At work:
- Ran a pop-up consultation booth in a secondary school in Merthyr, talking to the kids about online video content. (It’s research for a charity that’s going to be putting out mental health information videos.) I went on Monday and again on Thursday, and I tweaked things in real time, I enjoyed the learning by doing and iterating to improve returns.
- Ran a creative evaluation session in a primary school in Port Talbot, talking to the Youth Voice Champions about the programme they’ve been involved in this year. I will be running a couple more of these next week in different schools. It was fun, but note to self, next time don’t bring the pipecleaners because the kids spent 10 minutes making pencil decorations and bracelets instead of drawing their stories! Also spoke to the deputy head of the school to gather more evaluation data.
- Delivered an online session on cultural competency for Tai Pawb, it was a small but very reflective and self-aware group so we had excellent and deep conversations.
- Didn’t run out of brainjuice at lunchtime on Friday this week, yay!
Deliverables this week:
- Workshops in schools was the tenor of my week.
- Finished the piece on “psychologically safe spaces” for The Mint House – I’ve written up an extended version as a blog post on here.
Development this week:
- Finished and sent off the partnership response to an invitation to tender for the Co-production Lab Wales, that I’d started last week.
- Sent over the methodology and costings for a small pilot engagement project, a “test and learn” sort of approach.
At home:
- Didn’t do my Welsh study because I was writing the tender proposal to deadline, so I will do an extra big bit of study this weekend. My grammar wall is working out well, it’s above the shoes so I glance at it whenever I am putting on shoes (or taking them off) and I think things are sticking in my brain.
- Oh BUT – I did speak some Welsh to a real person in the real world outside of my classroom. Just hi and two sentences but still – MILESTONE! (At the Welsh language primary school I went to on Tuesday.)
- My friend sent me flowers in the post when I had my Everything Is Terrible crash last weekend.
- I’m coming to the end of my phone contract so I’ve started the process of switching my mobile provider from Three to Ecotalk, because they do a lot of work to protect nature, biodiversity, bumblebees, temperate rainforests, etc.
- Borrowed a wildlife camera from the local wildlife group, going to set it up over the weekend!
