At work:
- Social care engagement project: doing some project management admin and scheduling events, and making a little flyer to promote one of them. Helo Blod have been ace giving me a hand to do the Welsh version. I didn’t dare send them my attempt to check through because I thought it would be terrible, and when I compared it to the translation they sent me, it… wasn’t as bad as I feared but there were many mistakes also. I think I will give it a while longer before I attempt to share my Welsh student drafts with professional translators! 😄
- Strategic service review: catchup meeting happened with the client, the session plan and room design and layout have been finetuned. The delivery is the week after next so I’ll make the remaining resources and dot the is and cross the ts the day before, so it’s all fresh in my mind. I have ordered more post-its though. Always MOAR post-its. 🤩
Deliverables this week:
- Mentoring with senior leaders in a Local Health Board – ongoing. Had some really nice (unprompted) feedback this week. 💙
“It’s been very cathartic. It’s been very good to talk and hear yourself, myself, think outside of my team’s supervision sessions, and managers who are in the thick of it like me and with me. Having that space and time with an outside person – you’ve asked questions and helped me reflect. It’s definitly reduced my stress levels in these times of change. Every practitioner should have access to this, it’s made such a difference. And it’s been very timely.” - EDI workshop: it’s been delivered! It went very well. It was the annual whole team away day of an amazing community and sustainability charity in north Wales. The theme of my session was “identifying and respecting difference”. They were a group of 70 people who are pretty diverse in many ways, and it needed to be engaging and interactive, not a lecture. So I proposed an activity based on this Danish TV advert called All That We Share, which was a bit different and bold, and I was delighted when the team agreed to go for it! Then we had some reflection time and group discussions, I folded 90 cardboard bricks and brought bags and bags of crafty supplies for people to make themselves a reminder artefact, something to capture their thoughts from the session (because workshops are all very well but how quickly do we forget the new insights when we go back to the day to day). And finally I got them to write notes of appreciation to colleagues, it was so cute and focused like a big Christmas card writing workshop – and each person also received a personal note of appreciation from their management team. It was a very varied 2 hours, and not everybody engaged with everything, but that’s ok because I was deliberately offering different ways to interact with the question: “why does difference matter?” – It was intense but exhilarating. 😃
- Evaluation project: finalised the report based on the team’s comments. Just need to do the child-friendly summary now, to send to the pupils who participated. 🙋
- I had a day in Birmingham for the board meeting and AGM of Data Orchard (where I am on the board and vice-chair), and I facilitated a future gazing session – building on the one I’d done with the co-CEOs, we expanded the conversation to the rest of the board and the staff team. It was nice! 💬
Development this week:
- Finished drafting the response to an invitation to tender for a co-design project, for the Co-production Lab Wales. It took so long, OMG. Finished the write up over this weekend, in time for the other team members and our CEO to do a final review (they had seen my initial draft which was mainly bullet points and costings), before submitting by Tuesday. Fingers very crossed, because it would be a very nice project and also a few months of regular work between November and March. The pipeline of work has been THIN this year, for myself and everyone I’ve been speaking to in this area of work, because of so much uncertainty in the political and economic context. 📝
- The New Idea: is making its way! If only I hadn’t been waylaid by writing tender responses, but you know getting paid work is also kinda important… anyway there’s progress and I will be able to put up some content on our new website soon. Then all will be revealed. 🚧
- New Stuff blogging: I wrote a thing! I captured a little post about measurement. I don’t seem to have much time to think, I’m DOING a lot, writing stuff, delivering stuff, it’s nice to pause and just think and line up my thoughts. Will see how I can carve out some time a bit more regularly to THINK. 💭
- No reading post this weekend because I spent all my time on the tender proposal, it’s late, I’m tired. 🥱
At home:
- Actually not at home but on the road – I stayed in a cute hotel near Llangollen and Chirk, in the Ceiriog Valley, in advance of the north Wales EDI workshop. I had stayed there before (for the Eisteddfod) and I was looking forward to their breakfast croissants, which are the best I have had in a long time. Very French. Very delicious. I planned to have 2 with a big cup of hot chocolate, like a proper French person from the countryside. (Which I am.) HOWEVER. When I arrived at the hotel the owner said I was going to be in the annexe and the main hotel was closed because I was literally the only guest (it was too quiet to open the main hotel), and also no breakfast sorry (on account of main hotel being closed etc) and I was like OH NO YOUR CROISSANTS I WAS LOOKING FORWARD TO YOUR CROISSANTS and waxed lyrical about them and how I’m French and how I know a good croissant and his croissants are good croissants, and it turns out his secret is HE BAKES THEM FRESH IN THE MORNING and I was like TRAGEDY NO DELICIOUS CROISSANTS FOR ME and we had a joke about it and I retired to my annexe room to do my Welsh class online. Halfway through class I got a knock on the door and it was the owner bringing me two croissants on a plate covered in cling film for the next morning, and they made my whole room smell of delicious fresh croissants. 🥐
- Back at home, I baked and frosted a carrot cake for one of my social care engagement events. Got two events in one day, so there is carrot cake for the morning one and lemon drizzle for the afternoon one. This is the recipe I used and it is SO GOOD. I know because the recipe was supposed to make 2 round layers to frost and stack, but in loaf tins I ended up with 2 entire cakes, so I prepped one (sliced horizontally, frosted and restacked, frosted the top). But I tasted the spare and it’s too good, I’m going to have to get some help with eating it or it will all end up in my face. 🍰
- A very cake and pastry themed week, inadvertently, this week. 🤔
