Happy new year from the Local Gvt Innovation Network. Obviously not the start we had all hoped for, and we’re carrying with us many of the challenges from last year, but with perhaps a little bit more hope for the future.
To kick us off, our first session will be about coming together to set some rhythms and rituals for 2021. Rather than a new years resolution – often big ambitious plans – we’d like to create a space to explore some of the everyday tactics, mindsets and approaches that we might have had glimpses of in 2020 and we want to continue or develop; or some questions about other ways of working that we might need to help us transition through the next phases of the pandemic and beyond. Many of you might have set some of these intentions over the holiday period, during some enforced quiet time.
For example:
>Space and attention for people’s whole lives around their work
New punctuation spaces for reflection and thinking
>Taking hopeful action in sometimes paralysingly complex situations
>Pivoting and changing course while still maintaining a guiding destination
>Using digital to make connections and networks that you couldn’t before
>Seeing assets, energy and resilience in communities
We’ll return to the session we ran last May, plus other sensemaking that we’ve done, and work individually and in small groups. So after a month of undoubted busy-ness, its also a moment to pause, reflect – and keep yourselves accountable to promises made in the dusk of 2020.