Blog

I am writing in response to your article in the TES 25th March 2016 ‘Has the resilience ship sailed?’. Yes, I am totally in agreement with you that ‘resilience’ is a term bandied about the educational world all the time at the moment, and that there seems to be a lack of clarity and consistency about what it actually means.

Lots of different people at the Resilience Forum today to listen to Ann Hagell and John Coleman speak about their resilience toolkit, which they were funded to make for Public Health England. They’re from the Association for Young People’s Health (AYPH).

Excitement built as we pulled out of the morning rush hour traffic, heading for Leeds, to find a parking space in Elland Road football stadium. I’ve frequently imagined this venue over the years, home to a team who liked to kick lumps out of my champions, Chelsea, in the 70s.

On Tuesday 6 September 2016 I took my first ever trip to Sheffield for the end of programme exhibition for Imagine, a Connected Communities research programme funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) through the Connected Communities programme.

The adversity context for adolescents in Mandie’s study included pressure from the media and from school to dress a certain way, be a certain weight, and achieve academically. Family breakdown and bullying were also part of the context. But she doesn’t want to just do what other research says and call all these risks. For her, these are explanations, not labels.

Steph, one of our PhD students, along with colleagues Graham (head teacher), and Jerry and Charlotte (support workers), are talking about the great work that has been going on at Eleanor Smith special school in Newham. They’ve been implementing a whole school approach to resilience, based on the Resilience Framework.

Recently, a crack team of Boingboingers answered a call from our fearless founder, Angie Hart. Our mission, which we accepted, was to promote Boingboing’s resilience tools at the Utopia Fair 2016 by staffing our own Resilience Tools stall. The tools have all been co-produced with young people facing additional barriers to resilience as part of the Designing Resilience Project.

Sam Hart shared her knowledge and understanding of trauma and incarcerated individuals, based on her experiences and trip to the USA through the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Fellowship. Her scholarship focus was families of incarcerated individuals through a “trauma informed lens”.

Dr Hayley Walker-Williams and Professor Anise Fouché from the North West University, Vanderbijlpark, South Africa, presented the Survivor to Thriver strengths-based group intervention promoting resilience & enabling posttraumatic growth in women who experienced childhood sexual abuse in South Africa.

So there I was: slightly disoriented, a little sweaty, surrounded by thousands of other young people. All of us were listening to a performance of Lukas Graham’s ‘7 Years’. I know what you’re thinking, and the answer is no. I wasn’t at a concert or in a stuffy nightclub somewhere in London. Instead, I was in Strasbourg, France, enjoying the opening ceremony of the European Youth Event (EYE) 2016.

After many years of hanging around with academics I have learnt that ‘community partners’ is code in the international university world for ‘organisations and people who are NOT quite as important as us’. In my head I have often added my own secret addition ‘but are actually doing real things with real people’. This is why I like working with the Boingboing community and CUPP.

The creative task ahead of us in forming a future vision was based on the Miracle Question (from Solution Focused Therapy), and is something that anybody can do. The Question is this: “What would the ideal day look like for you if all barriers were removed?”

Prof Sue Kildea’s doing her talk on Indigenous birthing in an urban setting. Sue’s been working in this area for years now, though often out in the most remote parts of Australia. Working side by side with Indigenous Australians, she’s learnt loads about Aboriginal health and culture. I’m so excited that she’s here.

Co-production in resilience research and why it’s great is on the bill for today’s Resilience Forum. Anne Rathbone, PhD student in the Boingboing group at the University of Brighton, has been working with Arts Connect, a group supporting people with learning disabilities through Arts Practices, for 18 months now. They’re doing a co-inquiry group on resilience. She’s at the podium, along with Mikey and Dominic from Arts Connect.