Reflections on the Centre of Resilience for Social Justice meeting blog

Boingboing blogs from… The end of year celebration

The Centre of Resilience for Social Justice meeting: Capturing and expanding the resilience vision – 20 June 2019, University of Brighton

By Harvey Hill, Boingboing volunteer

Hi, this is Harvey here, Boingboing volunteer, to tell you about the great meeting of the Centre of Resilience for Social Justice, held at the Falmer Campus of the University of Brighton.

We arrived in room 115 of the Watson building, and were met with an array of brightly coloured resilience resources. I immediately felt at home, meeting some members of Blackpool Council who are working on the Resilience Revolution, in partnership with Boingboing. Our first task was to describe what resilience meant to us, using words, felt tips and very shiny stickers. My creation was on the abstract side, a spiral of yellow and black, representing how resilience to me is learning to balance the positive and the negative challenges, and accepting that you will never be able to control all aspects of your life.

After a brief introduction by Angie, we had time to network whilst munching on lunch (I particularly liked the glittery vegan brownies 😊). Over lunch I had the pleasure of meeting lots of passionate members of the resilience community, including people from CUPP, Boingboing, local councils and Blackpool to name but a few.

We then shuffled back into room 115 – with a few extra chairs – to hear presentations from all the branches of the Centre of Resilience for Social Justice. We heard about the work being done to increase the inclusion of resilience in the syllabus of nursing degrees, to hopefully increase the longevity of nurses’ careers, something that I thought was particularly relevant given the current staff shortages in the NHS.

Next we heard from a man wearing a nice shirt (I’m really bad with names, sorry) about an amazing project to give migrant children a bigger voice. He spoke about their ‘digital storytelling approach’; using videos and artwork to illustrate the stories of migrant children where they might not have had the opportunity to before.

The Resilience Revolution, based in Blackpool, was explained by Blackpudlians themselves (hope the journey wasn’t too bad ). They mentioned how the project had transitioned from its focus on ‘HeadStart’ to the revolution itself, as well as the increasing emphasis on co-production.

My friends, Lisa and Anne, gave presentations on the work of Boingboing. Lisa spoke about the importance of lived-experience representation within a service, and mentioned how you can find out more about this on Boingboing’s website! Anne spoke about co-producing improvements to counselling services with users, and how users mostly gave value-based recommendations, for example having welcoming receptionists.

I had to leave after this presentation but I was very sorry to miss the rest. It was a really great afternoon and so inspiring to see all the different work of the Centre. You can read Phil’s blog to find out more and check out the presentation slides.