Open Space postponed

Based on the feedback from the Open Space survey I have decided to postpone the event scheduled for 19th November 2015.

Whilst most of the respondents who gave their views wanted the event to continue in 2015 to enable a discussion which other forums do not represent, the level of response suggested that the timing is not right for this stage of the dialogue to begin.
That said it has opened some new conversations and sparked some new activities and I do not expect this event to go away – far from it I would love to see you signed up to come along when we reschedule in Q1/2 2016. Until then – keep talking.

A question about the Ipswich Open Space event…

The intent of Open Space is to bring together people who care about a specific question to discuss, engage in and take action upon that issue. Asking the question can itself highlight some complex dynamics surrounding the issue and has done just that in our case – to my mind this simply reconfirms the complexity of the question and the need to work together to solve it.

However….I want to run an event for Ipswich that is valuable and have given my time for free to that end. I am aware that there are a number of other activities and events taking place in parallel to this Open Space and it is my sense that to continue with our own event at this time would not fit with a spirit of collaboration and an avoidance of duplication.

In the spirit of Open Space I would like to gather your views on the way forward before I make any changes. I have kept it simple and very very quick – you can share your view by clicking https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/OpenSpace.

You are welcome to forward the questions to others if you feel they have a view we should capture but please only click the link if you really care about Ipswich and it’s future.

We have over 30 of the great and good of Ipswich already signed up so there is clearly energy and reason to have the dialogue…the question here is when and where.
Thank you for getting involved

Mothers everywhere…

…are posting photos of their pride and joy entering a new phase of life – whether its “big school”, senior school, college courses, travel plans or first jobs.  The BPS magazine The Psychologist this month leads with “The Transition to School – Claire Hughes asks what matters and why” – talking about school readiness and the impact of family and community on successful transition and ‘developmental vulnerabilities’ (Brinkman et al., 2014).

For me this could not have been more poignant a subject.  After over a week of what I can only describe of total teenage rebellion from my 4 year old during perhaps the wettest summer holiday I can remember, I was on my knees – psychologically, emotionally and physically..and I had done something I often find difficult, embarrassing and vulnerable – I had asked for help.

Help arrived in the form of both family and friends and one thing stuck in my mind more than any other – ‘children are designed to be raised in a community – and that community doesn’t exist like it used to’.  I had been trying to cope on my own with two under fives for fear of failing in public.  The result was that I was isolated, my children were isolated, and the people who wanted to help felt ‘uninvited’ to do so. We were spiralling downwards and needed to reconnect with our community in order to recover.

Ironically my first two go-to jobs having dropped the boys off at school were a meeting around community dialogue (working with a number of passionate ‘Ipswich-ians’ to outline an Open Space event on the future state of the town) and the set up of a design planning session for Recovering from Motherhood for my own Resilience Series launching in Ipswich in November/December.

Talking to my own mother this morning about it all, she tells me she can no longer bear to watch the news following the reports of the 3 year old washed up on a Turkish beach and countless other heartbreaking stories of those fleeing Syria.  I reflected that the power of community and protection of others in danger has lead to a huge wave of opened doors across Europe – doors that may not even open regularly to neighbours and friends. Is our sense of community really so diminished in the UK…or do we become too easily paralysed in our goodwill by a fear of rejection, a fear of failure, a fear of judgement by others?  Is our famous ‘stiff upper lip’ still getting in the way of offering a clumsy, ill-thought through, perhaps foolish or unsustainable hand of help to someone who really doesn’t care if we have a plan or a solution…they just need a place to feel safe for a short while.

On a similar note I shared with my mother a wonderful comment made on Facebook about the news of a 13 year old who had been found wandering along the M5 near Oldbury on Thursday morning.  The news reels were full of the word “illegal immigrant”, “migrant” and “refugee”.  The comment on Facebook was incensed – “The word you are all looking for is CHILD”.  As I waved my son off to his second day at school, red jumper tucked under his arm, schoolbag swinging, I tried to imagine waving him off in 9 years time as he boards a small boat with 25 others to attempt a crossing of the worlds’  busiest shipping lane to reach a place he is not welcome and does not know. I could not.  I hope never to.

 

Things are hotting up…

So today I have spent my day juggling small boys who have accidentally spilt suntan cream/pressed exit on their Superhero Game and killed Spiderman/ emptied Travel Battleships pieces all over the floor…as well as negotiating with a Virtual Assistant from Time etc (recommended to me by Carrie Beddingfield from the glorious OneFishTwoFish), researching website redesigns and….agreeing to host a FREE Resilience session in October for HRDs across Suffolk and East Anglia in association with Waddington Brown HR recruitment specialists.

The event will be a half day session aimed at fraught HRDs who support fraught employees, fraught managers (and equally completely calm “hand it to HR” managers) and generally work to keep the ship afloat whilst potentially also juggling a similar home-life to myself!

At the moment we are looking at a couple of venues in Ipswich with a ‘stay for lunch afterwards’ option and are hoping to offer 13-15 places for that intimate feel, with a potential for follow on events (also FREE) where demand dictates.

Delegates will be treated to a discounted rate on the Open Sessions that I plan to run in November/December on EI, Leadership, Recovering from Motherhood and Managing in Uncertainty

Details to follow.  If you are interested in registering your place, drop me a line at racheljackson@changingdialogues.com…and remember – its FREE!