford Foyer. It’s a privilege to be able to offer an insight into Open Talent to a mix of Foyer practitioners and partners. The questions that follow are impressively wide ranging, intelligent and encouraging, with support from the corporate representatives present that Government is not the only funder in town to make talent happen.  The audience quickly adopts talking about ‘complex goals instead of complex needs’.   It might be just the beginning, but there is clearly an appetite for challenging disadvantaged thinking with something fresh.  John’s presentation on the Oxford Foyer offers the optimism of developing a replicable outcomes model for Government departments to fund and support, rather than the other way around. I’m impressed by the focus, although I’ll be interested to see if a 98 bed service can thrive in the Perth summer without aircon.  I hope it does, it deserves to be a success.

After the meeting, I chat through ideas around accreditation, ‘case management’ and learning with Hanover staff. We come up with a new idea for my next tshirt: ‘I’m a danger to myself and others – watch out!’  Perhaps a clothing range of disadvantaged thinking can go alongside the ‘stand up comedy’ plan.  Anyone like to help out, drop me a line at ‘Diss Off Clothing’.

The day finishes with a meeting with what has now become the Advisor for the Minister for Housing, Tim Rose. Tim has a real commitment to Foyers and instantly gets the ambition in Open Talent to change the service paradigm. I can’t remember the last time I’ve had such an engaging conversation with someone from Government. But then I can’t remember when I’ve last had a conversation with someone in Government without  being covered in ink…

On the journey back to the hotel, we pass a Salvation Army Band with Santa hats struggling their way through Xmas hits.  We don't have time to spot their real talent, but it certainly isn't this. Has anyone spotted, the 12 days of Xmas is full of advantaged thinking presents. Santa gives talent to open!

Skating under the ice

I’ve arrived in Melbourne.  The city is a strange mix between old Oxbridge named University colleges, Washington / Philadelphia style streets, and people sitting on rooftops with beer bottles shouting out ‘great hair man’.  I’m taken out for a meal with my hosts from Hanover Housing at a lovely restaurant named after St Jude, complete with 'rabbit chips' and 'thrice fried chips' (is this some kind of potato torture? or an acknowledgement that in the world of the patron saint of lost causes, it's always going to take at least three attempts?)  I notice the questions in Melbourne tend to be a bit trickier than in Sydney, like bombs with longer fuses.  We are skating under the ice.

I’ve been thinking a lot about accreditation. It’s led me to combine - in my head at least - the Foyer tests with the Qualities framework to produce a new  hybrid shape, based on expressing, exploring, experiencing, and  energising  what we understand as quality for a foyer-style, strengths-based dimension.  AQE4 if you like, that follows through the phases as a process of development. We’ll see where that goes. I have it down in squiggles.

On the flight up – or down – I am struck by an article in the paper on ‘Dear me – a letter to my sixteen year old self’, edited by Joseph Galliano.   It’s a good idea for a book. For myself, what would the advice be? Probably that I was right without knowing it, but that getting it wrong would provide a richer source of knowledge.  Maybe the book needs to be the other way around too, for our 16 year-old self to remind our older entity of values that get forgotton through age. The secret of life lies in finding the bits of the puzzle.

Meanwhile, back in Gotham city, UK– what do you call a gathering of intellectuals and politicians? Another discussion on the riots.  It's a joke, but who is laughing...

Think 'n' Chips

Have I woken up back in England? It is hammering rain against my hotel windows, the city skyscrapers disappear into mist, and at the railway station there are no trains.  Just an anomaly, I’m told.

On the TV news, 19mm of rain is a major headline. I find myself staying to watch the bizarre experience of the world weather screened with the backing sound of Vera Lynn singing We’ll Meet Again.  It shouldn’t work, but is quite moving.  Maybe they were thinking of the sun.

A morning off, so I make straight for the nearest prison museum.  It’s the usual story of our failure as a society to cope with, nurture and rehabilitate those deemed to have fallen outside the law. Yet we still don’t seem able to understand how to change the narrative.  The youth justice system is as problematic here as it is in the UK.   The tools of puinshment many have changed, but the mugshots of people remain the same.

I follow the tourists snailing around the Opera House. My mind though is elsewhere, thinking of Open Talent day back in October, and the wonderful young person from Arena whose talent goal was to be an Opera Singer. In many ways, her journey towards that goal had taken her much further than where I was standing in Sydney.  The birds squark and the joggers run.

For lunch, I meet up with 5 members from the Sydney Rotaract Club. Appropriately, they choose the 24 hour Express café down at the Circular Quay. Its newspaper style menu claims that it is ‘always open, always good news’. The prefect venue to present Open Talent. Indeed, the paper wrapping my (thin) chips includes an article from 1912 entitled ‘A thrifty people’ on the value of human capital. This is the new Open University - learning delivered through chip paper.  I’m impressed by the Rotaract group’s energy and commitment, the range of talents they offer around the table.  We are soon discussing practical ideas on how to invest in advantages.  In particular, how micro financing can be applied as a vehicle for empowering enterprises and personal goals. I think they’ll be pioneers for a positive investment in young people.

Walking back along the harbour, I finally bump into the person known around the world in every city: the guy who plays the wooden pipes. He conjures up the great George Harrison track, 'Something'. Just another anomaly.

As the sun sets over Sydney for the last time this tour, I notice some of the pictures from the conference are now up on photographer Anna Zhu's site.  The usual one of me - all hair and lips.  Great to see that Anna captured the 'hands up' moment at the beginning of my workshop.  I hope that makes my colleague Nicola Kidston smile. 

Bye bye to Sydney - thanks for the memories.

Putting dreams back into housing

Finally checked out from the Santa’s grotto of the Novotel at Brighton Le Sands. Great hotel, but there are only so many breakfasts you can take listening to the Jingle Bells Rocks and Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer.  I’ve started using my ‘end youth homelessness’ Keepcup, as the next hotel down at the Rocks has cups so small you can hardly fit a teabag in them.  Love the quote on the Keepcup instructions – ‘through our own actions we inspire others to be the change they wish to see in the world’.  I’m advocating for a world of big cups.

Today I was a guest ‘expert’ at the NSW Homelessness Unit ‘Youth Housing Roundtable’.   This kicked off with a presentation on a ‘research synthesis’ on youth housing models, which, although very useful, had seemed to miss out a few important points on the Foyer experience: namely, the evidence showing that Foyers do operate with young people with ‘complex needs’ as it is called; and the importance of our quality assurance experience to define Foyerness around a focus, approach and relationship rather than a fixed model.  It was good to be able to throw that into the conversation, straight from the horse’s mouth.

I used my own 30 minute slot to pick up Minister Mark Arbib’s quote from EYHC that housing provision should enable young people to ‘reach for their dreams’. In other words, how do we put the focus on ‘dreams’ back into housing – which very much lies at the heart of the Open Talent vision.  Reflecting on our current work with Investor Partners in the UK, and our ‘youth offer’ paper for the UK Government’s Youth Action Group, there seemed plenty of connections to support the Australian experience, as well as perhaps the ‘permission’ to be ‘lateral’ in thinking.

After lunch, we broke into small groups to design ideas for a capital project. My group came up with a ‘flexi youth space’ proposal, which we focused on flexible design options to shape around different uses for different client groups, while building into the design the potential for social enterprise. It was good fun, although I kept wondering why there were no young people in the room, and why there didn’t seem to be a more formal and collaborative process to take forwards the thinking.   But I’m just the voice of a political tourist.

I left with the feeling that there is an opportunity to work with organisations in Australia on an alternative approach to outcomes and research evidence that can promote the types of innovative provision that I think anyone who understands the youth sector believes in. If we can’t tell the real story, in everything we measure and say, then we have lost the right to be ‘experts’.

Wouldn’t it be great, from an Open Talent perspective, to create our own design agency with young people as the co-consultants. It’s not just a question of the collaborative involvement process; it’s also an opportunity to turn someone’s experience into a business solution.

It was sad to say goodbye to so many wonderful, passionate people. As the Keepcup suggests, we leave each other with the inspiration for change.  I hope I’ve given as much as I’ve taken from Sydney.

Running on full

The conference is over. Returning back to the hotel, without the other delegates, I have that end of summer twilight feeling in my heart, when you are missing the fun and learning you’ve had.  YFoundations is like a family you want to be part of.  But lots more to come – the tour heads to Melbourne on Sunday! 

I spent my morning chatting with the lovely Jaime Alden, from Sydney Rotaract club, a group of young people wanting to ‘empower people to help themselves’.  I think clubs like these, and the people who make them happen like Jaime, are where the ‘democracy of talent’ will be forged. It’s not all about trying to work with big business. The generational tribe to open talent is all around us.  Let’s make the campaign start here.

Over lunch, I talked with the passionate staff team from Pathfinders in Armidale. This is a rural area with limited access to housing opportunities, so they are trying to explore the concept of developing a Foyer approach by applying it to the resources they have – such as converting a caravan park into a learning community, and running an exchange programme for young people from care to support their peers in Ghana.  If I didn’t have a job to return to, I think I’d be flying to Armidale to help them.  This is why Foyer is exciting - it's an approach to be expressed without boundaries, as long as you have the ethos right.

This afternoon, I was picked up by George, a driver used by Virgin Unite, who took me to and from the Sydney office while explaining the wonders of Beirut nightlife, the philosophy of taxis, Richard Branson’s books, and Sydney society.  A taxi that makes you feel better for the journey because of the conversation. It’s a dying art – and George is an art in himself.

At the Virgin office, with a magical view of the Opera House, I sat in with Anton and the Managing Director from People Development group (with the best business card I’ve seen this year), before getting ‘miked up’ to be filmed presenting to a mixed group of staff from Virgin Mobile, Money, Active, and Atlantic.  This was a trimmed down version of yesterday’s presentation - the expresso version, if you like. We had a great conversation afterwards. Every time I meet staff from Virgin I’m impressed by their drive and creativity.  The world needs more businesses you can think with like Virgin.  Thank you Anton )

A little time left to prepare for tomorrow’s Youth Housing Expert Panel.   I’m over my jetlag – now I’m just plain tired.  But Open Talent is the ultimate battery, I'm always running on full.