Changing Relations

Our 2 new Navigating Vulnerability workshops are live to book folks.

These pilot workshops will create an engaging reflective space to support:

💞 frontline practitioners to develop their practice around holding the emotional load of others (Wed 15 July)

💞 managers to enhance support structures to protect the wellbeing of staff navigating participant vulnerabilities (Thu 16 July)

These workshops will draw from interviews we have undertaken with people in a range of roles whose work, in one way or another, involves holding the emotional load of others. We spoke to professionals within domestic abuse specialist support, the wider voluntary sector, the culture sector, as well as those working in schools and university settings.

Illustrator has created a series of images that visually represent the key themes that emerged to provide an engaging way in to these rich and varied conversations.

Whilst each workshop will focus on the perspective relevant to the target audience of frontline practitioners and managers respectively, both will create an opportunity to:

💡 Identify the contexts, tasks and roles that involve emotional load and what that can look like

💡 Acknowledge the implications - both practical and personal - of this kind of work, including where practitioners may hold their own challenging lived experience

💡 Embrace the value of such lived experience

💡 Explore boundary-setting and what is needed to facilitate this

💡 Consider a range of coping strategies, processing frameworks and support structures

We are keen to understand the value that practitioners and managers from different sectors take from this workshop and what else we could develop to support those who are navigating vulnerability in their work.

This work has been developed with support from

📆 Workshop for practitioners - Wed 15 July 12.30-2.30pm - https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1989317004712

📆 Workshop for managers - Thu 16 July 12.30-2.30pm - https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1989317549341

Looking forward to seeing you there!

(links in bio)

We've always been conscious that working with challenging themes such as domestic abuse & sexual consent involves carrying a heavy emotional load for practitioners, particularly where this results in participant disclosures & where practitioners are navigating the weight of their own difficult lived experience.

It's why our Artistic Director@kategormanjewel is so passionate about bringing a care-based practice to our project management.

But over time, we have observed - across the various sectors we engage in - that the practice of recognising & consciously working to support those whose roles involve carrying an emotional load, is patchy.

We've seen some amazing practice.

We're also conscious of many gaps, of an inconsistency in funders recognising this aspect of the work they are supporting, of culture sector freelancers falling through the cracks & left to manage the load of others once a project has ended, of those at the top of organisations carrying a huge weight of the vulnerability passed up the tree from participant to practitioner to manager & not necessarily having clear pathways to ensure they too are fine.

So we decided to tackle it head on.

Over the last month, we have been interviewing people in a range of roles from a range of sectors to understand what it's like to carry emotional load in the work that you do & what personal coping strategies, frameworks & organisational structures & approaches enable them to keep on keeping on.

What we have gathered will have great value for practitioners navigating vulnerability on the frontline as well as those in management roles & we have planned 2 training sessions to pilot this content:

📆 Wednesday 15th July, 12.30-2.30pm for PRACTITIONERS
📆 Thursday 16th July, 12.30-2.30pm for MANAGERS

Keep your eyes peeled for booking links!

We're super grateful to for supporting this new development under our core theme of Inclusive Practice.

And to our lovely illustrator for throwing together this work-in-progress image before they dive into the interview content to visually represent the key emerging themes.

Lush workshop yesterday working with 's beautiful imagery around the theme of creating supportive workplace environments for staff who are navigating invisible disabilities.

Our lovely participants told us the session was "engaging, empowering, interesting, creative, accessible, open, thought-provoking, informative, safe, fun."

The booklet we worked so hard to create with support from support was really valued as a tool in its combination of testimony from those with lived experience of disability, together with impactful artwork visually representing the key themes that had emerged from the interviews we undertook.

If you would be interested in copies of the booklet for your workplace - or to support your own reflections on inclusive practice - or you would be interested in booking the workshop we have devised to give space for these valuable reflections - get in touch - [email protected]

Having some good chats with teachers at inclusion conference 😁

Getting ready for our stand at Schools North East Inclusion conference next week with some lovely new flyers about our schools workshop offers (thank you Megan Watson 🤩).

Looking forward to chatting to lots of teachers!

👋👋👋

Eeeeee!

Our new website is finally live!!!

This has been such a huge amount of work over a really long period of time.

Thanks so much to Vida Creative for making it look so fab 🤩

Take a look folks - https://changingrelations.co.uk/

Just want to take a moment to shout out to our gorgeously fabulous facilitation team - - beautifully captured for us here by the lovely .

These lasses have worked SO hard over the last academic year, consulting with our partner schools, carefully considering how to achieve learning on some really sensitive themes in a way that is fun and engaging. They're brought all their creativity and reflective thinking to the table to develop beautifully layered, iterative schemes of work that gradually build up children and young people's social emotional skills and insight. The timeline was super tight and the pilot delivery has been intense.

Particularly massive shout out to Sarah who has taken the lead on our education programme development, tirelessly pulling all the threads together behind-the-scenes, which she will in the next months be collating into educator toolkits to support the next phase of our A is for Amy / Sometimes it Hurts programme delivery, whereby we hand over to school and youth group partners to deliver what we have developed for themselves.

Can't wait to see it all come together.

Lasses you should all be very proud 💖 💖 💖

here

I know we've already done an "oooh we won an award" post.

But look - it came with a trophy!!!

Here we are with our lush Primary School partners at St John's School in Benwell, reviewing the last term of pilot delivery of our Sometimes it Hurts programme with their KS2 children as well as our partners at Copeland Road Primary School in West Auckland and Edmondsley Primary Academy near Chester-le-Street.

It was so moving to hear about the children's development of a really nuanced and complex insight into emotions, including how it can be possible to feel conflicting feelings at once and the strategies they can use to soothe themselves and support their friends.

And to feel how much our partner teachers appreciated what we had shared with them and how keen they are to continue implementing this content in the next phase of development where it will be on them to deliver in place of our wonderful creative facilitators and .

Very proud.

But also slightly embarrassed that everyone told me I had to do a pose with the trophy as if I was holding the FA Cup 😆

Thanks so much to the North East Museums & North East and North Cumbria Child Health and Wellbeing Network teams for our lovely Chris Drinkwater award trophy! We are very chuffed.

Did you know that it's the International Day for Health and Safety in the Workplace tomorrow?

We just thought we'd drop in to flag our upcoming Invisible Visible Management Workshop which aims to help you reimagine disability and create a workplace culture that enables all of your staff to thrive.

The workshop is based around Invisible Visible - a digital exhibition we supported artist Hope Caitlin to develop that explores disability and the barriers to workplace inclusion.

Our Management workshop will use Hope's beautiful artwork as a creative way to explore our understanding of disability in the workplace, considering the challenges faced by those with experience of disability but also the unique contribution they are able to make.

We aim to:

🫶 Foster a deeper understanding between professional leaders and disabled employees, creating a space of safe and inclusive communication
🫶 Enable you to recognise the often invisible barriers that prevent your disabled employees from thriving
🫶 Identify actionable steps to improve work life balance as it pertains to disability and chronic illness

Thanks so much to for hosting this in-person workshop -

🏛️ in the lovely Learning Centre attached to the Palace Green Library
🕰️ on Tuesday 2nd June from 12pm - 2pm

We just have 4 places left so don't miss out!

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/invisible-visible-management-workshop-tickets-1985058992884

If you would be interested in a webinar iteration of this workshop please drop us a DM and we'll make a plan to schedule something together online as an alternative option where this feels more convenient / accessible 🙏