Good morning and thank you for inviting me to your collaborative event. Iām delighted to be here. And itās wonderful to see so many of you at such a busy time. I know that some people will be watching later, so hello to you too.
Weāll hopefully have time for questions and comments after Iāve done, but if anything occurs to you please pop it in chat and Lorna will keep an eye on it in case I canāt see it for the adrenaline rush!
Iāve prepared a Padlet for you with stuff I mention today; plus Iāll be publishing what I say here over on my blog so you can head over there if you want to revisit. Pick up this QR code for the Padlet.
Iām here to talk to you about joy and how over in FE weāve been baking this value into practice for the past three years or so. FE faces separate and equal challenges to HE as of course it would. We all face similar external challenges, as do our colleagues in schools and early years. Itās all a mess.Ā
And yet here we are, doing our best. In our classrooms, in our admissions practice, in our libraries, in our timetabling, in our one-to-ones with students, in moderation meetings. We are trying to operate with kindness and ease when everything feels urgent. It isnāt. But with so much noise around us itās sometimes impossible not to feel that it is. Where do we think? When do we rest?
I worked for two decades at a social purpose college in the North of England. It was a vocation, as Iām sure choosing the OU is for you. And yet having a vocation - trying to make a difference - subjects us all too often to āpassion taxā (in the words of the wonderful BrenĆ© Brown). We work hard, so we are asked to do more, we care, so we are asked to be more āresilientā (which also means do more). Here at the OU, Iām hearing that itās a fresh start for everyone and that today is about bringing you all together, to encounter one another with new energy, to grow a sense of belonging. I believe that, in the words of Fred Moten and Stefano Harney, we can resolve to resist āthe misery of the academy.āĀ
FE does that. Not everywhere, not saturated into it - yet. But alongside that sense of collegiate belonging within an organisation, hundreds of people have found a way to belong together pan-organisationally and pro-socially, building not a fixed community but a number of constellations, operating independently and coming together around a single value of joy. Thatās what unites us, whatever our role or geography, or personal mix of identities. A single value which doesnāt require us to share our whole ethics, just a commitment to joyful practice.
Iād love to introduce you to the roots of joy and Iāll start by telling you what it isnāt. It isnāt a commodity, like happiness seems to be these days - a series of memes and purchases which we have to work harder to pay for. It goes deeper than that. My history of joy comes from encountering the work of 17th century Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza while I was doing my PhD. Spinoza was a character. A lens grinder by profession at the time of the European Enlightenment, he fell out with just about everybody because of his conviction - dangerously radical at the time - that God was not a beardy bloke on a cloud but was actually present in all of us, a life force he called zoĆ«, which means in Greek, one with vitality and life. We are immanent, which means suffused with God (or whatever energy created us). And he didnāt just mean humans, he meant the whole earth - animals, trees, rocks, seas - and bees, while Iām rhyming. Thereās a wonderful statue of Spinoza in Amsterdam, where his cloak is covered with birds and animals.
Spinoza believed that when we encounter one another - or encounter nature in any form - this energy is shared and multiplied. He called this joy. So joy is both innate to us and relational, from the start. This world view captivated me. I wondered how I could put it to work.
Then lockdown happened. I reckon the OU was more resilient, but FE was on its knees, having not really taken on board the potential for digital transformation. That first day I got a call from a colleague, Stef Tinsley. āWe have to do something,ā she said.
Stef knew Iād done a TEDx talk on joy, so that was the natural gathering point. We created a hashtag #JoyFEš and did a broadcast on Twitter. By the end of the day we had twenty joyful educators in a WhatsApp group.
Since then #JoyFEš has become a phenomenon. We are a collective; we have no money (we fundraise for Zoom once a year), no bank account, no organising core. This is quite deliberate, because we donāt want to be owned. We have WhatsApp groups to run our operations. People come and go - this is the āconstellationā approach and itās healthy because we donāt get fed up with one another and there are always fresh ideas. We use the metaphor of geese to describe our leadership: we take it in turns at the point, we swoop down as a practice of care to rest when fellow geese are in the weeds.
Energy is growing for a #JoyHEš so Iād really like you to bear this in mind.
We donāt have a āmembershipā; instead, what we have are lots of entry points and we share facilitation: twice weekly writing rooms and ideas rooms, a Friday podcast, a Facebook Live broadcast every term time morning, we used to have a magazine until it stopped being joyful (it was a closed editorial group and we got fed up with one another). We run online events and summer programmes. We send bluebells for Teacher Appreciation Week each year. And we still very much operate on social media, uplifting, affirming, digging deep for joy.
And, crucially, those who gather around #JoyFEš are doing joyful changemaking work in their organisations. And I mean deep change, not tinkering with the deckchairs. Doing the work of change when no-one else knows how. Work around equalities, difference, kindness, care, listening and radical rest.
We are fuelled by joy and when we get tired thatās the very time that we seek out the joyful spaces, to re-energise one another. And when we meet, we always meet in a Thinking Environment: a set of disciplined, facilitated processes which have proved to be a powerful vehicle for not only culture, but also systems change. We donāt have chance to experience the Thinking Environment today, but Iāve popped some information on the Padlet.
To return to Spinoza, we have stepped into our own power. Writing in Latin, he had two words for power at his disposal: potestas and potentia. Potestas is what we think of as power in English - clout, hierarchy, politics. Potentia is different. Potentia is whatās released when two people encounter each other (or encounter non-humans, sometimes) joyfully. The energy is joy and potentia - joyful, activist power - is what puts it to work.Ā
Over the past three years, we have learned so much about joyful practice. Recently, we started to get it down into some joyful practice principles, which Iāll run through with you now - some of them weāve already encountered. Of course there are more. I keep thinking of new ones all the time! But twelve is enough.
Shared Responsibility
This has been the toughest thing to learn. Itās so easy to take the lead, then everyone looks to you to get it done. Setting an expectation that if youāre in one of the organising groups you have to pitch in and if you canāt thatās absolutely fine, just dip out. You can always come back. At first, everyone was looking to me and Stef and I get that, but it had to change, otherwise this wouldnāt be collective and it would not ripple out. Encouraging responsibility and resisting the urge to infantilise has been a life lesson for many.
Noticing
Oh yes, paying attention and noticing. Noticing human and non-human verbal and non-verbal messages (like, why is this plastic?). Then appreciating if itās good and challenging if it needs to change. Itās in the detail that change happens.
Goose Leadership
This is lovely. I āfellā recently and the community swooped into help. I rested, I found the joy in me again, I am fine.
Anti-clique practice
Another tough one because it gets everywhere. Early on I noticed the āin-jokesā creeping in as we waited for the Ideas Room to start. Absolutely well intentioned but nothing could be less welcoming. It gave me a few fast heartbeats to challenge, but being awkward, brave and kind - BrenĆ© Brownās mantra for life - gets you a long way.
Value (singular)
Joy. Just joy. Everything else is also part of the work but thatās up to the individual.Ā
This is how we drive energy, momentum and purpose. This is how we remember who we are.
Pro-social
Joy is innately relational. And pro-social - by which I mean community-building - practice is essentially anti-competitive. I love competition in sport but, like cynicism, itās corrosive to joy.Ā
Thinking Environment
The vehicle by which we do all of this work. Itās not just values-based in some lip-service way. It uses values as a thing that does. And itās brilliant for generating the questions we need to ask in this world right now.
Trust
Thereās no joy without trust. Joyful practice is trust-building. In the highest performing organisations in the world, trust is valued more highly than performance. Yet in a world where we measure everything, we donāt have any metrics for it.Ā
Counting is capitalism
This always gets a laugh but basically, it is. We have to account for *everything*. Iām not anti-accountability but it gets a bit much. We never count numbers, because #JoyFEš is a blessed place of relief where we can step away from all that and just do the work.Ā
Step away
Knowing when to stop is really powerful. Itās part of a nomadic mindset, which also relates back to Spinoza. As with the magazine, when itās time, itās time.
Co-construction (not consumption)
Oh yes. I can honestly say that nobody who encounters JoyFE is just on the take. OK, well maybe the occasional commercial coach pops up to an Ideas Room to get āanother tool for the toolkitā. Good luck to them. We are changemakers because we work collaboratively, not because we take a red diamond and try to post it through a green square.
Consistent messaging
It takes a lot of trust building to collectively amplify our voices. And we do say the same things again and again. Small, persistent, consistent acts of joy. Microjoys. Thatās how we change the world.
We also - and this is going to sound very boring - keep on top of our admin. Thatās how we get to be consistent, with social messaging, for example. Itās also how we create a legacy, an archive. Nobody is going to do that for us. We have to tell our own stories. So if weāve got any administrators in the room, I appreciate you!
One of the most challenging things about working in education is that only a fraction of what we do ācountsā. We are asked to gather evidence to meet KPIs, but that represents only a tiny amount of the work that we do. Enter the Bowerbird. I encountered him also when I was doing my PhD and I tell the whole story in a blog, which Iāve put on the Padlet.Ā
He lives in South East Australia where he hops around on the forest floor, searching for blue shiny things, with which he decorates a beautiful bower - not to live in, but to attract a mate. What I love most of all is that these blue shiny things are mainly the detritus of human life - plastic straws and bottle tops - repurposed into something beautiful. The stories of our work are the blue shiny things - a photo here, a thank you card, a tweet, a word in the corridor - where are they archived? In FE, where the Bowerbird has a lot of fans, the shiny blue things are articulated and stories are told. A whole chorus of Bowerbird song playing out in research, blogs, articles, podcasts, social media and the rest. Across education, only early years comes close to this rich landscape of publicly available practitioner voices.
I hope you have enjoyed listening to these stories of joy and that you will join usā¦just follow the Bowerbird (OK, follow the hashtag #JoyFEš). It really is time for a #JoyHEš - a place of belonging, respite, inspiration and also changemaking. JoyFEers think of themselves as Golden Unicorns - again in the words of BrenĆ© Brown. People embedded in their organisations who know the culture, who have the ideas and who are finally demanding to make change. I would love to see that catching on across the piece and god knows, HE needs it. We are always here, as your fellow geese and critical friends.
I was so lucky in my PhD to have Sarah Amsler as my external examiner. Sarah writes about light - or possibility - in dark times. We all carry the internal light of joy, but sometimes itās hard to believe that āpossibilityā is even possible. We have to believe that it is, and that the key to that is sharing our joyful collective energy. Hereās a quote from Sarahās book that I wanted to share with you today:
ā[I wanted to write a book that] focuses on the cultural practices of teachers, artists and cultural activists who are working both inside and outside existing institutions to create and protect spaces of possibility for radical democracy in everyday life.ā
Thatās you.
And, as Rebecca Solnit writes: āThe stars we are given, the constellations we make.ā
Finally, I want to return to the bigger picture, bigger even than education this time. Friends, we simply canāt go on like this in the world. And while the power people are battling it out at the top, Iām telling you that we are the people who can change things. If not us, who? And if not now, when? In the words of brilliant educational researcher Leigh Patel, we need to move from accountability (to what? āThe Manā?) to āanswerabilityā - answerability to the earth, to each other and to a decent set of values which really must include joy.
So good to read this - reconsolidating what I have grown to know , learn about , and enjoy so much being a part of this rich joyful community as in #JoyFEš ever evolving : JoyHEš whatās not to like ? Great presentation as always packed full of shiny treasures ā¦