Open Enquiries — Meet the Team and sign up
On the 16th February we’ll be kicking off a series of Open Enquiries that link to our Civil Society Approach, looking to build a shared view of how communities and wider civil society can thrive.
These enquiries are for anyone working on, with, and in civil society or their local community. They’re designed for people who are willing to bring experience, knowledge, ideas and a sense of curiosity to the table.
We’ll be hosting the Open Enquiries twice a week, in Miro. Each session will broach, unpick and deepen our understanding of a particular theme — we’ll introduce you to these in the coming weeks. They’re a bit of an experiment: we’re hoping we’re creating spaces that enable us all to gather and collectively build wisdom that will feed into our emergent civil society strategy, among other things.
The first session will take place on Tuesday 16 February, starting at 13:00 and lasting for two hours — you’ll be able to drop in for 2 minutes, stay for the full 2 hours…or anything in-between. We’ll publish more information about how we anticipate things working over the coming couple of weeks.
The first theme we’re working with is Thriving and Powerful Communities*.
As the COVID19 pandemic hit, a wave of social solidarity spread across the country, and shone a light on the power and potential that resides within our communities. It also gave glimmers of the structural, cultural and behavioural change that is possible and urgently needed to better enable thriving and powerful communities. In the coming years we will all need collective action to build towards recovery and renewal.
In this session, we’re hoping to reflect on your experiences and explore some of the signals of change — both weak and strong. What do these mean for how we might build better, equitable and just approaches that support communities to use their power, to renew, imagine and create the changes that they want to see? What has the pandemic exposed or underlined that all communities must have access to? In the face of the long crisis what must change and shift to support more powerful, thriving communities? How will we go about doing the work necessary to target and dismantle inequities and inequalities?
In our next blog we’ll dig a bit more into the theme, highlight some of the resources we’ve been using, tensions we’ve identified and provocations we think it might be interesting to respond to.
If you’d like to join us, you can sign up here.
The people building these enquiries have come together from across the UK and Europe, with experience spanning a number of different sectors. A mix of us will be present at each of the sessions. Here’s a little bit of information about who we are.
Carrie Deacon
I’m helping to explore the strong and weak signals of change facing our communities and civil society, and what the implications of these may mean. Together we are rapidly assembling ideas, examples, practices from across the UK and the world, to help us open up interesting conversations and explore challenging and important questions together.
I am a strategist, designer and facilitator with experience of collaborating with communities, civil society, and public sector leaders to imagine and create approaches that address some of the big social challenges we face. Much of my work focuses on exploring knotty, complex issues. I’m particularly interested in power, and how people are changing communities and society through new ways of organising, collaborating and imaganing, and how this can shape institutions, social structures and culture.
I’m looking forward to listening, and collectively imagining how we might build from some brilliant work already happening, but also identify and create new possibilities. I’m interested in how we follow our curiosity and dream together, but acknowledge the hard work that no doubt needs to be done in the coming years. I’m hoping that at a time of tragedy and great difficulty, we can also refresh each other’s energy and optimism for the future.
Cassie Robinson
I run the UK Portfolio at The National Lottery Community Fund but also, as part of the Funding Strategy Directorate am responsible for stewarding our enquiries and emergent strategy approach to how we’re going to shape and support civil society and communities going forward. Different colleagues across the Fund are focussed on other aspects of this — from climate action to young people, but these open enquiries give us a change to be more exploratory and future focussed — there is so much we can’t possibly know yet, and I love that we can go on a journey of discovery together.
Ellie Davis
I’m part of the research team. Together, we are examining the various themes, finding examples of interesting thought and praxis, and drawing out emergent features. The exploratory nature of this work is different from anything I’ve previously done.
I’m a professional copywriter with a varied background. I have a degree in biology and an MA in media practice for development and social change. Much of my work is focused on the built environment but I’ve recently been working on several projects that discuss means of creating systemic change in civil society. I’ve long been interested in work that creates positive change — from environmental and ecological to social justice.
Working with complex systems thinking and issues of intersectionality has been an opportunity to bring together disparate elements of my experience and research from the past years. It is a fascinating process and I hope that some of the passion we all bring to the project is translated into an experience that inspires and provokes.
Mona Ebdrup
I’m designing the Miro Living Room boards, where we are gathering all the bits and pieces from the entire process and conversation. I’m exploring how to make the Miro boards relatable, accessible, engaging and sparking curiosity in a time where we are all learning to embrace working digitally in meaningful ways.
I’m a graphic facilitator and I have always found myself working very interdisciplinary and on quite complex and at times very challenging issues. One of my core strengths is to be able to look at things from multiple perspectives. I’m Copenhagen based, but working with groups and organisations across many countries.
This project intrigues me in several ways: pushing boundaries for how we engage (digitally), daring to step into the open inquiry and asking questions rather than providing all the answers.
Rachel Karasik
I’m working on researching and developing content, particularly trying to find emerging and off the beaten track case studies and ideas that will inform and hopefully inspire interesting conversations throughout this process.
I’m a food anthropologist and former chef, but my career first started in social innovation and civil society. I’ve worked across sectors, cooking and writing, often in collaboration with those outside my field, creating meaningful opportunities to learn from different perspectives and experiences.
While my work generally focuses on food, this project feels like coming full circle to some of the earliest work I did in my career. It is an important time to be highlighting the power and needs of communities in our current crisis, and to embrace that fact that we don’t have all the answers.
Rosalyn Old
I’m part of the team researching and preparing content for the different themes in the process. There are so many pieces of interesting and thought-provoking research out there, as well as a wealth of experience and examples of how communities and organisations have adapted in incredible ways to the changing circumstances.
I’m a researcher and facilitator interested in democratic innovation, civic participation, governance, community ownership and commons models. Along the way I’ve worked in a grassroots co-operative and researched sustainable urban communities, and been an active advocacy and facilitation volunteer within the youth sector.
For me this project brings together some of the most interesting questions at the intersections of those areas. It’s a chance to bring together some of the most interesting examples, ideas and questions to continue to shape the path forward for civil society at a crucial moment in time.
Suzy Glass
I’m managing the overall process and focussing on engagement — how do we bring interesting groupings of people together, how do we design and facilitate light-touch online exercises that allow us to collectively explore and deepen our understanding of complex themes?
I’m a producer, consultant and facilitator. I have always worked in interdisciplinary settings, and have particular interests in cultural practice, emerging futures and transformational change. I have strengths in horizon scanning and synthesis, and tend to gravitate towards working in complex environments.
This piece of work hits a sweet spot for me — it allows me to explore some of the methodologies and techniques I’ve been developing over the years, while focussing on how we create the conditions for change and improvement. It feels like it comes at the perfect time — I know I desperately need some space to think about how we might emerge from the mess of now, and I’m hoping these Enquiries will provide that.
Sign up for our first session on Powerful and Thriving Communities here.
*The other four themes are:
- The everyday infrastructure you need now
- Adaptation, resilience and coping in the long crisis
- Equipping communities to anticipate, imagine and shape the future
- Ecologies, constellations and ecosystems
