Education Stories — 01. Jim Ralley
I always thought I was naturally smart and creative. But now I see that all my successes are largely thanks to my parents and my privilege. I want to figure out how to extend that privilege to others.
The question I’m trying to answer at the moment is: how can I best use my privilege, creativity, knowledge and experience to help change education systems across the world?
We’re kicking off the #FutureOfEducation project by asking people to tell their personal education stories. This is the first step in me attempting to burst out of my middle England, middle class bubble to figure out how I can make an impact on the world of education.
[click here to get involved or submit your own Education Story]
My parents leapt up into the middle class
My parents (Paula & Pete) both grew up in the Black Country, in England’s industrial heart. Their parents, my grandparents were hard-working, open-hearted, family-oriented working class heroes, with a touch of entrepreneurial spirit.
- Grandad Len was a mechanic, and ran a local garage with his brother
- Grandma Phylis was a midwife, and would cycle from house to house, visiting mothers-to-be
- Grandad Fred was a pattern maker who quit his job to become a successful cartoonist
- Nanny June was an office worker for the ‘public works’, a branch of the local council
Neither family had much money whilst my parents were growing up. But there was a lot of love, and they planned their lives wisely. So I don’t think they felt like they lacked anything. They were born in 1958, just 13 years after the end of WW2, and they learned the deeply ingrained sense of duty and frugality that remained from those transformative times.
My parents met at a residential arts centre called Ingestre Hall. An amazing 17th century mansion that was sold to the local council and became a glorious 70's experiment in progressive education, co-habitation, personal development, and free creativity.
The 1961 sale stipulated that the hall must provide “enrichment of education and life experiences for children and young people through the creative arts”.
In my version of our family history, this is the moment that defined the course of my parents’ lives, and therefore defined the course of mine.
Ingestre Hall was where they learned how to channel their energy, creativity, and tireless work ethic through creativity and the arts. They formed bands, recorded albums, made theatre, renovated dilapidated areas of the mansion grounds, painted, sang, danced, and fell in love. All within the frame of a kind of post-60’s, post-hippy, government-subsidised, casual commune.
Anything was possible. The world suddenly seemed like a big and exciting place. And in the almost-post-industrial Black Country, this was a valuable mindset to have.
I had an awesome childhood
So my parents fell in love, moved in together, had a bunch of different jobs, some creative and interesting, some not.
Eventually they settled in Alrewas, the sleepy village where me and my brothers spent the first 18 years of our lives.
By then Mom was a nurse and Dad was a teacher. Proper stable jobs to support their family of five, but with short commutes and nice long holidays so they could spend as much time as possible with us growing up.
Whilst these were undoubtedly great jobs, it was the side projects that I associate most with my parents, and that I learned the most from. They were (and still are) relentless makers, bringing people together through the arts, creativity, and social action. Things like:
- Running an art club for kids
- Campaigning to get dog 💩 bins installed around the village
- Writing, directing, and performing in the local theatre society
- Getting play equipment installed in the park
- Running a theatre club for kids
- Building the biennial Alrewas Arts Festival into an awesome 8-day event
- Starting a free local cinema, The Flea Pit
- Fundraising to create an archive to document the history of the village
- … (I’m sure there are way more that I don’t know about)
We didn’t have much money, but it didn’t feel like we were poor either. We always had old cars, and we rarely ate out. Holidays were biking trips to Wales, or camping in Northern France. Later, when Dad became a headteacher and we had a bit more money, we went on a few skiing holidays to Canada and Austria. Life felt rich and exciting, and I grew up with a deep connection to my family and my village.
Which helped me to excel at school
This loving, stable, wholesome family environment meant that I was free to focus on learning. I read and read and read books all the time. I wasn’t super sporty, but did pretty well in most other ‘subjects’. I was a nice kid, with a nice family and with nice friends, attending nice primary and secondary schools.
Life was great. And it continued to be pretty great through school, into 6th form, and on to the University of Sheffield where I studied English Literature (which I chose because it was the subject I liked the best and got the highest grades in).
I saw some of the world. The safe bits. I had a chilled gap year travelling alone in Canada and New Zealand. I studied abroad in Oklahoma for the 2nd year of my degree.
Again, I had nice pals, supportive parents (who helped me to move house, paid my rent throughout university, and kept a room spare for those long summer holidays).
Parents + Privilege = Possibility
I had time to focus on reading, writing, learning and play during university. I got smarter and smarter. My writing and critical thinking improved. And I left with a First, the highest grade you can get.
I had time to work between semesters, earning money to travel and indulge in the arts and culture. Slowly becoming a more rounded and (hopefully) interesting human being.
It all seemed so easy and inevitable back then. Of course I was going to go to 6th form, then on a gap year, then to university, then… But the wheels had been greased for me. My future was wide open with Possibility, and that future had been ensured by my Parents and the relative Privilege that I enjoyed.
I left the education system thinking anything was possible
I had been brought up believing that anything was possible. That if I worked hard and smart, I could do pretty much anything. And if something bad happened, or if I was ever lost, I could return to my parents, and the safety net of my little village.
So I went to Spain and taught English to kids and adults. I didn’t even think about the rules, or failure. I found a list of private academies somewhere on the internet and emailed them all. One of them replied, and in 2 weeks I was living in a place called Cáceres, with a new job, new housemates, a new language to learn, and total validation that my path was the right one.
I returned to my village after 1 year in Spain and got roped into helping out at the Arts Festival that my Mom was now running (with my Dad her dutiful second in command). I loved it, of course. That kind of thing is part of my DNA.
That week I met Tim, who had also just returned from a post-uni gap year and was trying to figure out what to do next. We had a few beers one evening and decided to start a company, The Big Art People. We figured that schools would pay us to come in and run big, collaborative art projects with their kids. And they did. Over 2 years we ran 100+ projects in schools, libraries, and community centres all over England.
It was hard work. And a massively steep learning curve for two liberal arts grads to figure out how to run a profit-making company in a global recession. But we smashed it, with the support of our parents (💵 + ❤️), our community, our upbringing, and all of the headteachers across the country who took a chance on two 23-year-olds with big ideas.
It was after this period that I realised I could combine the academic training I’d had during my education, with the business skills and hustle I’d learning running a business, to do meaningful, creative work that made me decent money.
It turned out anything was possible, pretty much, for me at least
We shut down the company at its peak, ‘exiting’ with £8,000 each (more than enough to see us through 6 months of decent living back then). We both wanted to move on to different things. Tim trained to become a primary school teacher in London, and I moved to Manchester with a scholarship to study an MA in Arts Management, Policy and Practice.
More learning. More privilege. More possibilities.
With the £8k cushion and the scholarship I was again free to explore new possibilities, I got into Creative Learning, ended up doing lots of freelance work with my professors, and slowly build a nice freelance career making films and consulting for arts organisations on their digital and social engagement strategies. Again, working super hard and learning how to work with clients, how to package my knowledge and skills as services, and how to gradually evolve and optimise my work and lifestyle.
Then David at Hyper Island found me. I dove into this new world of progressive education, human behaviour, personal development and digital technologies. Suddenly I was part of a global industry. I was working in Manchester, London, Paris, Stockholm, Singapore, and Palma. Working with students, working with corporates, making shit happen, working harder than ever, and playing pretty hard too.
The learning experience at Hyper Island was deep and intensive. When I left 2.5 years later I felt changed. More professional, more confident, more ambitious, but also more humble.
I freelanced for a while. Moved to London. Got bored. Moved to Berlin. Then in the summer of 2016 I got married to Ellie, my partner in many adventures and definitely the source of so much of my learning nowadays.
So now it’s time to start changing the world
In October 2016 me and Jon started Flux, an indie management consultancy that aims to liberate people and organisations. We’re doing well so far, and I feel like I’m learning more and faster than ever. We’re working with some awesome clients and partnering with loads of awesome people.
Flux is our ‘freedom machine’
We want to build a business that becomes a freedom machine. It should enable us and others to live the kinds of lives we want to live, and to make the kinds of things we want to make. We’re doing that in a bunch of different ways at the moment, and we’ll be changing and evolving the things we do until the day it dies or we die.
If my formulation above is right, and Possibility = Parents + Privilege, then how can we create a company that helps people who are lacking in either of those categories?
That’s where #FutureOfEducation comes in. It’s a side project that will some day become massive project. This post is just the beginning. I’ve looked to the past and processed my own story. Now it’s time to hear other people’s stories, from wildly different perspectives, and use those to try to figure out where, when and who can make the biggest impact on education systems.
I was insanely lucky. How might we design ‘the need for luck’ out of the system?
[click here to get involved or submit your own Education Story]
