users of GL1. And, as with Cathy, my health promotion manager, Sue specifically focussed on immediate neighbours living in the lower socioeconomic areas surrounding the Centre.
I could soon see that the coming together of Cathy, Jane, and Sue in this form of strategic partnership was going to be significant. And even more significant for me was that they were willing to trust me to guide the evolvement of the Living and Learning Centre as I saw fit. Whilst each of them had investment, both financially and in interest (an annual £15,000 per organisation to cover my salary and a small operating budget). They trusted me with the briefs they gave me and allowed me to run with it.
As a consultant nowadays, it’s rare that I get an open-ended brief, although I encourage my clients to let me guide them through a process without a specific end in mind. These occasions are often the ones that result in the most creative, innovative, and high-performing solutions. In community engagement, this approach is critical: we must trust in communities to evolve during an engagement process, on their terms, using their skills and knowledge.
GL1 opened to the public on the 12 August 2002, and the Centre’s adventure began! Summarised as a centre to promote health, leisure and learning to local residents, it acted as both a drop-in venue but also a base for which a range of outreach programs occurred: always in partnership with others.
We partnered with the health service to run support groups for pregnant women wanting to stop smoking. We partnered with local career advisor to run a Live the Life You Want workshop. For Stroke Awareness Week, we welcomed 26 older people to drop-in for blood pressure checks. And, as part of the Strolling in Gloucestershire Festival and Adult Learners Week, we hosted a guided walk about the historic city. Working collaboratively with Black and Minority Ethnic community groups, we undertook tours of GL1, focusing on the women-only swim sessions. We established strong, ongoing partnerships with organisations such as the Education Achievement Zone, Sure Start, ACET (Adult Continuing Education and Training), the Information, Advice and Guidance Partnership, local surgeries and the Library Service.
One of the big success stories of those early months was the Family Learning Weekend, called Live It Up, which involved a range of organisations working together with the Centre to offer a range of activities for local families. I have a vague recollection of the event involving free swim sessions, career advice, and ‘have-a-go-at-kickboxing’ sessions.
One memory stands out: the incredibly popular ‘Meet a Rugby Player’ session. We worked together with Gloucester Rugby Club to host a brilliant event with two of their popular players, shown in image 8. The event won a national award from the Campaign for Learning, noting its innovation in combining health, education and leisure promotion and connection to community. The following year, we ran another event as part of Family Learning Week that we called Step Back in Time, and installed Victorian-styled classrooms for local children to experience, with an actor playing a very strict Victorian-era teacher.
One of my favourite, fun and creative memories of the work of the Centre was planning and implementing a Valentine’s Day initiative. Love poetry was displayed on all the public café tables for the week to promote reading. The local Library Service’s Reader in Residence attended to recite poetry to people between the ages of 14 and 25, aiming to promote reading specifically to this age group.
Art was a big feature of my time at the Centre. With the Primary Care Trust, we worked with graphic design and multimedia students from Gloucestershire College of Arts & Technology to deliver an exhibition for No Smoking Day in 2004. That year’s theme was ‘for smokers who want out’. The students created artwork to illustrate why two thirds of adult smokers wanted to quit smoking. The artwork had a powerful impact and its placement in a Leisure Centre reached a different demographic than would normally attend an art exhibition (or potentially a more traditional health service). Another initiative saw us working with Leo Saunders, a local ‘fusion’ artist, who mixed media such as photography, paint and screenpaint, to install a stunning exhibition of his work in the main GL1 reception area. The exhibition gained plenty of media coverage, as well as raised eyebrows, attracting some not-your-usual-suspects into the Centre.
The somewhat hedonistic lifestyle of working in the leisure and pleasure industry, as it was aptly nicknamed by colleagues (recognising the long out-of-office-hours working in a venue where the majority of people spent their spare time), gave me the escape I needed from my already failing marriage. It provided the essential support I needed when my marriage ended. I built some great friendships during my time at GL1. There I learned the true meaning of having a ‘work family’.
It also convinced me of the potential of partnerships – both at a strategic level and operational level. The Living and Learning Centre would have been nothing without those partnerships.
Conversation Starters
WHO would you like to see proactively working together in your workplace or communities?
WHAT partnerships have you been involved with? This can be personal or professional! What did you learn from the experience? How can you use what you learned during this experience to form strong partnerships in the future?
WHY collaborate? What benefits might collaboration bring?
WHEN have you witnessed great things being achieved by people, groups or organisations working together?
WHERE have you seen significant financial investment in infrastructure happen in your communities? Were you interested or involved in it? If yes, did you have much influence over the process? If no, what stopped you being interested or getting involved?
5. Use creative and innovative processes
Creativity is the necessary work of evolving community engagement practice using methods that honour people’s individual and collective knowledge about their lives and their environments.
― Wendy Sarkissian¹²
My year in my mid-twenties traveling to Australia on a working holiday visa is worthy of a book of its own. However, to summarise, in early 2004, circumstances in my personal life led me to quit my job, sell my house, and set sail for the other side of the world. Perhaps saying I ‘set sail’ is a bit overdramatic, but you get the gist. The bright blue skies and glistening waters of Sydney were the tonic I needed at an exceedingly difficult time in my personal life. Although I was nursing a battered heart, I settled comfortably into a footloose and fancy-free lifestyle in Sydney. For this reason, amongst others, Sydney will always hold a special place in my heart.
Work-wise, the working holiday visa limitations meant I could only work for periods of 3 months or less. So I was having a blast, taking on typical backpacker jobs (jobs nobody else was prepared to do!) I remember feeling out of place attending a briefing to be a ‘promo chick’ for a well-known pharmaceutical company. I flinched at hearing I’d need to wear a pink bow in my hair, whilst sporting a short spiky, bleached-blonde look. That job was definitely not going to work out. One job involved being up before dawn to greet commuters in North Sydney with promotions for a newly opened gym. My assignment was to help the guy dressed up as a big muscle man not to trip over. I’ve since worked with clients and colleagues in North Sydney and always give a cheeky smile to, and take a pamphlet from, any person I see on the street. Who knows what their journey is?
