We Learn

The design group of potential Give a Day leaders had to decide how to communicate the idea to people and places around the country. We created a mythical person in a small town in Norfolk who would get something, a leaflet, a video, an assistant; something that would allow her and her friends to lead…

Give a Day was born as a response to floods in the city of Carlisle that left people stranded without food, or temporarily homeless. Rebecca Solnit’s book A Paradise Built in Hell,1 charts civil society responses to disasters (natural or man-made) over 100 years, disasters like the San Francisco earthquake, Hurricane Katrina, and 9/11. Solnit…

The work of Robert Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett1 resonated with the design team. They used socio-demographic data to chart change in U.S. society from 1850 to 2020. From 1850 to around 1925, the U.S. was an ‘I’ society, fiercely individualistic, dog eat dog, winner takes all. From 1925 to 1965 it was a ‘We’…

Young and old. Working people and retired people. Working people and unemployed people. People who have their own business with people who work for others. People working in health with people from the arts industry. People who have a disability with people who are fighting addiction. People who work in public institutions with people who…

It is Give a Day to Carlisle; Give a Day to Kendall; and Give a Day to Ayr. It is Give a Day to your place, your community, town or city. Place is used in many ways in U.K. social policy and philanthropy. In our conversations, we reflected on what place means to the emerging…

Give a Day is values driven. (There is no organisation, so values are the core to the approach). Finding a shared language to express those values takes time. In the initial reflections the words, compassion, generosity and hope strongly resonated with the design group. Pride in place is also core. It is Give a Day…

The first meeting of people interested in doing Give a Day took place in November 2019. People came from Ayr, Dungannon, Falkirk, Kendall, Longtown, and Oxford to a two-day convening in Carlisle. People came under their own steam, and stayed with local people, an indication of the interest in and commitment to the idea. There…

Civil society is broad ranging. It includes social supports such as charities. It extends to the work of trade unions. Often overlooked is the activity of associations and clubs. All of this is fundamental to healthy communities. Our interest, in this work, is in another often neglected part of civil society. We refer to it…

The learning has gone through two distinct phases. In Phase 1, the design group from Ayr, Barrow, Carlisle, Kendall, Longtown, and Liverpool met in person (in Carlisle) and online regularly to capture the core elements of Give a Day and replicate them. Two of the places have delivered Give a Day in 2022, and one…

Ratio is the learning partner. We take a radically different approach to design and discovery. We call it relational learning. We design with people who will use an innovation in the place where they will use it. In our work, data is not a statement. It is used as a feedback loop to help those…