Hard to believe it’s Friday again! Here’s another loosely curated selection box of things we hope will inform or inspire.
Access, advocacy and expertise
Brave and thought-provoking piece from Unlimited’s Jo Verrent
I’ve just updated our risk assessment, a task I do every three months. It looks dramatically different and a hell of a lot riskier than it did 3 months ago. I had to add a new risk, linked to legacy and succession planning. What if I don’t make it through this?
Are you leading through the crisis … or managing the response?
Great HBR article (free to view) that identifies some of the traps that leaders can fall into in responding to a crisis, and how to avoid them.
‘Time to change’ from David Jubb
An inspirational call for real change in how the cultural sector works.
One thing I learnt in Battersea was that unless you change the structure, it is very hard for change to be sustained. Because the old structure works like elastic, and after all the hard work by everyone to make change happen, the prior structure just starts to pull everyone back to where they started.
Parity for charities
Many small arts and cultural organisations have found they have fallen foul of the Small Business Grants Fund because they are already receiving mandatory charitable rates relief. The Charity Tax Group has prepared a briefing for officials proposing the eligibility criteria be amended – watch this space! If this is relevant to you please let them know so they can build the case for support.
The Story of Telling: Unremarkable
I think this captured some really important points and echoes my experience of working with Small Change®, small changes can have a big impact.
The Cynefin Framework
This is a longer read but its an interesting framework for looking at the current context and how we might approach it:
- Where you’re clear: just do it!
- Where it’s complicated: make a plan
- Where it’s complex: get a sense of possibilities
- Where there’s liminal complexity: choose to move towards complicated or chaos
- Where there’s chaos: apply constraints quickly and maintain them until the situation stabilises
- Where there’s confusion: keep collecting data and revisiting, it will either move towards the other domains or remain an unresolved paradox
The Messy Truth
If you’re interested in contemporary photography and visual culture The Messy Truth podcasts cover a range of stimulating topics
Feel free to share any resources you come across that are proving useful in the current situation.
Dawn & Susan