The Next Step

 Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by how far we have yet to go.

My aspirations, and the collective aspirations of our team, for the Discovery College are huge. We want to be delivering powerful transformative work with children and young people. We want to be demonstrating how effective and beneficial co-production and lived experience leaders can be. We want to be lobbying for better quality and more preventative support at a local and national level. We want to have a building that is bustling, vibrant, and loud and quiet in equal measure.

When I see pieces of this vision being enacted by other people and organisations I manage to be both inspired and envious! I look at the strides we've made forward to date and, whilst I can objectively see them as substantial and fast-paced progress, I also feel a little jolt of nerves that we're not moving quickly enough. That we still have so far yet to go.

But...

I'm currently reading a book. I'm an avid reader and munch my way through fiction and fantasy at an alarming rate. The protagonist in my current page turner is trying to do the impossible. He's trying to bond together a disparate, conflicting and tumultuous set of communities to overcome a powerful injustice. He's short on time and, due to a fairly shady past on his part, he's having to work hard to gain the trust of the people he's trying to persuade. The work is ambitious, hard, slower than he'd like, and highly personal to him. He spends chapters and chapters ruminating on what the most important step of a journey is. He concludes that the most important step is... the next one.

The point isn't how long it takes, it's not even the destination, it's that you keep going.

So on those days when I'm feeling overwhelmed, when everyone else seems to be reaching loftier heights than us, or I'm trying to wrap my head around how long-term this commitment needs to be, I focus in.

Just the next step...

And you know, I think the next steps are going to be exciting 😊

2020 Round Up!

 As the year winds to a close I wanted to take some time to reflect on, and capture, what this year has meant to the College, and to me. There are some obvious personal changes - I'm writing this blog post surrounded by boxes in a new home, and with a dog stretched across my lap! However, for the College, the moments we've marked have been more discreet, more subtle, but no less impactful.

At the start of 2020, we had pledged to deliver 7 pop-up pilots to test our approach with a cross-section of children and young people. We'd been awarded funding for the first pilot to take place and had recruited our first paid staff! By March, they had written our first programme and delivered our very first session to 10 children in a Witney primary school. Strong start to the year! 

When the lockdown measures were implemented, all delivery had to be suspended - the primary school in Witney closed, so we pressed pause on our pilot. The vast majority of funding opportunities became emergency or survival funding and, as you'll have seen from my previous entry, it didn't feel ethical to compete for these. Other funders closed their planned rounds, meaning that bids that were ready to be submitted had to be parked for the time being. We decided to take up less space, support our sister-organisations, and wait for opportunities that were right for us.

During this time, I got to work recruiting a Working Group of stakeholders - parents or carers for young people with mental health problems, people with their own lived experience of child or adolescent ill health, professionals working in the sector. I conducted a number of Zoom and telephone interviews and found 5 fantastic people who volunteered their time and their expertise to help steer the college and guide our strategic decisions at this formative time. This process of recruitment spanned the Summer and Autumn, but trust me; they were worth the wait! (Don't worry, we'll introduce you all soon...!)

In May I was due to walk the 200 mile Coast-to-Coast route, mapped by Wainright, to raise funds for the College. Due to lockdown restrictions we had to postpone until August/September, but completed the walk in 12 days, and at the cost of just 2 toenails...! We raised around £1800, and had miles of walks donated from supporters during the postponement, walking a collective 300 miles before the real walk began!

It became clear as time went on that the disruption caused by the pandemic would not be short-lived, and that the impact on mental health would be incredibly severe. It began to become obvious that we could no-longer watch and wait - young people needed mental health support, they needed connection, and they needed to be heard.

We therefore launched Youth In Lockdown in partnership with the Oxford Poetry Library and Open House Oxford. We received around 100 submissions from young people aged 8-23 from across Oxfordshire, expressing in a wide range of creative formats their experiences of the pandemic. We're delighted that we plan to exhibit this collection at the Freeborn Gallery in the new year!

We also appointed our first Patron, the wonderful Rhys Lewis. In partnership with Rhys we hosted a 4-week remote Record Club on social media, receiving song selections from local businesses and young people internationally. The response was staggering, and we even received a song choice from Fearne Cotton! We continue to work closely with Rhys, who's incredibly passionate about advocating for good mental health.

After being nominated by a student and a teacher, the Dragon School in Oxford kindly donated £1650 in November to support our work. This money will enable us to connect with young people in the new year who are struggling more than ever to look after their mental health.

Lastly, we had two fantastic Micro-Internships from Oxford University. In the first week of lockdown in March Sofia and Deniz joined us to take over our social media, create and queue some posts, and co-write a communications plan. In December Alan and Catrin came on board to collate research into some of our commonly-used activities (like mindfulness and art) so that we can strengthen our evidence base. These incredible young people make such giant contributions to our work in just 5 days, and we can't thank them enough!

So what next...? Aside from stuffing my face with mince pies, the Christmas break will be spent reviewing our 3-year business plan. Myself and the Working Group have decided to push our pilots into next year, with a more diverse range of pilot focuses mapped out. The funding environment is challenging, particularly for a fledgling service like ours, so we'll need all the help we can get to secure the remaining £24k needed to deliver these 7 pilots. We'll be writing bids and joining forces with big-hearted members of the public to try to generate that cash, as we know it'll enable us to move to being a more reliable, comprehensive, and informed service in 2022. This year has been incredibly challenging and it would be easy for us to feel disheartened at having to delay our plans. However we've learned that we're compassionate, resilient, and very much needed, and that not everything that's worth doing will be in your plan - sometimes going off-map can be very worth doing!

We wish all of our supporters, and all of the families across Oxfordshire and beyond, a very Merry Christmas and a peaceful start to 2021. For those of you who find this time of year hard to weather, we hope the festive period is gentle and we will hold you in our thoughts until we can reconnect in January.

Creating Space

You may have noticed I and the Discovery College have been keeping a low profile for the last month or so. This has been very much intentional, and is set to continue for a while longer, but I wanted to pop up (Meerkat-like) to explain why, before we go back to temporary radio-silence...

When Covid-19 landed on our doorstep and the country was put into increasing phases of 'lockdown', I felt mingled feelings of both exasperation and relief. After many months of planning, our facilitators had just delivered the very first session of our very first pilot in Witney. We'd made public commitments to delivering 7 pilots over the course of 2020, and had been starting to develop our fundraising strategy and efforts. We were also about to have 2 interns join us from the University of Oxford for 2 weeks to put together a comms strategy.

And then the world stopped.

It felt like a really pivotal point for the Discovery College of gathered momentum and increasing recognition, and we just had to put the brakes on, hard. The relief I felt, however, is that I really could just wind up all operations and put them on ice - the fantastic facilitators were working for us on a freelance basis, and were happy to suspend their work until later in the year, and there are no other paid staff or ongoing service commitments to muddle through or try to support or honour. Compared to many of my friends and peers, I and the college got off incredibly lightly. We have the luxury of just waiting until this all blows over.

However, it's felt a little like having a stone in your shoe - there's this work that I'm incredibly passionate about and is arguably needed more than ever, which I simply can't get to or fulfil right now. But I made a choice - a choice to create space for the Discovery College's counterparts, sister-charities, and other vital organisations and services. To create space for my friends and peers, doing Herculean jobs of keeping the wheels on their organisations, and keeping both their staff and people using their services safe and well. This is why we've effectively dropped off the map for a little while. We aren't bidding for any Covid-19 funds, despite knowing that we'd be able to use our expertise to create offerings relevant to the current community needs, because other organisations need this work and funding more than us right now, and have infrastructure in place to do a bloody good job of it. Our Host Partner, Elmore, are up to their eyeballs supporting not just their clients but collaborating and pitching in with other Oxfordshire Mental Health Partnership services to ensure no one gets overlooked, so they don't need us hanging on their coat-tails asking for back-office support. And we're halted all of our comms plans except basic social media updates, to avoid drawing attention from the voices that need most to be heard right now.

All we're doing at the moment is reading up on our model, developing plans for our culture and ethos, learning from the fantastic example of others, and writing funding bids that may not come to fruition until the Autumn. But let me be clear that we are no less committed to our cause. This is not apathy or a winding down of our drive towards our goals, we're simply getting out of the way so that the most vital work, right at this moment, can continue.

We'll keep you up to date about upcoming news, including our plans for the Coast to Coast fundraiser that's due to take place in May. And in the mean time, we're sending so much love to the sector, and telling all of our friends and counterparts that we are so proud and in awe of the heart-led and innovative work you're all doing. You are making the difference, and I can't wait to see you all in person when we're able to, offer you a cup of tea, and tell you just how amazing you've been.

Sending a big virtual hug to all!
Laura

Youth In Mind Conference

For those who don't know, the Youth In Mind Conference is almost as brand new as we are, having run for the first time in March 2019. When I attended last year, the Oxfordshire Discovery College was just a little idea germinating in my brain, but I set myself the goal that next year I wouldn't just be an attendee. Next year I would be a stall-holder.

So I was delighted, this year, to be getting up at the crack of dawn on a chilly February morning, loading the car with my crate of eye-catching materials and slinging my new banner over my shoulder.

Despite the fact that I spilled coffee all over my white shirt just as all the delegates started to arrive, it was a fantastic day. There were interesting talks and panel discussions, I filled up two pages with peoples' details for a mailing list, and had valuable conversations with some new potential allies.

Whilst last year there was almost a sense of surprise that we were all there because we were invested in youth mental health ("what, all of us?!"), this year it felt like there was a wealth of validation and a very healthy appetite to actually do something about it. There was a feeling that, yes, we know that the prevalence is rising and people need our help, and yes, the wider world is beginning to notice that too. But what do we, an experienced and skilled and passionate collective propose to do about it. I can't speak to the outcomes that will result from the day, but I can say that I witnessed a huge amount of connection-making, and that collaboration has to be the first step in moving us forward.

Next year's goal? To run a workshop. Oxfordshire Youth, hit me up!

The Art of Failing Well

After a burst of momentum that has seemed to propel the College's journey since just before our launch in October, I've reached my first real up-hill slog.

There are numerous challenges in starting out on your own to try to create something bigger than you, so I hadn't wandered into this mad escapade expecting smooth sailing! The challenge is that the circle of people on whom you'd rely heavily at times like these within an organisation is very small when the organisation is still in it's infancy.

In the name of transparency, these are some of the challenges we've met with recently:

• We've been working hard to find other organisations to collaborate with and, whilst they're consistently keen, they also have their own ways of working and their own costs and pressures. Twice in the last month have we started hopefully along the path of working together to then find stumbling blocks. These aren't insurmountable, but inevitably take more time.
• Having submitted a sizeable bid to the Oxfordshire County Council Youth Opportunity Fund some time ago, we were disappointed to not be awarded any funds. Whilst this is part and parcel of the funding application process (you really do win some and lose some!) it unfortunately means that we'll be unable to run an open-access pilot for teenagers in Banbury as soon as we'd hoped and we'd also been crossing our fingers to appoint a Coordinator to help drive us forward. In all openness it was doubly disappointing that the fund was so significantly delayed, which has left us hanging for quite some time.
• Whilst we had a truly fantastic time at the Youth In Mind Conference, and achieved our goal of progressing from attendee to stall holder, we were unfortunately missed out of the service guide published jointly by Oxfordshire Youth and Oxfordshire Mind, so were not listed in the annual publication being distributed to all GP surgeries and beyond.

I remind myself that these hurdles have come in a wider landscape of having my first opinion piece published in the Oxford Mail and Oxford Times, launching a fundraising page for my upcoming Coast to Coast challenge (which has already reached 50% of it's target!) and getting to the second stage of the Youth Ambition Fund for a pilot in Oxford. These are successes and regardless of their size they are all progress.

I'm also very conscious that my own resilience is a little low at the moment, having just started a new job whilst trying to fit the Discovery College into unpaid gaps. I received a well-timed Buddy Box part way through the month which contained, amongst a number of simply lovely things, permission slips to be used to give yourself permission to do various self-care activities. I think perhaps I'll use a couple of those this week to give myself permission to let Discovery College take care of itself for a few days and recharge my motivation. We are on track; my greatest responsibility at the moment is to be a forceful reminder of that and to remain, above all, excited!

Building Trust

"No two moralities match. Accept different shapes, so long as they aren't sharp enough to hurt."

~ Matt Haig - The Humans 

 Since our launch in October, we've been working hard to build connections. By this I don't just mean a name on a mailing list, but real relationships with strong foundations. In the limited time that I have outside of work, this can be challenging but it is an essential.

Generally speaking, I've been met with enthusiasm (at one meeting recently a professional responded to my description of the Discovery College by throwing her hands in the air and saying 'Hallelujah!'. I'm not even kidding) and people have been keen to collaborate and to share expertise. However, at the other end of the spectrum there have been a few who have responded with tentativeness, distrust, scepticism or animosity.

It would be very easy for me to respond in kind; getting defensive and shutting the door to any future possibilities of working together, making sure they stay out of the loop of anything I'm working on or trying to make happen.

However, in that circumstance, it's not just me who loses out. Children, young people, families professionals - all of the people we're trying to work with will find it harder to navigate between our services and may ultimately miss out. This is not ok.

I appreciate that the Oxfordshire charity sector is a busy and vibrant one, and you may not see the need for another service. I appreciate that funding can feel very tight at times, and competitive, and it may feel like our presence here is a threat to your income. I appreciate that you have such a genuinely deep and valuable skill set and experience in your work, and perhaps feel that you could deliver this work better yourself.

However, I'm really not here with any agenda that involves taking from you or undermining you. My only agenda is to make available a service that I strongly believe will be a valuable contribution, and will complement what already exists. Do I think I'm the right person to be overseeing this? Absolutely. But I didn't come to that decision lightly, and I didn't come to it without some serious self-examination.

I'm going to persevere with that minority group of relationships that haven't come easy so far - they are strong and essential players in this field, and I think that together we could do even more fantastic work. I'm going to role model trust as best I can and keep trying to have visionary and brave conversations with them.

Oh, and just so you know - at home I'm sometimes referred to as 'Cuveo'. Cuveo means 'stubborn' in Ruchiga... We will be collaborating for the benefit of the people we serve, just you wait!

Oxford Speed Dating

Back in November I was honoured by two invitations to attend fantastic events:
One, the celebration of our host partner, Elmore's, 30th birthday at the inspiring Modern Art Oxford.
The other, a supper with other charity bods at the house of Tim Stevenson, Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire.

Now Tom Hayes had asked me to represent the College at Elmore's celebration some months ago, so when the second invitation rolled in for the same night, with an overlap of around half an hour, I'm sure you can understand why this was my message when I forwarded the letter to my partner:

To cut a not-very-long-but-very-frantic story short, I spent around an hour talking to the great and the good at Elmore's event (complete with our very first branded roller banner!) before then legging it just before the speeches.

Cue me running in 3-inch heels through the cobbled streets of Oxford, to arrive in a state of some disarray at the home of Tim Stevenson about 10 minutes later. Thankfully he and his wife, Marion, were incredibly welcoming and quickly sat me down at a table of likeminded people and plonked a glass of wine in my hand. We collectively reflected on the strains that hamper our work, and the resources or opportunities we've found that may alleviate some of these pressures.

I have to admit that my first thought when I received the invitation was to consider what opportunities meeting the Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire might present to the Discovery College; I didn't really consider who else might be there and how we might be of benefit to one another. However my main take away from the evening was a forceful reminder of what a diverse, dedicated, and fascinating sector we are, and how supportive we can be when we're given the opportunity.

Overall TripAdvisor rating: 10/10, fantastic food, inspiring conversation, and a small work out (if you run to the venue like I did) to boot. Would definitely recommend.