A week of endings and new beginnings

The past couple of weeks have been about endings and new beginnings, Spring is just round the corner and so it seems good to talk about new shoots of life, especially seeing how Gig Buddies is growing down under, but it's also been a time of me leaving one of my jobs and the sudden loss of our office. Here's what's been going on...

I’ve not been very god at keeping this blog going so far, and that’s not because I’ve been lazy, just the opposite, and no time or energy to sit down and blog.

The last few weeks have been quite momentous for me though. We had a fantastic time taking Gig Buddies to Australia, the response to the scheme over there has been quite overwhelming, with interviews on national radio and organisations in Perth, Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane all wanting to get involved. I hope our partners ACL Disability Services in Sydney know what they’ve got themselves in to! They were truly wonderful hosts too and really spoilt us with some great memories, and fantastic food.

On the way back from Australia I made a momentous decision though, since last summer I’ve been effectively balancing 3 jobs; working as the Involvement Manager at Southdown Housing, the Co-production adviser at Think Local Act Personal and overseeing the running of Stay Up Late in my spare time (unpaid).

Just before leaving for Australia I heard we’d been successful in getting some funding to develop the work we started around the Stay Up Late campaign – more on that another time – but it means we have the resources to actually pay me for 2 days a week to work at the charity.

I’ve therefore decided to leave my job at Southdown – to some people this may come as a bit of a shock – I’ve worked there nearly 20 years doing various jobs and they’ve been a great organisation to work for and have supported me fantastically over the years with Heavy Load and Stay Up Late. They’re also an organisation with fantastic values, always aiming to put the people they support first. Something we’re obviously big on both in Stay Up Late but also in the way we work at Think Local Act Personal.

So on the plane was the place that I wrote my letter of resignation. I was having real trouble sleeping too so had around 25 hours to think of what to write.

And then since getting back there’s also been quite a few other developments just in this past week:

• We’ve had requests to take Gig Buddies to Northern Ireland
• Campaigning organisations asking to work with us around the UK with some really interesting ideas coming out
• We’ve been invited to run something at a major UK festival (more on that soon too) – but this has got us really excited
• Held another great trustees meeting with a real sense of momentum and positivity in the meeting around our work
• We found out we’d got a small successful funding application approved, always nice, and from a large employer in the city, which is even better. 

But then we heard some disastrous news, we’d lost our office space! For the past year we’ve been enjoying free space in a disused office block with amazing views of Preston Park from our sixth floor spot which we were sharing with a couple of other community groups. Now the block is being turned in to housing and so we need to get out. It was a good thing while it lasted and has really helped us develop our work, having more office volunteers in, but come at just the worst time for us as we’re just about to take on 2 admin interns with learning disabilities and a new part-time admin worker. Whilst Starbucks is always an option for cheap ‘office space’ it’s not ideal and we’d rather be spending our money in more ethical ways.

This led to a frantic week of trying to find a new home and a place for all our stuff which we’ve accumulated over the years. By the end of the week we’d actually managed to find somewhere, thanks to our friends at CareCo-ops and also managed to find some temporary free storage too thanks to HoveMethodist Church. On top of that we can add ‘office move’ to the work experiences of our 2 new interns. (Big thanks too to Centric for hosting the free space for the past year – they’ve been a massive boost for us).

I was actually a little exhausted in thinking about the past few weeks and so had what I class as the ultimate treat on Saturday, a walk in the Sussex countryside with my family on a day when it feels like proper early spring. Wonderful.

Now I’m looking forward to planning our trip to Poland, talks at the Funky Llama and RiPFA conferences and writing a bid for Reaching Communities, as well as planning that trip to that music festival (as I say more on that soon!).

It's not been the easiest of weeks but things are now looking up.

Time to break out some good music to get me busy (really enjoying that new Sleater Kinny album by the way) and think about the lessons of the last week and look forward to the week ahead and a new future for me and the charity.