Centrestage - Tuesday 2nd April

Today , we drove down to Kilmarton, Ayrshire to meet with Lynn Hendry, Fiona McKenzie and Paul. I’d read a bit about the Tom Hunter Foundation last night but seeing it first hand was something else. Nobody was introduced by job titles or roles – they just spoke passionately about what they do, how they reach out to the people they serve and where they’ve come in the past 13 years.

Fiona was a school music teacher and told me of her transition from classroom to Catalyst – a program in a prison where 4 of her previous students came along because they’d liked her as a teacher. Before long, she had them singing along. She’s fun, dynamic and showed me how a disrupter can bring about change in a fabulous way.

We talked about relationships and trust as the key to engagement and developing self-worth, before people open up to reveal their needs. Food helped too. They work up and down Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in a way that is not traditionally taught, but they make it work. Their role is a lot about parenting and working with people of all ages in many different ways. Centrestage involves music and drama, but also has all the behind the scenes roles to allow full participation. Catalyst is the prison program. Fairshare takes food from supermarkets that would have gone to landfill and allows people to take what they need and contribute what they can. So it’s not a handout and allow them to retain dignity. They also used a strengths based tool rather than focusing on deficits and problems.

These were some themes that came across – Dignify and Stabilise, Choice leads to Agency, Find the Disrupters and allow them to develop the relationships that augment the disruption. I was so impressed at what venture philanthropy can achieve. We had a tour of the new old school they have recently obtained and they discussed their plans for making it a Centrestage village. They have many other networks and collaborations so that they work together as a village rather than siloed services with strict boundaries.

So I’ll be returning to Australia to find the “Tom Hunters”(Respected person with the resources) and the disrupters like Fiona to venture out to make change happen. I'd also love to come back in a year and see them settled into the new buidling.