The Future of Work for Young People, London UK

A couple of weeks ago I was asked to scribe at a wonderful day of discussions, learnings, and poetry for a charity in central London. 

The aim was to dig deeper into the Youth Futures Foundation's research findings: what does the next generation want from their working life? Unsurprisingly zero hours contracts and unfair dismissal came up several times. Also: young people are being set up to fail, with poor HR treatment from small companies, a lack of training and progression. Young people need to be educated about their rights from an early age, as some of these experiences happened while the participants were still in secondary school.

This was commissioned by the Youth Futures Foundation https://youthfuturesfoundation.org/ in partnership with Durham University. 

After the morning's work, done on my ipad (above), in the afternoon I pivoted and drew up a mural using old school pens and paper on the wall, as the poetry workshop unfolded. An intense afternoon for the young people taking part! Please click on the image below to enlarge.

 

Urban Planning using Co-production in Croydon, South London, UK

Two years ago I worked for UCL's Coproduction team https://www.ucl.ac.uk/public-engagement/co-production-collective on an urban planning project, helping Croydon council bid for a pot of money from the GLA.

They won the bid, so I've been asked back to help record the co-production process. Image below is a work in progress, the 'vision' for the project is still tbc hence the blank banner space. 

There's a lot of work to be done in and around Croydon,  but as one of the participants said: "if you scratch Croydon it bleeds history" and they have a passionate group of local participants, so watch the space around Surrey Street Market!

Thanks to Niccola Hutchinson Pascal for asking me back, and for recommending me widely to her other UCL colleagues. I've worked on some really interesting projects this year.

UCL - Grand Challenges, Inequalities

 I have been working on some of the ‘Grand Challenges’ research projects for University College London (UCL).

More on these here:https://www.ucl.ac.uk/grand-challenges/

This is the hoped for future, a more balanced and equal one, where everyone is able to participate and internally UCL has become more self-aware and inclusive:

This is the current situation - unbalanced:

And this is a bit of background about a previous project and the fruits of interdisciplinary research:

Inclusion - Schools Conference, Derby

Had a wonderful morning up in Derby yesterday, drawing a slightly epic 4 metres of live scribing for a very enthusiastic and passionate crowd of heads and other inclusive teaching advocates. This is my 3rd year and I’ve already been invited back for next year! Thanks to Jo Wilkinson and the Inclusion Partnership https://inclusionpartnership.co.uk/inclusion-conference/

Also thanks to John Felix for the lovely portraits! https://johnfelix.com/

UCL the Grand Challenges: Climate Change

 

Please double click to enlarge! University College London have several large research projects that they call Grand Challenges, mainly because - they’re huge things to tackle, often described as ‘wicked’ problems. 

This was a town hall on Climate Change, and as we’re all starting to swelter this summer, I really hope some of their research comes up with some gems!

Kinship report

Some work I live scribed and then added to post-event for the charity ‘Kinship’ .https://kinship.org.uk/ 

A call to the government - to reform the support given to kinship carers, because they’re doing largely unpaid and unsupported work looking after vulnerable children.

Logo Design, Family Hub site, East London

Had a panicked call recently from a client who need a logo design, pronto! So after a rapid exchange of listening and squiggly sketches I came up with a couple of options, and the final image was chosen, (very quickly!) and is now being used on signage out in the eastern fringes of London.

Merton Children’s Parliament

Had a lovely time yesterday, listening to children in southwest London in the Borough of Merton, as they were talking about their experiences of participating in the Children’s Parliament over the last couple of years.

The children were all around 11 and were really enthusiastic and very confident in speaking up, it was great to be a part of such a positive event. The Children’s Parliament will continue in the next academic year.

I was working digitally and prepared the first of the below images from briefing call notes and pre-designed the layout. The other 3 images were drawn directly from listening live.

Feeling included and cared for at school - Illustrations

I was asked to create a series of images aimed at educators for the Derby County Community Trust INCLUSION conference coming up later this month. I’ll be back live scribing up in Derby (go the Rams!) stadium in a couple of weeks, can’t wait :)

The first sequence shows the effects of applying strict rules instead of taking the time to understand the child, so by the end of the day she’s miserable. The second sequence shows the pupil feeling seen and heard, and the result is that he’s had the opposite experience, and he’s had a great day.

Dementia prevention, sharing research for University College London

I had a lovely afternoon scribing at a public engagement event about dementia in London yesterday. The event was run by University College London, and was a sort of crossover between knowledge exchange and public health messaging with several dementia research groups there to share their findings with the public. 

The good news is: research that has been undertaken recently by Professor Gill Livingston has found that dementia is up to 45% preventable if you remove the following 14 risk factors:

Unfortunately, as we heard from participants, as we grow older and become physically infirm or lose sight or hearing this can also lead to social isolation, adding to the potential risk for dementia. Other things were a surprise, eg I wasn’t aware of the impact of air pollution and high LDL cholesterol as risk factors for dementia. (So more walks in the woods and healthy snacks for me then!)

 

Heads Up is out now!

Published by Quarto books and written by Dr Clara Doran. A book about the science of brain health, written in an open, accessible way, with plenty of illustrations to keep you reading!

I had a lot of fun coming up with responses to the text, and also learnt plenty along the way. Here are some pics of what’s inside: