Lemn Sissay on collaboration and driving change
L to R: Rachael, Lemn, Alison
This week it’s the Nantwich Words and Music Festival, an annual event which brings some fantastic events, gigs and readings to our town.
On Tuesday 15th October my good friend Rachael and I went to see Lemn Sissay whose job description is; “I write stuff. Stuff that. Stuff that I like.”
After an eclectic mix of inspirational, hard-hitting and surreal ‘sandwich’ poetry, we had a Q and A session. A question about how we save youth clubs, led to interesting views from Lemn on how we drive change. He challenged some limiting assumptions about how we manage change. We can move away from the model of ‘us and them’; managers and teams, directors and doers. We can start to think about shared leadership, adopting ways of working that enable all of us to take action, working in collaboration, rather than hierarchy, to bring about the change we want to see.
As an example of this, Lemn talked about The Christmas Dinner. This is an annual project, founded by him, for ‘communities to provide a Christmas Day for care leavers aged between 18 and 25 – one they’ll never forget.’
Lemn described everyone getting round a table with a common purpose. Each member of the team comes to volunteer their time and contribute to the day bound by their shared beliefs and energised by their vision of what they can achieve together.
It was really moving to hear how the group collaborate, sharing the leadership, knowing what part they can play and pledging their contribution to deliver something amazing.
What happens is magic, every Christmas Day.
To find out more about Lemn visit: www.lemnsissay.com
To find out more about The Christmas Dinner visit: thechristmasdinners.org.uk/christmas-present/
