People, Places, and Possibilities The 3Rs of Reading, wRiting and aRithmetic have long been the bedrock of modern education systems; the keys to the kingdom of knowledge and understanding. The kingdom itself is becoming an altogether different place where new relationships are being forged to tackle society’s intractable issues. Individual problems become possibilities when reframed …
Unblocking So how do we go from scribbling away with youthful abandon to the arduous wielding a pen to sign on the dotted line of mind-numbing bureaucracy? Usually, in the vain hope, it will cushion us from yet more of life’s arrows? The tabloid headline describing this kind of travesty would read something like “It’s …
Squiggling Reality We are all born with the instinct for creativity, then life happens. Think “cave paintings” and ask yourself what inspired people to decorate the walls of a cave with images and glyphs? They were arguably making sense of the world around them by recreating it in graphic form. Similarly, if you’ve ever observed …
If Digital Is the Old Normal What’s Next? Coronavirus has accelerated a transformation that was already well past its tipping point. Now, through the current wave of digitization, our education systems have also been teleported through the vortex of cyberspace to rematerialise in a parallel universe where the younger generation is already comfortably co-existing with …
Raising the Game Once our children held in their hand the ability to instantly search the infinite pool of knowledge that is the world wide web, the purpose and nature of education could never again be the same. Especially when we take into consideration that the students are often more digitally literate than their “sage …
Self-Organised Learning Education and learning have always been about personal growth and discovery. The Latin root “educare” meaning “to lead out of”, invokes the idea of a journey, an exploration. There is also in this definition a sense of leadership, freedom perhaps. The rigid exoskeleton of institutional bureaucracy that has built up around it in …
Re-humanisation of Work So, Coronavirus has accelerated an already emergent phenomenon that is rapidly becoming part of the much-heralded “new normal”; digitally-enabled remote working. This much is very clear by now, but who will decide what’s normal in the post-crisis world? Give yourself a pat on the back if you thought, “middle-class, middle-aged white men” …
Creating Value Is Intimate Work Doing rewarding work is like art in the sense that its value is completed through contact with the intended or incidental audience. In some organisations, the perceived distance between inputs and outcomes can be so great it’s difficult for those doing the work to see this equation. It’s a well-documented …
Caring and Sharing The idea of “self-care” has become a mantra for a new generation of community-minded activists. Not to be confused with “selfishness”, it happens to map rather neatly to the “prevention” agenda for those concerned with systemic models and top-down solutions. The reality of a simple translatable path between these two parallel worlds …
Who Suffers Most When Systems Fail? Should we expect the organisation that provides our housing to also support our education, employability and wellbeing needs? For this to be a question and not a straightforward statement of fact in the 21st-century is abject system failure. When systems are failing, the obvious question should always be “who …
