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Blog Post
What does the world of tech and big data have to do with us?
Read moreWe’ve had two brushes with big data in the last couple of weeks. Cathy’s been talking to other foundations about it…. On my first day back in the office after returning from a meeting of international foundations on big data, The...
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Blog Post
Introducing Systems Changers 2018
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The third Systems Changers programme launches this week and I feel particularly fortunate to be involved in it. The Systems Changers 2018 group is made up of practitioners who work specifically with vulnerable young people and the systems they...
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Blog Post
An untold story of power, defiance, mutuality and growth
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Disclaimer first: my role in the process of facilitating An Untold Story was to listen, amplify the voices and facilitate the editing choices of the twelve women who told their stories in the book. (Their voices can be found here, in full colour,...
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Blog Post
Knowledge, Trust, Capability & Empowerment (1)
Read moreKnowing what we know Despite decades of research on ethnic inequalities and severe mental illnesses, it is surprising how few of the findings are well known by the public and many specialists. It is as if evidence of injustice or intractable...
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Blog Post
Light Despite the Darkness
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“The best we can hope for with these people is to keep them alive” I remember it like it was yesterday, the shock that someone in his position would say something like that, knowing I had to challenge it and feeling determined to change...
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Blog Post
Do the limits of my language, limit my world?
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Power is an abstract concept and many conversations start tentatively so I was particularly struck by the conversation we had with the students in a secondary school in Bristol recently. The students were able, and willing to explore a complex...
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Blog Post
What we have learnt about ‘power’ so far
Read morePower emerged as a theme through Lankelly Chase’s and our partner’s work on the systemic causes of multiple disadvantage. From place-based change to social innovation, our partners and colleagues kept telling us that sharing power and...
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Blog Post
Reshaping Research: Knowledge and the Conditions of Possibility
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I once wrote a politics paper arguing that in striving for replicability, predictability, and proof in the quest for more scientific research we ultimately miss the point: we miss the messiness and complexity of society by reducing rich and...
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Blog Post
Writing Deprivation in the Body: Epigenetics Friend or Foe?
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Sue White and David Wastell sketch out the risks if we don't question 'what is this knowledge for and what does it do to us?' in relation to the new science of epigenetics. Arguably a question we should be asking ourselves about all kinds of...
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Blog Post
Profiling Severe and Multiple Disadvantage in Scotland
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Our 2015 report Hard Edges was an important step for us, clearly making the case that problems don’t exist in isolation. In partnership with the Robertson Trust and working again with the team at Heriot-Watt University, we have commissioned a...