Author: drnicko

Awarded an MBE for services to arts-based businesses, I am passionate about generating inspiring, socially engaging, creative practice within educational contexts both nationally and internationally.

All Our Futures: International Education Conference at Hull University Welcoming Speech

Hull has been the City which helped me makes send of the turbulent times that had been going on in the English education system since 1997.

I was a relative newcomer to working in schools in 2002 when I joined the Aspire Trust. My memories of primary and secondary statutory education were mixed – a disrupted primary education, marred by parental disputes and continued house moving was followed by a secondary phase which was altogether more stable and safe and provided a context which allowed me and many of my school friends to look back in pleasure at those halcyon school days. Not quite ‘the best days of our lives’ but not far off it we all agreed when we met some weeks ago on a school reunion which took us back to the site where we had met some 40 years back.

But my friends and I were in one sense a privileged few. We had the benefit of having passed the state’s 11+ exam which allowed us then to be accepted at the local grammar school. Others though in our class were not so fortunate. Whether this was due to their being less academically inclined, less prepared to comply with the demands that primary schools made in those days, or just had a bad day when it came to sitting the test, their failure to pass that exam at such a young age meant that they were parcelled off to the local comprehensive school.

Whilst they too may look back at their time in secondary school as being the best days of their lives, we shall never know; that splitting of us at 11 years old made sure that we followed different educational paths, established different social networks and altogether had vastly different expectations of us. It was expected of us that we would be prepared for university; other our friends (who our parents talked about in hushed tones as somehow having ‘failed’ something) were prepared for the world of work – which in those days meant some kind of vocational training in retail, industry or perhaps even the armed forces.

In those days there was a definite split in the English education system – the academically capable went to grammar schools, those who weren’t, didn’t. Those who went to grammar school were prepared for university and careers in the professions; those who didn’t, weren’t. Those who went to university and the professions were prepared to run the country; those who weren’t, didn’t.

This split at 11 year old was – and to a large extent, still is – a reflection of the bipartheid nature of the English education system. This system still perpetuates today the polarity of the academic versus the vocational education in this country.

There are many other awkward and contestable polarities in our education system which you will no doubt encounter this week in your visits to our schools in Hull. The pressure for children to achieves versus the desire for them to enjoy their education; the need to behave within a certain type of socially acceptable behaviours versus the desire to ensure every child’s education should be about recognising them as unique individuals complete with their own dreams and desires; the pressure to train children for the work place and to gain employment in a real job versus the pressure to prepare children for life long learning and the vagaries of the future; the pressure to educate children in order to maintain social norms and to protect cultural values versus the pressure to educate to change the social norms.

These polarities are no doubt echoed in your own schools – and this is why we have called this conference, All Our Futures. It is clear to us that the challenges and joys we face in education here are the same challenges and joys that you face; whether this be dealing with the impact that a dysfunctional family can have on a five year old boys dreams, or witnessing the eureka moment when a 15 year old girl can play Beethoven’s Appassionata piano sonata all the way through for the first time.

Of course, our contexts are vastly different, our languages and cultural practices sometimes hard to fathom. No amount of conferencing will ever be able – nor should it ever endeavour to be able – to wipe away those differences and pretend that we can easily transport one set of educational tips and tricks to a far off land. Providing education is not like selling burgers at MacDonald’s.

Sometimes we may look at each other this week and realise that there are huge oceans of difference between us which can never be bridged. But we hope that our similarities and our common concerns will eventually bind us together this week in search for some solutions for the common good of all our children.

I hope that in our second All Our Futures conference that our mutual work, our shared conversations and our mutual presence will enable us to see ourselves as part of larger human jigsaw picture in which we all, like smaller jigsaw pieces need each other to fit together to provide a reflection of the human race as a whole.

I hope that we can paint a picture for our future generation of children and learners and that they can say that their futures started with All Our Futures here, today.

What is an entrepreneurial city? What are its building blocks and whose doing the building?

We’d best be mindful that entrepreneurship is (at least) a double edge sword – carrying with it connotations of Delboy behaviour, illicit grey economy dealings, making a quick buck doubly fast but without a grain of civilising or moral coding behind it.

Whilst it can mean being creative, innovative, flexible, and focused on spotting income generation opportunities when none existed before, none of these things in their own right are necessarily ‘good’ or ‘bad’ things. It depends on what is done in the name of entrepreneurship as to its resultant value.

So, an entrepreneurial city could either be the city from hell – much like Tokyo in Bladerunners, or it could be an en-nobled, ennobling civilised space in which people’s entrepreneurial behaviour is directed towards the greater good rather than their own bank accounts. An entrepreneurial city could either be filled with wide boys, hoods and spivs – or it could be like Venice. Or both. The choice is ours – i.e. all the inhabitants of that city, not just the choice of the ‘entrepreneurs’ whose interest might just be focused on their own economic destiny.

The building blocks of an entrepreneurial city might be

…The way it treats its poor, its excluded and its disillusioned
…The way it gives air time and political influence to individual spirits
…The way it doesn’t preferentially focus on the ‘big boys’ of the economy but supports the development of nano-, micro- and mini- SMEs
…The way it recognises and values local culture – not just traditional, mainstream arts and museums but the myriad of ways in which people go about things and create value, difference and impact
…The way it values diversity and difference
…The way it doesn’t only tolerate dissention but appreciates it
…The way it regulates itself and public behaviours
…The way it values risk, challenge and uncertainty
…The way it engages with the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi: a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is “imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete” (Wikipedia)

So, if we want to start making an entrepreneurial city we’re probably best starting at home. Our offices and premises could be reflective of those building blocks; we should worry less about PR aspects and not be so anxious about making mistakes.

Entrepreneurialism is founded on risk, learning, making mistakes and recovery. If we want to encourage that, we have to breath the same kind of air once in a while too.

An Open Letter to Chris Evans: Score yourself out of 10: 1 billion? Well done you!

The British DJ, Chris Evans, has a slot on his primetime radio show in the morming where he invites children to tell the audience what they are going to do for the first time ever that day. The next day he phones them back and asks them how the experience was, and for them to “score yourself out of 10” as a way of self-evaluating the experience.

A few children self deprecatingly give themselves a modest 6 or 7 out of 10 but many more jump into the self evaluation task with glee and award themselves anything from 11 to 3000 to a billion out of 10.

And well done them! If only every self evaluation process was so generous in its spirit, so forthcoming with the marks and the ticked-up boxes. Wouldn’t it be great if, on completing our driving test and being asked by the instructor how well we thought we had done after running over that cyclist, we could return with the answer ‘masterly’?

Wouldn’t it just take the biscuit if when being asked how much tax we had paid last year we could say, like all the big grown up companies out there, that we had paid a zillion pounds in corporation tax rather than the sixpence ha’penny our accountants had racked up on our behalf?

No more will OfSTED be able to rank a school as satisfactory when the children will say it is supercalfragilisticexpialidocious and award everyone working in it pay rises of over a squillion per cent.

Chris Evans is doing wonders for our future generations of children by encouraging them to inflate their self-worth beyond measure from a very early age. We’ll appreciate it in our dotage when when we visit those children who’ve turned into bank managers themselves. They’ll reassure us that our pensions have increased in value by the very fantastic sum of 33 gazillion per cent interest and they’re loving evey minute of it. Well done Chris!

All Our Futures: International Educational Study Visit to Liverpool in partnership with the British Council Bulgaria

All Our Futures is Aspire’s annual conference for international head teachers which will take place in Liverpool between 4 and 8 March 2013. The event aims to introduce pedagogical practices which are being applied at various levels in English schools by providing participants with exclusive, intense immersive experiences in schools and do generate unique, high quality insights into teaching and learning.

We are delighted to announce that this year, All Our Futures is being produced in partnership with the British Council in Bulgaria: so we will be particularly looking forward to meeting Head teachers from Bulgaria and the wider Balkan region and introducing them to our schools in Liverpool.

Further details are here:

http://www.aspire-trust.org/all-our-futures-2013-2/

and photos of the visit here:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151543038237812.1073741827.657337811&type=1

So Coca Cola want to have a ‘conversation’? Two words to start with

Coca Cola in their eminent benign wisdom have announced today that they want to have a ‘conversation’ – presumably with all of us – about the effects their ‘drinks’ are having on the obesity ‘epidemic’ which is sweeping all before it. Whether you hang out in the streets of Manila, watching the street urchins carve out their financial futures from those omnipresent red and and white tins; or you stock break in Frankfurt whilst watching millions of people’s financial futures drop off imaginary cliffs whilst supping your caffeine free, sugar free, value free ‘drink’, Coca Cola want to engage you in a ‘conversation’ about your drinking habits.

The notion of the ‘conversation’ has crept up on all of us across the world it seems, most notably in many public sector bodies who have liked its liberal, paternalistic overtones for years. It is frequently attached to a similarly slippery notion, that of ‘the offer’. “Here you are,” they smile, “here is our ‘offer’ to you and we would like to have a ‘conversation’ with you about it.” If you’re really lucky, there may be some ‘drilling down’ into ‘the offer’ as a way of extending ‘the conversation’.

The benign idea that somehow this multi-trillion private sector is going to sit down at some kind of large kitchen table and enquire about our collective health and worry about our expanding waist lines, fatty livers and soaring blood pressure is not an image which is particularly convincing.

Trouble is, a ‘conversation’ usually depends on one person in dialogue with another which wrestles out meaning between the two of them: meaning which wasn’t there in the first place and has been constructed through that wrestling match. It’s not about one person insisting that their monologue is somehow more important than the other persons; and that if person B could somehow get their thick head around the sense and logic and inexorable correctness of what person A is saying then person B would be a lot better off, healthier, more intelligent and most crucially a better behaved consumer.

And that’s the main problem with the ‘conversation’ wherever you hear it. It’s perpetrators want to modify your behaviour, whilst not modifying their own contribution to that behaviour. Their ‘conversation’ is more frequently their monologue masquerading as a dialogue with you nodding in agreement to all their wisdom. Just two words are needed to change this nature of the modern day ‘conversation’ and neither of them include the words ‘Yes, please.’

Automation Nightmare: just what IS so wrong with paper based systems?

We have become so accustomed to automated systems in almost every aspect of our lives; everything from booking a train ticket to downloading a tune to flossing our teeth: there’s nothing in the world apparently that can’t be automated, or which can’t benefit from the collective minds and wisdom of keen young men and women who wish to do away with the messiness of everyday life and replace it with the shiny new bullet of automation.

Organisational procedures are a case in point. Where once we had paper based systems for recording our attendance, our interest and whether we were any good at things or not, all this is being swept away in the joy and apparently trouble free system of the web based, automated system which can conjure up data at frightening, tera-rates of activity. Trouble is, whilst supremely seductive, shiny and dazzling in their cleaniness, automated systems also suffer invariably from varying degrees of stupidity. You will no doubt have countless stories of lost train tickets, i-tunes that are tuneless and teeth that fall out as a result of your over enthusiastic flossing toothbrush.

What’s particularly frustrating is the apparent unwillingness of these so called intelligent systems to admit their stupidity and allow for a degree of unknowability to be flagged up on the website once you start using them. Paper based systems may well have been messy and unreliable – but at least you could screw them up, kick them into the waste paper basket and start all over again.

Beyond Leadership: International Business Conference on export and international trade at Lancaster University, March 2013

The pressure on businesses to survive and thrive through developing their export capacity are growing weekly. Hardly a day goes by without some politician or business leader exhorting businesses to develop their international links and export capabilities. But authentic and inspiring knowledge, advice and guidance can be hard to find. All too frequently, businesses can be offered superficial solutions to complex, strategic problems.

Beyond Leadership aims to reverse this trend by offering business leaders and acclaimed business academics the space, time and opportunities to meet, converse and establish meaningful long term dialogue between each other. The conference will offer opportunities to re-think strategic approaches to export and international trade and establish vital new links between the higher education sector, businesses and international partners.

Beyond Leadership is for business professionals, academics and researchers who specialise in business and those who practise leadership especially in international trade and export contexts. It is suitable for both those businesses who are new to export and existing, well established exporters. The conference will enable you to make new business and academic connections, develop new knowledge about export, develop new approaches to strategic development and increase your capacity to grow your business both nationally and internationally.

Co-produced by the Aspire Trust and the Grove International Management School, this event is for practitioners, academics and researchers and those who practice leadership in any kind of organisational setting especially in overseas trade.

The event will take place at Lancaster University on 21 and 22 March 2013. For further details, and to book your place please contact us at nick@aspire-trust.org.

Resistance isn’t Futile! Telling our stories of the Labour Movement

The Aspire Trust is one of the first groups in the UK to receive a Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) All Our Stories Grant for its challenging and inspiring new project “Resistance Isn’t Futile: Combination, Mutuality, Solidarity and Aspiration”: an exploration of the history of labour movements and trade union activity in the North West between 1830 and 1950..

The project will access the collection of Keith Hackett, who has amassed a significant archive of labour related artefacts from the region. This currently private collection will be made into a public resource through a process of researching, cataloguing, digitising and a series of community-focused research and story telling events.

All Our Stories – a brand new small grant programme launched earlier this year in support of BBC Two’s The Great British Story – has been designed as an opportunity for everyone to get involved in their heritage. With HLF funding and support, community groups will carry out activities that help people explore, share and celebrate their local heritage.

The popular series presented by historian Michael Wood and supported by a programme of BBC Learning activities and events got thousands of us asking questions about our history and inspired us to look at our history in a different way through the eyes of ordinary people.

The programme and HLF All Our Stories has proved a real hit and Resistance Isn’t Futile is one of hundreds of successful projects around the UK to receive a grant. The project will begin with the digitising and cataloguing of more than 400 items from trade unions, mutual benefit societies, friendly societies etc which will be made available online. 12 key pieces will be identified for further research and each of these will provide the focus for a community-led research project. The Aspire Trust will work alongside each community group to examine the stories and histories related to each artefact.

TV presenter and historian Michael Wood, said: “We British love our history, and no wonder: few nations in the world, if any, have such riches on their doorstep, and so much of it accessible to all of us. It is really tremendous that the people of the North West have been inspired to get involved to tell their own story and to dig deeper into their own past. It’s brilliant that so many people are being given the chance to get involved through the All Our Stories grants. Having travelled the length and breadth of the British Isles this last year filming The Great British Story, I am certain that fascinating and moving stories will be uncovered which will not only bring to life the excitement of local history, but will illuminate and enrich every community’s connection with the national narrative.”

Keith Hackett said: “I have collected and kept these items safe – some for almost forty years – because for me they give testament to the efforts of extraordinary ordinary people to improve their worlds – and make them better for their own generation and for generations to come. Every items has a story to tell, and most name the people whose efforts they valour-ate. Whilst the objects themselves are in their own ways stunning, beautiful and inspiring …. behind each one lies the efforts, beliefs and achievements of real people …. and it is their stories that will truly bring these objects back to life and relevance in today’s world.”

We were delighted to be approached by Keith to play our part in telling the stories of the labour movement’s history in the North West. The notion of public service is taking a hammering in these days of cut backs and recession, and we hope that our “Resistance Isn’t Futile” project will rebalance many of the stories that are being told in Britain right now about the role the labour movement and working people can play in making this a great country to live in.

For further information please visit http://www.aspire-trust.org

Hello all you readers in Indonesia!

We are honoured to welcome one of Indonesia’s leading performers and Youth Choirs to the Opening Day of All Our Futures International Education and Business Conference at the Cunard Building, Liverpool on Monday 16 June.

The “Lady In Red” Ms. Meily F.Pungus is an international vocal artist resident in Manado, North Sulawesi in Eastern Indonesia. Known as the Indonesian “Lady in Red” Meily delivers a special experience from the range of international hits delivered in her own distinctive rendition. The unique style and range of Meily does justice to acclaimed performances of superstars including Whitney Houston, Adele, Celine Dione and Maria Carey to name a few, and the versatility and range of her talent know no bounds.

Meily performs as the lead singer with the City of Manado Youth Choir delivering popular hits tunes and spiritual rendition of gospel and themed huts from screen and stage. Meily tailors her performance with her team to satisfy and excel in the local culture and feeling of the city she performs in. She is already a master of many of the Beatles Hits, Adele and other UK superstars in the singing world and we can’t wait to welcome her to the home of the Beatles!

For more information about All Our Futures, click here.