Weeknote 08, 18th Feb 2019
What I’m doing
It’s been half term, which I, along with the kids have welcomed. It meant some lovely family time at the start of the week. And because Little Village is only open during term time it always feels blissfully calm during school breaks. I’ve spent my limited working time well, thinking hard about how we focus the proposition we want to take to grant makers as we seek major funding from 2020. Around that brain work there’s been a chance to catch up on other important stuff — thanking all the wonderful people who donated their services to make our birthday party a success; drafting contracts and agreeing terms with new staff; and, inevitably, dealing with my inbox which I’m having a battle of the wills with at the moment.
What I’m learning
The big question that’s been focusing my learning this week and last has been about scaling: what are we trying to scale, and why? At one level, it’s about scaling the infrastructure around the baby bank element of our work. That involves pondering logistics, distribution and supporting technology as I don’t think we are efficient enough at the moment. But at another level, it’s about treating love as a hard outcome (I will write more about this soon), and asking how we can scale relationships and kindness. Talk about a balancing act between cerebral and practical! I’m really looking forward to a few calls I’ve got scheduled with people who I’m hoping can help me on these questions over the next few weeks.
What I’m celebrating
Other than my formidable granny’s 90th birthday, which was really special, I’ve been celebrating a feeling of connection with lots of other people who are also working on the idea that love could be a route to systems change. I’ve had fantastic conversations this week with people like Tayo Medupin from Shift Design. I’ve been listening to Richard Davidson talking to Krista Tippett about the potential for brains to recover from trauma if kindness and love are present. I’ve been re-reading Adam Kahane on love and power, and also Camila Batmanghelidjh on love as a route away from violence. It’s such a joy to find other people working on a shared agenda (though I think Batmanghelidjh’s case would be so much more powerful if she accepted even a tiny bit of responsibility for what happened at Kids Co).
What I’m feeling
This week, the Resolution Foundation published a report forecasting that by the end of this parliament, the majority of kids in single parent households, and in families of more than two children, will be living in poverty. HOW IS THIS OK??? I feel very powerless. All the more so as I’ve been putting together some stats we’ll be using on International Women’s Day in a couple of weeks to explore the impact of poverty on women specifically. I predict I am going to feel angry and ranty about all the corporates and brands getting in on the ‘aren’t women amazing’ act on the 8th March. Yes we are: but if this is a day for sisterhood, then let’s talk about the unacceptable treatment of poor women that should put us all to shame.
Who I’m working with
I had the pleasure of catching up with Charles Leadbeater, who I used to work with when I was at Demos. He is now (among other things) a Trustee at the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, who kindly supported my work on Little Village through their Ideas and Pioneers Fund in 2016. He’s great at spotting powerful ideas, and articulating them beautifully, and I love the clarity of his thinking and his ability to make complex stuff feel simple and compelling.
Photo of the week
