We always look forward to getting together for our retreats, but this time it felt strange that there would only be three of us, with Gopal possibly joining us from Juba for a session on skype. It’s surprising how different
I’ve had a lot of fun learning about film making on a short course organised by my local Picturehouse cinema. Ryd Cook, our tutor, is a young film maker fizzing with ideas and enthusiasm and over a series of 10
From time to time a piece of work comes along that allows me to pull together my thinking on a subject that really interests me. I’m fortunate to have that experience right now. Oxfam Novib have commissioned me to
It is a new year, and I am full of good intentions. One of them is to try to communicate more about what I am working on – so here goes. The last quarter of 2012 was taken up in
Robert Chambers’ guiding principle for workshops, being ‘optimally unprepared’, comes straight from his commitment to participatory learning. The paradox makes me sit up and think: where can there be room for ‘unpreparedness’ in a workshop, and how do you measure
In a previous post I shared some first impressions about using audio. Now Keith Ricketts and I have had more time to digest and think about what we’ve learnt, and it’s opened up more new ideas. Here’s a few: Think
Just returned from the launch of my report on the Kings Hedges Family Support Project in Cambridge, with a speech by our MP Julian Huppert (pictured with the report). There was lots of birthday cake, and about 80 toddlers and
It has been a busy Summer and the Autumn looks set to be busier still. I’m currently working with Oxfam Novib on their framework for Knowledge and Innovation Management and with The Leprosy Mission International on their system for Annual
I’ve been exploring how to use audio interviews as part of my work. If making a lot of mistakes is any guide to how much learning is going on, then I’ve learnt a lot! Luckily for me, I’ve been working
After each training or workshop, I try to write up some key learning points for myself – how I’d run the course differently, what sessions worked well and which were less successful – and why. The difficulty is that each
I’m sure many of you are seeing your newsfeeds full of discussion about what is happening in Ukraine, and how best to help. That desire to help is a basic human instinct, and the reason why many of our current
