Spinning Plates - A look back over two really hectic weeks

When I started this blog it was to hopefully help people see how we do things on our limited resources and also explain why we can't do everything we're asked to! These past two weeks have been a good example of some of the pressures we've put ourselves under as a charity.

There has been a huge amount of interest in the work of the charity thanks to the fantastic piece that appeared in The Guardian's Do Something supplement a couple of weeks ago.
We have been inundated with people wanting to either set up their own version of Gig Buddies in their town or wanting to volunteer. It really has been fantastic to hear the level of interest there is and we're working hard on the plan to get sharing the scheme.

As mentioned in my last post the first step is get the pilot working well in Australia, and then Scotland, so we can be sure of being able to share the model without losing the integrity of what makes it special.

We've also had a busy time with me being asked to lead a workshop discussion at Richmond Borough Council's Learning Disability Forum and also speak at Lemos and Crane's conference in London around providing community based activities for people with learning disabilities. I love doing these things as it's really important for us to engage people in our ideas and share our work but it's also becoming increasingly difficult to fit these in with my work commitments, but will aim to continue doing what we can.

This evening I'll be sorting out the publicity to promote the next Kiss My Disco night, which will be the last one we actively promote as we're handing this over to Freshtrack DJ workshops to try and free up some time. I'm also just finalising some easy to read health promotion guides which will be up on our website shortly, and checking the team have everything they need before they head off to Madrid on Wednesday for the next leg of the ART-is project.
And if there's time there's a funding application I need to get submitted shortly.

The one plate I've deliberately stopped spinning this week is my inbox. On Friday I decided to take an internet holiday and turned everything off and we went away for the evening.
I'd had a couple of emails earlier in the week that had frustrated me a little.

One email was from a founder of a small charity who was asking why we weren't able to link their charity to our website (because we don't have a page set up to do that). I thought I'd helpfully suggested that the best way to create links was to have an active social media presence to make it easy for people. They said they didn't want to do this as they didn't want more emails coming in (maybe actually they're quite wise) but it frustrates me when charity's don't get the importance of an active social presence.

The other email that frustrated me was one from someone complaining that we only run events in the South East and the North East is under-represented. The reason we only stage events in the South East? Because that's where we live! I replied nicely but made the point that we need to take responsibility for making stuff happen if we think there's a need.

Neither of these people replied to my emails either - and I thought my tone had been nice and helpful, maybe not!

So you might be thinking I'm getting some irrational stress levels from my inbox and you're probably right. I always aim to respond to messages but these past two weeks have been incredibly hectic so I'll continue to apply my policy of replying when I can but this week I decided it was time to take an internet holiday. So I switched everything off, went away for the night and had a thoroughly relaxing time.

Next up I've got a Skype meeting with one of our trustees tomorrow evening to plan the business planning workshop at our next trustees meeting, and I'll be trying to answer a few of those emails too.