Storytellers of the world, unite and take over

Brexit has been a triumph of social division.  The 75% young people who voted to remain can be forgiven for feeling resentment against an older generation whose selfishness has already left them with a enough economic and environmental challenges to cope with.  Let alone whatever rights and relationships they will lose next.  Those in poorer communities, at the sharp end of a diminished stake in society, often voted to leave in the hope of something better.  It is no coincidence that votes to remain tend to map against lower rates of educational attainment and income – Brexit has been fueled by despair. The lack of a logical argument from both sides of the debate has left us with the absurd outcome of people in Cornwall voting to leave, while asking for the government to save them from the 60 million gap that losing EU funding will mean.  There will be plenty of people feeling let down by false promises in the years ahead. Faith in democracy is taking another beating in the corner.

In Australia, they talk about the importance of creating ‘inclusive growth’ – the idea that a healthy society can only exist when all sides are included in its benefits. Brexit is a reminder of what happens when you don’t get that: you vote for anything that brings the establishment down. The shadow of austerity and political neglect has left us in a deepening mire of our own making. But now is not the time to sink into it.  Whatever the outcome of Brexit, the clearest thing of all is that we are living at a time of absent leadership for the values of social justice and equality that should define the future of Britain.  As Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett concludes in her EU referendum opinion in The Guardian, for young people, it is the moment to ‘mobilise, organise, strategise, and above all hope’. 

Perhaps more than ever we need to establish better spaces for co-production and the sharing of power, both generationally but also socially, and across Europe.  From the way we run organisations, to the way we educate, employ and house people, we need a new approach that truly invests in potential.   The truth is, we have not been living in an equal society for all for some time.  Moments such as Brexit should make us more aware of what we too often choose to ignore.  There might be more hipsters in East London, where I live, but you don't have to look very far to see people struggling in the shadows of swanky apartment buildings for the new elite. The system and the way we do things, from where we live to how we work, is ripe for an upgrade.

How do we begin that?  By finding and inspiring a different story.  It’s a simple truth, which Jeanette Winterson was the first to note in the election aftermath.  Stories have an amazing power.   Over recent years, I have seen an increase in the number of youth charities using story telling; but it’s mostly stories to evidence the now and themselves rather than shape a better future of real change.   We keep ‘sleeping out’ with stories of need instead of ‘thinking out’ together to create better worlds.  Inspiration is the first ingredient to build futures, but we seem to be running on empty. Power is clung to too much and used too little for good.

What people really wanted out of this election is actually a story worth telling and working on.  Most people on both sides voted for essential truths that could and should form part of a more positive narrative for inclusion across Europe.  Without a political party or institution fit to shape that story truthfully, it’s time for us to get on with it. Storytellers of the world, unite and take over. 

Looking for a place to begin? Check out  Sounddelivery's Being The Story on 16th September

Climbing Beyond Advantaged Thinking

 

‘A climb more demanding in spirit than the body…’

With these words, Mount Shichimen volcanoed into consciousness.  The magic mountain, shaking my mind with dreams of an expedition into the soul. It would take seven years until I could join a Buddhist pilgrimage for the three day march.  People trekked its contours each spring and autumn to reconnect with the laws of the universe, the memory of ancestors. I too sought to chant the mountain's path to reach sunrise over Fuji, uncertain what the journey would reveal.

It seemed I had already started the climb on my first trip to Japan in 2009.  I was enjoying coffee and cake on a visit to the home of Mr Ijima, the leader of the Shishin temple who organise a twice yearly trip to the mountain.  In the jet-lag mist of stories about Mount Shichimen that night, I felt the summit of something I couldn’t yet understand.   Mr Ijima explained that my work at Foyer Federation was like a tree growing branches but missing its roots; that we were looking at young people’s current and future talents without considering the full significance of where they came from.  Thus, the full potential to transform conflict and challenge, he felt, was being lost.  Mr Ijima showed me how his temple applied a combination of Buddhism and modern psychology to unravel the connections of generational influence. I began to wonder if the importance of family was something missing within me as well as my work.  How to make sense of it though, as something relevant beyond an eastern belief?  What followed from that night is too difficult to explain here, but its relevance has haunted me ever since.

After 2009, I introduced the concept of Advantaged Thinking with Foyer Federation as a way of applying positive, asset-based approaches to improve the lives of young people we ‘disadvantaged’ with our beliefs and stereotypes.  It led to over 5 million pounds of funding in 2013-15 for Advantaged Thinking programmes in the context of advancing young people’s health and employability. That should have been a pinnacle moment.  But by spring 2015, my mother had suffered a stroke, my parents and I struggled to embrace its change in our life, and I resigned my job in the belief that something was lacking in how charity (or my experience of it) worked, which I felt I could discover by being outside it.  In the isolation that followed, I had my chance to find the meaning of Mount Shichimen.  I reconnected with lost family relatives and retraced the paths of grandparents whose memory had resurfaced during my first trip to Japan.  I spent more time in ‘the moment’. Sometimes I felt hurt as people I once helped seemed, in my frustration, to ignore my new ideas on charity as an art and the development of inspiration to impact on more lives. Equally, though, I felt more aware of the need to let the past go – to create a different space for fresh meaning to exist.  Mount Shichimen illuminated my imagination with hope.

I laced up my hiking boots two days after the long flight from London.  The time had finally come. Together with my Japanese family, our footsteps carried the lightness and weight of connected ancestors.  We experienced closeness among the spring shades of mountain colour.   Sometimes the climb was unrelenting in its steepness, while at other moments the belief of reaching the summit overshadowed straining limbs.        

                                             

I remembered how my grandfather Charles had died from a heart murmur, long before I was born. My heart punched out the rhythm of the climb.  At every point on the journey, as we stopped to mark the presence of shrines, we stripped away layers of our daily life like onion skins, reaching for the sweeter values beneath.  Most of all, I felt the appreciation of the pilgrims - from the tea that greeted us at resting points, to the stones we sometime slipped on, everything had equal resonance and space.  The right to be is something so easily forgotten.

When we reached the summit, scattered like runners at the end of a marathon, a line of monks waited in welcome for us, their faces smiling moons.  The moment needed no applause; everything defined us.

 

Existence was so fragilely present, in the touch of snow under foot, an exchanged bow, the treasured tears cleansing my eyes.  It was overwhelming, as though we had entered an outer layer of our lives, and only stars lay beyond the thin air we breathed. 

I felt it the next morning, too, rising to a snowy world of unfamiliar dark shapes. After a night under a cocoon of blankets, we watched in the bitter cold as a bank of clouds around Mount Fuji lit with the the sharp gold of a fresh chanted dawn.  A white space of inspiration, containing all possibilities, seemed to float between us.  It was as though, rather than reach a new horizon, we had returned to an older sky. 

After the long descent down, we got dressed and took our sleepy seats on the bus for the drive back on the motorway.  At the first stop for refreshments, people ventured out into a shopping mall, returning with a treasure trove of ice cream, coffees and junk food.  Familiar habits were taking us home.  Our climb beyond the mountain had begun.

The word ‘shishin’ means children’s feelings toward their parents, and parent’s feelings toward their children.  In Shishin, both feelings are brought together to create harmony from the conflict of experience, just like the climb brought us together, from different lives, to a single illumination of dawn.  I reflected if it was this disruptive harmony that was missing in our work in the UK.  We seek to involve young people, but do we fully appreciate what their challenges signify, have we found a dialogue to embrace our joint transitions together, with equal power and appreciation? I wondered if an expression of Shishin would deepen our discovery.  Putting aside existing structures and beliefs, a starting point for generational inspiration could flourish. 

For me, this is what the magic of Mount Shichimen represents.  Like the fragile blossom of a Japanese cherry tree it blooms and fades under our eyes.  It is as much within us, as it grows outside through others.  Until we reach a point to bring inspiration back into our all our lives, we repeat the same problems that are the root of things we wish to overcome.

The climb is something best measured, as with all experiences of inspiration, in its gradual treasuring over time.  I am still descending, unravelling from it, climbing again through it, reaching for new ideas on the trek to good; looking for others to join with my footsteps and heartbeat on...

 www.inspirechilli.com

Taking Cover Through Inspiration

Kangan Foyer 'reception area'

This February, I took the long flight over to Australia.  I was en route to set up an Accreditation pilot for Foyer services and deliver a key  note speech and workshop for the Foyer Foundation. The chocolate valentine's rose that greeted me from a hotel receptionist wasn't authentic, but the passion for Foyers across the country was very real.

Like many of my generation, I have a strong memory of the 1983 hit by Men at Work (an ironic title today). The song paints a picture of Australia as a place in danger of losing its spirit, from which people‘better take cover’. My travels to Australia have always been the opposite.   What I love most is not the vegemite, wine or weather; it’s the pioneering embrace of the people for vision and innovation.  There is some great practice and thinking in Australia.  Maybe one day there is a tour to be run there to share the learning.

Melbourne was my starting place to meet up with some old friends and reconnect myself into Australian culture.  The mosquito buzzword of the moment was 'trauma-informed practice'. I found myself answering questions through my morning jet lag about how Advantaged Thinking could apply.  At the back of my mind I was troubled by the sense that Advantaged Thinking is perhaps a trauma-informed idea.  It’s a reaction to a moment of trauma in my own life that I connected with experiences of people overcoming challenges through the contexts of homelessness and disadvantage. Those patrolling the boundaries of practice sometimes see Advantaged Thinking as a threat because it adds something new into the mix – the idea that the destination is not resettlement to cope with problems, but progression to build Aristotle’s Good Life.   

Kangan Foyer lounge kitchen area

By the end of my time in Melbourne, I was thinking about youth practice more like a game of golf.  Young people are trying to get round the green to make the cut. We walk with them carrying a limited set of clubs, and sometimes we even insist on taking the shots and getting in the way until everyone ends up in the bunker.  Young people will never make the cut unless they can find the right shots for each hole; and that means they need a better selection of clubs, as much as they need learning and wisdom through experience.  Advantaged Thinking is about creating more clubs, finding more practice places, and redefining the relationships so it’s young people who end up striding out on the final green to make the cut.   It’s an image that fits the importance in trauma-informed practice for building trust.  'TrustYouth', as Foyer Federation call it, should be about enabling young people to build investments of trust through a strong social contract/Foyer deal underpinned through Advantaged Thinking. Then again, the only golf I’ve ever played was crazy.

Foyer Foundation Conference saying hello

In Sydney, my conference key note started with a jokey comparison between myself and John Lennon (I've often been mistaken for him, despite the fact I am alive and can't write music).  The one thing we have in common, I suggested, is that we both have experiences of our work being overshadowed by the past. These days, I’m always the 'former director' from Foyer federation, when I’d rather be the current creator of the Inspirechilli version of 'Imagine'. Tellingly, this is exactly the problem that young people often face. Society likes to refer to young people in terms of their past – homeless, offender, care leaver, etc – rather than the person trying to overcome challenges and create opportunities in the present.  Maybe our culture sometimes lack the inspiration to look beyond the past to define the future.  I certainly think that’s true, and it’s a driver for the Inspirechilli ‘inspiration-first’ approach. The rest of my keynote honed in on lessons from the work of Corbusier and Foyers about the importance of sustaining vision and ethos through the way we design and deliver services.  That is a truth worth holding onto at a time when austerity cuts can push services to forget their identity.

Pilot Accreditation Foyer banners

I stayed an extra day after the conference to set up the Foyer Foundation’s Youth Offer accreditation pilot with 7 services from Melbourne, Wollongong, Adelaide, Canberra, Brisbane and Perth. The workshop introduced participants to the new Youth Offer Foyer Framework that I’d shaped with Emma Perris for Foyer Federation. It guided them through the founding concepts built into the framework, how to use the framework to reflect on services, and the accreditation process to develop and validate the quality of Foyer practice through it.  We had agreed to bespoke the framework to fit the Australian policy, regulation and youth practice landscape, and to enable the pilot participants to become peer assessors to lead its future delivery there.  To achieve this, I’m using InspireChilli’s new online platform to enhance the accreditation experience as a learning and collaboration process. Along with online assessment tools and training resources, the system allows participants to access webinars and feedback forums, and to both find and upload all the required documentation for assessment through the platform.  It’s how I believe accreditation should work. For the moment, the pilot cohort have a long journey ahead as they begin to assess their work and get ready for validation in November. Like the UK Foyer network, they want to build the right evidence base for impact, develop the Foyer concept into new areas, and ensure that the ethos is secured for the future.

There was just enough time after the workshop to enjoy being interviewed by young people at a Foyer, and deliver a few final training sessions to organisations working to develop service philosophies and innovation practice in the homeless and care sectors.   The InspireChilli message was the same call shared at the conference: for the sector to know its 1% inspiration vision to drive the 99% of what it does; and for organisations to show leadership by focusing on the solutions they can actually create.

Travelling home, I found solace from the flight by watching a film about Bobby Fischer’s struggle to become world chess champion in the 1970s.  Just as chess, for Fischer, was a poignant search for truth, so for me is the work of the beyond profit sector.  Fischer had an impressive IQ as a chess Grandmaster. Yet, it was a different type of IQ that brought him success – the inspiration quotient to find undiscovered moves at the right time.  I believe our future IQ depends upon a different form of intelligence that is led by inspiration. At InspireChilli, we know this inspiration capital can be developed by applying specific tools and resources to how we work and live.  Why take cover from the threats around us, when we have the technology to build tomorrow right here?

You can find the slides and an audit tool for Advantaged Thinking from the conference speech and workshop at  www.inspirechilli.com  Check out the InspireChilli Courses and Offer pages, and get in contact if you want you to find out more about how to grow inspiration in your work.

For further information about the Foyer Federation's work on TrustYouth and a new Youth Offer, see www.foyer.net

Finding radiance

Seeing Foyer as an approach, rather than bricks and mortar, has been a consistent message from Foyer Federation over the years.  It is a focus that helps unpick the stereotype of ‘youth homelessness’ to reveal the more complex mix of social and personal challenges that require better offers than just a bed for the night.  More than a place to stay, Foyers were always about communities of learning to connect and find one’s place in the world. 

In my time at Foyer Federation, when I worked on the Foyer Accreditation framework, it was the staff and young people in projects I remembered more than the buildings they worked and lived in.  Yet, the buildings left their mark.  Thankfully, few were places that were unfit for young people. Most gave glimpses of design innovations to accommodate the Foyer ethos as a living community – creating a sense of space, energy, interaction and progression. A running joke over the years was to have the architects over for the night, so they could live with the good and bad they left behind. New Foyers did not always learn from the past – and while great ideas got handed down through the Accreditation framework, design errors were sometimes replicated by those who didn't listen to learn. 

The origins of Foyer as a concept comes from France.  Over the years the Federation always kept cordial relations with Paris, with a few shared visits.  Ironically, though, it was travel to USA which brought back more ideas in my work as Director of Innovation. Visits to New York and Philadelphia led to a focus on assets that drove the early development of Open Talent and Advantaged Thinking.  In those philosophies, the idea of ‘place’ came to the foreground as a form of inquiry into the type of environment where young people could best develop and harness their talents in life. It is a powerful question which is always best left open, as every age must shape its own answers.  Perhaps it is the job of Foyers to sustain this conversation at the community level, re-applying the Foyer ethos and approach over time.  Indeed, the best projects I visited were those flexible and forward thinking enough to keep redeveloping themselves in the moment. 

I was fortunate to begin my 2016 in Marseille, with a final slot on my itinerary to check out Le Corbusier’s Cité radieuse (Radiant City), the modernist flagship for his vision of Unité d'habitation.  I left regretting I had not visited before. For here was a project of bricks and mortar, in which a vision of life had been cemented into the design.  The stunning sense of space and light, shops, businesses, educational facilities, and breath taking rooftop views, enshrined an approach to community living that still inspires people to live there today.  While not a Foyer for young people, anyone who knows a Foyer would have instantly recognised its principles.  Of course, history will point to how Corbusier’s vision came unstuck in some of the less well conceived housing estates designed by others in Great Britain.  But there are important things to learn when one sees, in the original building, the essential features and intent that were foolishly disregarded in the flawed projects that followed.  It is a lesson in what happens when a founding vision is lost from the bricks and mortar. Le Corbusier’s Cité radieuse was a work of art.  Where is its equivalent as an offer for young people today?  What might be a future way of living that offers a solution to the shifting sands of youth housing and employment? 

Watching the sun sink into the rooftops, I felt three messages from Corbusier grip my mind: 

1. That there must be a strong guiding vision and philosophy for what we wish to create, ambitious and radical enough to shape a positive vision for future living; 

2. That the vision and philosophy of the ethos must not be compromised in its inception, or, most particularly, its replication – for once the approach enshrined into the design of bricks and mortar is taken apart and diluted, the promise of radiance disappears; 

3. That, to ensure the above, we need a collaborative development framework for our new vision and philosophy to guide how and what we do so we maximise its potential over time. 

Those messages are even more important following David Cameron’s recent promise (or not) to ‘regenerate’ UK housing estates.  The message to ‘rebuild houses that people feel they can have a real future in’ is one that Corbusier would surely recognise; though I expect he would also ask, what the vision and philosophy behind the message is.   

Whether demolishing and rebuilding estates, or seeking to sustain or redevelop Foyers, it is the bricks and mortar of inspirational thinking that is most precious. 

At InspireChilli, we take inspiration seriously.  So did Corbusier. Shouldn’t you?

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