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Rootedness

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“A human being is rooted through their real, active and natural participation in the life of a collectivity that keeps alive treasures of the past and has aspirations for the future.” — Simone Weil, The Need for Roots I increasingly think many people are not lonely because they lack connection, but because they lack rootedness.

Judgement

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The strongest form of judgement combines an understanding of the broader system with the ability to adapt to real circumstances;  and the problem is that systems tend to privilege the first and ignore the second.

-Joanna

Taxidermy

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Taxidermy is what happens when something living becomes easier to look at than to understand. In Seeing Like a State, Scott describes the way complex systems are stripped down into something static and legible. The result is tidy, but no longer true. The problem is not that we simplify. It’s that we forget what has … Read more

When Access Fails: A Practical Escalation Brief

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From time to time, I’m asked what to do when a venue’s lift is out of service and inclusive access is effectively lost. These situations are rarely malicious, but they are often mishandled — not because people don’t care, but because responsibility is diffuse, urgency is underestimated, and the implications aren’t clearly articulated. Recently, I … Read more

Some thoughts on inclusion

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I’ve been thinking about how easily inclusion slips from being a principle into being a tone.When that happens, it starts to sound kind, but it stops being equal. In many policy and practice settings, inclusion is now spoken about primarily in the language of care. People are to be looked after, supported, kept safe. These … Read more

The Disappearing Word: Conscience in Modern Leadership

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There was a time when conscience appeared naturally in the language of public life. Leaders invoked it without irony. It was understood as part of the moral architecture of leadership — not a private quirk, but a public expectation. Today the word sounds almost archaic, as though it belongs in sermons or memoirs rather than … Read more

Misfit

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I’ve always felt like a misfit among what I call the able-bodied folk or uprights. I knew I wouldn’t fit in – I come with wheels attached. Take sport, for example. Netball was the girls’ sport at school, but I couldn’t play school sports because the netball courts of the late 80s and 90s weren’t … Read more

was it heckling?

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I was asked not too long ago to start documenting some of those casual remarks and informal barbs that I experience as a woman with a disability—things that happen far more often than I care to admit. I’ve always been torn about whether this is a good idea. On one hand, sharing these experiences can … Read more

Trying to let them

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I recently came across a poem,, and I guess a self generated theory, and a controversy about the two. The poem itself has been very impactful even in a short period of time. It has spoken to my past. But even since I read it I feel like life has somehow conspired to give me … Read more