Background
Stepping stones
To the future
3 Min Read
The experience of being in the world right now often feels like a fast flowing river that could sweep you away at any moment. The river is deep, murky, powerful, complex. There is little to hold on to that feels familiar.
How can we possibly find our footing, and create a path towards a more equitable future?
Over the past four years of working with this question, we’ve learnt about some of the stages this involves. We have a sense of what they feel like, what gets in the way of moving forwards, and what skills, tools or practices might help us shift into a different way of working.
We see them as stepping stones: waypoints that we can build through that river, that give us a place to stand, and to see where we have come from and what we need to do next.
This is not a structure we set out to follow. Rather, like much of our learning, it is something that became visible to us in the ‘rear view mirror’. It is not a linear journey - zooming out would reveal a series of loops, criss-crossing each other and showing where we have moved back as often as forwards.
But thinking about the process in this way might help in finding a step that resonates with you. As the Irish idiom has it, they may “give you a place to stand when your feet are sore” - some solid ground where you can recognise your own experience reflected back, or find some useful ideas to take forward with you.
Throughout our website and in our publication, we have connected our learning, and our own journey, to these steps. It shows what we were thinking about and doing - and sometimes what we wish we’d known. The steps will look different in each place, but it will always be a long journey, so sharing what we learn could mean fewer people starting from scratch.
Here’s what it looked like for us:
Roots and readying –
The groundwork and conditions that need to be in place for a different way of working to emerge.
PARTNERSHIP AND PROGRAMME MODE –
Knowing something else is needed, coming together with a commitment to work differently and getting stuck in old patterns.
SPACES TO CONNECT AND REFLECT –
Relationships, spaces to connect and learning becoming the work.
SKILLS, STRUCTURES, SUPPORT –
Developing the skills and support needed to lean into difference, so we can have the challenging conversations that lead to more innovative ideas and actions.
COLLABORATIVE ARCHITECTURE –
Creating the infrastructure – the governance, fiscal hosting, funding and capacity – for an equitable civil society where communities have power and money to make decisions for themselves.
We imagine that a fully realised vision of a better future might take 10 stepping stones. We have an idea about step 5, but we don’t know what the others will be. The whole process is about doing the ‘next right thing’, while holding this future vision lightly as a north star. We hope that, by sharing our learning, you might be part of building those stepping stones where you are, which will in turn help us build ours.
