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