Category: Leadership

Northfield Young People’s Forum "Leaders of Today" – a new podcast on the Grassroots Channel

selinajenninorthfieldwide

Jenni Rowley and Selina Okunnu of the Northfield Young People’s Forum talk to us about how power is shifting towards the young in Birmingham. From April 2007 the forum, run by 11 to 19 year olds, will have up to £80,000 to offer as grants to the young people of this south Birmingham constituency. There is also an update on a story from July 2006 about Get Hooked on Fishing, based in Bournville.

For any of our dozens of other programmes about active citizens please find the Grassroots channel here.  Any comments are welcome, use the link below or email grassroots@podnosh.com.

School of Everything – except for choice?

A few weeks ago I showed a friend how to use predictive text. He was delighted. So was I. Teaching and learning are precious and potent means to connect.

Charles Leadbeater (writing in Prospect Magazine) mentioned something new to me: the School of Everything. It’s an online/offline project still in dvelopment, being created with support from the Young Foundation. The site they are working on is intended to be a place where we can all connect to share knowledge; a combination of wiki, classroom, coffee shop and workshop.

They set out their principles here, which (if you don’t mind) I’ll repeat:

Read more

Time to capture the Dark Matter

David Wilcox has just put up a post which helps think about the relationship between formal and informal structures – whether in non-profit or profit organisations.

He cites a thought which popped into the head of Lloyd Davis at It’s Social Stupid. It occurs to Lloyd that creativity most often happens in the ‘shadows’ – the informal links into and out of  formal organisations – rather than within the naturally constraining structures which were designed to get things done.

I think we all spend some considerable time in the shadows. You know: Read more