Paces

Creating an enterprising conductive community. Possible?

What does it mean to be "conductive"? Can an organisation be "conductive"? Should an organisation that practices conductive education reflect conductively upon its own self?

I have pondered this before. The SAHK model is instructive, for instance.  This morning I was reminded of this when I read a blog posting by MIke Chitty. I have mentioned Mike in this context before.

Asking what a 'real enterprise zone' would look like, Mike proposes that it would be a place where:

People would feel a sense of belonging because they were part of community that wanted them to succeed and likewise provided opportunities to help others succeed as well.

Mike again wrote something similar in a review for New Start magazine of "The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods" by John McKnight and Peter Block:

Just people, relationships, skills, interests, passions, associations and what it means to be a competent community.  A place where people learn to support each other and make good thing happen. Of their own volition.

Now it seems to me that Mike's words taken together sum up pretty well the environment we all try to create around conductive education. It seems to me to sum up, too, what Paces Campus is about, in providing a setting for a conductive education charity and school to operate - a haven, to put it that way, in a world otherwise uniformly indifferent, even, hostile to CE: a place where you can help others succeed and where people want you to succeed.

Being enterprising ... Talking Enterprise

I've mentioned Mike Chitty on this blog a number of times.

His approach to community development is one that for me resonates with conductive education work with adults or rather how such programmes might be developed, as we have some way to go. Located in "assets" not "needs", focusing firmly on the individual rather than "community" or "business skills", with an emphasis on "being enterprising" and "becoming", Mike's take on development is about people having "active agency in their own lives".

Drop in on this talk and listen to Mike himself: "Talking enterprise, community and entrepreneurship" ... and stay to the end, when Mike shares his thoughts about schools and education.

 

  

 

Co-operation in the Age of Google #CondEd

As I write, I am in the middle of reading "Co-operation in the Age of Google" by Robin Murray, a review commissioned by Cooperatives UK: "a radical vision of the how the co-operative sector can expand in the 21^st Century."  Its underpinning contention is that "we are living at a time of profound transformation". I am reminded of a thread of recent postings on his blog by Andrew Sutton, such as "CE's New Wave - creative not beholden" which in part proposes "independent, small-scale action" centred on the individual a radical wat forward for CE.

Here is an extended quotation from this excellent read that challenges many of the assumptions about how we organise ourselves - and including conductive education.

"The US writers James Maxmin and Shoshana Zuboff see the assembly of packages or service modules around the needs of the individual consumers as a radical break from the twentieth century model of standardised services (or commodities) delivered by a specialist producer. It allows the pro-sumer to bypass large service organisations with rigid and costly structures, and stimulate a new trust based support services. Trust is the key, for the user has to have confidence that those providing the support are acting in the user’s interest not that of a supplier. They refer to this as the new Support Economy."

"In summary:

• Users are themselves increasingly involved, individually or jointly, in some element of design and production, changing from passive consumers to ‘prosumers’.
• Prosumption is most advanced in the economy of information. But in the material economy, goods and services are themselves being reconfigured around the user. Modern production has changed from pushing out products to pulling them through according to the demand of the user.
• Users have become a key source of innovation (second only to employees according to the EU’s Community Innovation Survey)
• New types of support services are required – from health coaches to computer help lines
• Users are developing their own mutual forms of support
• The service or commodity point of contact has be rethought around these support needs (whether the doctor’s surgery, the supermarket, or the school).

Two very welcome visitors

Belatedly .... Thursday saw two very welcome and special visitors to Paces.

In the morning, one of Paces' oldest friends, Graham Moore, Chairman of Westfield Health. Graham it was who in 1994 attended our very first public meeting, where we announced our intent to bring Conductive Education to Sheffield and set up our own centre. As Graham tells it, he just couldn't believe what we were planning to do, couldn't see how we could possibly succeed - and decided he'd better help!  On Thursday he offered his help again, and that of Westfield Health, with our plan for refurbishing the old craft workshops as three new classrooms.

By contrast, the afternoon was spent with a new friend, Mike Chitty.  It proved to be one of those all-to-rare afternoons when, after lunch together in the Campus Cafe, we settled down just to talking about what interested us: three of us from the Campus and Mike. We are looking to build on this in the New Year with some work that could benefit our adult group.

Thanks to both Graham and Mike. The world seems a better a place.

 

Eyes on the skies: Gabriel Nderitu is building his own plane

Gabriel Nderitu is building his own plane … in his tiny back yard in Nairobi, Kenya. The engine is from a Toyota Corolla, the wheels from a Mini, instructions from Wikipedia. The aluminium wings, too long for his yard, lie in the street outside his house.

The 42-year old IT engineer developed a passion for flying at school. He studied physics at university and two years ago decided it was time for his dream to take flight. So far it has cost him £5,000.  Earlier this month, Gabriel did his first ground test run. The rear landing gear collapsed after 15 yards. 

Sat with a first cup of coffee and reading The Guardian, I found Gabriel’s story (Wright stuff: Kenyan builds plane in garden) utterly uplifting - if you will forgive the rather bad pun.  

Gabriel’s story reminded me of four other people – all with links to Kenya.

In the early 1970s, you would have read in local press the story of another builder fascinated by technology. I never knew his name - or if I did, I've long since forgottten it. In Nyeri, 90 miles north of Nairobi, a villager was constructing his own submarine. Yes -  a submarine, in his own garden. I know not what became of him and his undersea Captain Nemo dreams but I can tell you that Nyeri is approximately 500 miles from the sea at Mombasa.

The second is another aviator. Nanyuki airfield, some 30-odd miles further round Mt Kenya from Nyeri was rumoured locally to have been extended and strengthened by the Americans to take B52 bombers onward to Vietnam. One afternoon, I was at Nanyuki and saw a handbuilt plane line up for take-off at the far end of the long runway. The plane’s engine was said to have come from a 1600cc VW Beetle. The pilot coaxed the plane down the runway, at the end of which was a stand of trees. As the plane trundled along the ground, bouncing into the air and back down again a couple of times, it seemed impossible that it would rise over the tops of the trees, never mind get airborne.  At the last moment, the tiny plane heaved itself one last time into the air and, just scraping the very tops of the trees at the far end of the runway, lifted itself and its pilot into the skies.  The pilot, I was told, the builder of the plane, was Air Commodore Harold ‘Daddy’ Probyn, First World War fighter pilot and Commandant of Cranwell during the Second World War, after which he emigrated to Kenya to become a coffee farmer. He would have been in his 80s then.

The third was a great Kenyan educator, about whom I have briefly posted before, Peter Chiera. During the most difficult of national circumstances, the struggle for Kenyan independence in the 50s and 60s, Peter Chiera set up an ‘Harambee’ primary school not far from Nyeri,.  Today, in the UK, we might call it a “Free School”.  When I first met Peter Chiera, his small local village primary school had evolved into a secondary school, funded by the government. I was to help set up the first ‘A’ level courses. Peter Chiera meanwhile was already way ahead of his, looking to a future in which the school had become a distance-learning outpost of Makerere University.

The fourth? Well, that would be myself, a dreamer of conductive education dreams; a builder of fantasies, as some would say, that struggle to take flight, but one persists.

So, today, my thanks, though he most likely will never hear them, go to Gabriel Nderitu, for renewing my own faith in people and a simple belief that things can be done.

 

 

 

.... for parents to invite us into their lives.

"What does Paces need to be like for parents to invite us in to their lives?"

Not my words but those of the ever-stimulating Mike Chitty.  I met Mike at the Sunshine Bakery in Chapel Allerton this afternoon. Over a very civilised pot of tea and cup cake we discussed adult services and marketing. (I had a mango, banana and passion fruit cupcake with which baker David Bennett beat competition from 70 other professional bakers a couple of weeks ago to win the National award as Britain's best cupcake.  It was delicious!). 

Marketing to "Worlds of one". Another of Mike's phrases. I shall wait until he elaborates the idea on his blog -soon I hope - to get his full meaning. For here and now, Ray and Karen and I at Paces have been pondering this week how to reach parents of children with cerebral palsy in South Yorkshire. A bid to the Big Lottery "Reaching Communities" programme has not gone forward as they are asking us to demonstrate need.  One problem is that their notion of "community" is perhaps an identifiable geographic one, such as High Green, that is self-aware and can be "reached" through consultation to identify common service needs that might then be funded. The "community" of parents of children with cerebral palsy is an altogether different proposition - one that is made up of single families, very largely isolated one from the other, with no awareness of itself as a "community" that can identify common needs: "Worlds of one".

How do we start  to talk to "World's of one"? We ask of ourselves "What does Paces need to be like for parents to invite us in to their lives?"

".... for parents to invite us into their lives?" That's the phrase that grabbed me and gave real meaning to the whole sentence.

If, as Mike asserts, marketing is about conversations, what should we be saying, how should we be saying it, in what voice, so that parents see Paces as people they would "invite into their lives" - to seek our services, become our members, volunteer their support.

I could go on. I need to think awhile. This is just a brief taste of a very stimulating conversation. Great cupcake, too!

Enterprise & the emergence of identity #CondEd

I was reminded via Facebook, today, of a posting on his blog back in February 2009, by Mike Chitty:

I have been banging on about enterprise as being a process for the emergence of identity for a long time now.  Enterprise provides the (nearly) perfect vehicle for us to explore our talents and passions and have the results of our efforts judged in real time by real people. 

In the link that Mike provided (which I urge you to follow), he writes:

Enterprise is not about business and entrepreneurship.

It is not about premises, finances, business plans and swots.

It is a process for human development.

It is a way of exploring:

• who I am,
• what my potentials are/might be, and
• the kind of future that I could create.

It is way of living – of becoming.

Enterprise can be a catalyst, a framework, for the emergence of identity.

I find this a near perfect expression of conductive education and working with adults. Perhaps I should elaborate further - and on how Paces has sought, quite coincidentally, to implement this in our adult programme.

I have mentioned Mike's blog before. If you use the 'search' tool here on this blog to the right, below the 'Live Traffic Feed', by setting the 'Select search engine" to "Paces blog search" and search on Chitty, you will be presented with a list of my previous postings mentioning Mike. 

Thanks for the reminder, Mike.

By indirections find directions out

Managing a conductive education enterprise is not always a straightforward matter. Literally, it seems.

Over the years, I've often been accused (if that isn't too strong a word) of 'losing the plot',of 'having my head in the clouds', of "not focusing" on what matters.

Our concern with developing the whole Campus, for instance, is seen as "a diversion", a "waste of resources", or a "drain on my time" as Paces CEO. Only the other day, I was told very firmly that I "had to recognise" that Paces School was the "most important" of the charity's activities.

Of course, I know perfectly well that the charity's most important work is introducing families to conductive upbringing, helping them access it and finding ways for their children to continue to benefit, in some cases into adulthood. (Not for nothing does our Mission statement - see the top of this blog - begin "Supporting families ..."). Schools, and all the apparatus of institutions like schools is just a way of doing it.

And I know, perhaps instinctively, that Polonius's advice (in Hamlet), that finding direction by indirection is often the best way. There's a name for it apparently: "obliquity".

Obliquity is the idea that complex goals are often best pursued indirectly. In general, oblique approaches recognise that complex objectives tend to be imprecisely defined. These objectives contain many elements that aren't necessarily or obviously compatible with each other. Furthermore, we learn about the nature of the objectives and the means of achieving them during a process of experiment and discovery. (Think oblique: How our goals are best reached indirectly. The Independent 18 March 2010)

I especially liked the statement "we learn about the nature of the objectives and the means of achieving them during a process of experiment and discovery".  Sometimes, when I might appear to have wandered off from the main highway down side-roads, surprising lessons can be learned about the objective, precisely a process of experiment and discovery. Sometimes, too, I have to acknowledge failure, that something just doesn't work, and the by-way has become a cul-de-sac. 

This seems to me the very nature of innovation and creativity: no less in a conductive education enterprise than in any enterprise. The trick, of course, is that whilst others might doubt, to keep one's own eye firmly on the ultimate goal.

Which makes me wonder: if obliquity applies to an innovative and innovating enterprise, can it be applied to a whole movement? In other words, could it be that all the forms of conductive education that we see and hear of across the world are simply organic detours into the side-roads and by-ways and undergrowth off the main path - and that this is fine provided some of us (enough of us?) keep our eyes on the goal?  Or perhaps I have just dived off the highway again?