Love: Love creates more capacity to care and grow and be stretched/extended. Love allows us to be courageous and beautiful, and to not fear discomfort. We commit to spreading love at every opportunity.
Curiosity: We are open to possibilities and actively explore the unknown. We test new approaches to systems and organising. This is sometimes painful but we recognise it’s where the growth is.
Collectivism: We value what each individual brings to the space at all times. We believe in a collective effort, understanding in order to go far we must work and build with others.
Equity: We understand we must go further than ‘equality’, ‘diversity’, and ‘inclusion’ and instead take a systemic and Intersectional approach, which ensures we recognise that we do not all start from the same place. We will take necessary action to address systemic barriers in our work.
Reciprocity: We nurture reciprocal relationships, with a balanced value exchange that benefits all. We celebrate our interdependence with each other and the world around us, and our mutual responsibility to support one another to create a thriving system.
As fellow Producer Ellie Hale so eloquently puts it;
Obviously I’m biased but I can’t help feeling that if society at large followed these values — i.e. strengthened its muscles of love, reciprocity, collectivism, equity and curiosity — our individual and shared experience of this massive period of change that we’re all still clumsily, painfully navigating would be one of post-traumatic growth and solidarity, rather than stress and splitting.
How might we make sure these values stay ‘live’ and embed them into our work?
We will be:
- Recruiting according to values and behaviours, not just skills and experience.
- Regularly checking in on values in team meetings and celebrating shared examples of ‘values in action’.
- Creating a set of shared behaviours relating to each value (and identifying any non-desirable behaviours).
- Holding ourselves and others accountable when values are not being evidenced (or actively ignored).
- Encouraging our partners and network to consider establishing values and supporting this work.
- Aligning our work to our values — for instance if there is an opportunity presented for a new project, does it really fit?
- Assessing suppliers and partners fit with our values.
Be genuine, be authentic
Key takeaway — don’t just set values for the sake of it. Live them. Be authentic. Follow up with your actions. People will always remember how you made them feel over what you said (credit Maya Angelou). Be clear on what you will compromise and what you won’t.
Transition
Catalyst’s vision is huge and no one organisation can achieve this alone. Anyone acting towards that vision should feel able to act as (not with) Catalyst. But our research with the network showed that’s not always how it feels at the moment; we know there’s a need for more diverse and equitable representation and power distribution across Catalyst, and for partnership and governance models that better reflect our collective ethos.
In 2022, Catalyst's dedicated Producer team will review, renew and transition Catalyst into its next phase. They’ll look to bring coherence and shared understanding to big questions like ‘what and who is Catalyst?’, what kind of field-builder Catalyst should be and how information and value flows through the networks.
This will build on the work and learnings of experimental working groups that have been testing more decentralised forms of organising across Catalyst. These are helping explore key questions around where (and how) we go next.
How can you get involved?
We would love to hear from organisations or individuals keen to help civil society make the best use of digital, data and design.
You can see how to get involved and join our community, and we'll be looking to speak to a number of people and groups in the coming months as part of our review. Let us know if you'd particularly like to contribute to that. We look forward to you becoming a catalyst for change!
