Barley field ready for harvest, with a summer sky at its background

The top TEN things inspiring the Catalyst Producers this month!

We’ve just passed Beltane, the official start of the Summer in Celtic pagan tradition. A time of bonfires, feasting and flower-harvesting. 

Our Steering Group have been harvesting insights from review research as they move into the complex, crunchy and creative work of model and governance design for the next phase of Catalyst. 

Our delivery partners continue to have fire in their bellies as they run and iterate a vast array of projects, services and experiments to support the sector. Read more about these in our latest News update, and see some of the humans impacted by Catalyst on our new interviews page

Meanwhile, Jo and I have been laying the groundwork for our new Operations Specialist to start this month (exciting!) and finding nourishment from inspiring voices, within and beyond the network. 

Here are some of our favourite morsels worth sharing… 

  1. Immy Kaur talks about The Power of Community Imagination and her journey to creating CIVIC SQUARE in this Planet Critical podcast - a beautiful reminder of what’s important and what’s possible
  2. Tulaine Montgomery, co-CEO of US-based venture philanthropy organization New Profit, pens a loving rallying cry to grantmakers in Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR), What’s Love Got to Do With It? Returning Philanthropy to Its Root
  3. Steering Group member Kate Swade shared this fab poem, The Seven Of Pentacles by Marge Piercy - the gardening and weaving metaphors resonate strongly!
  4. Jo read and loved I’m a fan by Sheena Patel, which offers ‘a devastating critique of social media, access and patriarchal systems’
  5. We’re big fans of the Leadermorphosis podcast and love the concept of ‘Inner Development Goals’ (IDGs) in this interview with Bernadette Wesley on Bridging inner and outer transformation
  6. Related to that, lots resonated from Transition Network's story of asking ‘What if we distributed power differently in our organisations? on the What If to What Next podcast. Great insights into their move to collective governance - a process that is now 8 years in! - and the common pitfalls along the way
  7. Creative or creepy? We’ve been enjoying following some of the AI-generated image bonanza happening on Midjourney and other tools
  8. April was Earth Month. If you didn’t catch David Attenborough’s latest Wild Isles BBC series, now is a good time to catch up - and don’t miss the sixth episode that’s only available online - a collaboration between the RSPB, WWF and National Trust, showing some of the brilliant people working to restore biodiversity in the UK
  9. I was lucky enough to see inspiring mycologist Paul Stamets live at Breaking Convention conference last month. If you love mycelia, you’ll enjoy this interview with him on Fungi, Heterodoxy and Systems (H/T Emily Bazalgette’s This Might Resonate newsletter)
  10. Finally, this SSIR article by the Ford Foundation’s Hillary Pennington on Tackling Inequality Through Social Innovation echoes a lot of our own sector trends and tech justice research projects. This quote in particular hit home:

“If the challenge of the past two decades has been to reckon with systems that are unfair, needless, and out-of-date, the challenge of our time is to replace them with systems that are more inclusive, more equitable, and built on an enduring foundation of justice for all.”

If you have a resource of any kind that you think we should have on our radar, please share it with us! We would love for the wider community to influence our work and provide creative input. 

Drop us a line at hello@thecatalyst.org.uk Or tweet us @wethecatalysts.

Image source: Unsplash

We’ve just passed Beltane, the official start of the Summer in Celtic pagan tradition. A time of bonfires, feasting and flower-harvesting. 

Our Steering Group have been harvesting insights from review research as they move into the complex, crunchy and creative work of model and governance design for the next phase of Catalyst. 

Our delivery partners continue to have fire in their bellies as they run and iterate a vast array of projects, services and experiments to support the sector. Read more about these in our latest News update, and see some of the humans impacted by Catalyst on our new interviews page

Meanwhile, Jo and I have been laying the groundwork for our new Operations Specialist to start this month (exciting!) and finding nourishment from inspiring voices, within and beyond the network. 

Here are some of our favourite morsels worth sharing… 

  1. Immy Kaur talks about The Power of Community Imagination and her journey to creating CIVIC SQUARE in this Planet Critical podcast - a beautiful reminder of what’s important and what’s possible
  2. Tulaine Montgomery, co-CEO of US-based venture philanthropy organization New Profit, pens a loving rallying cry to grantmakers in Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR), What’s Love Got to Do With It? Returning Philanthropy to Its Root
  3. Steering Group member Kate Swade shared this fab poem, The Seven Of Pentacles by Marge Piercy - the gardening and weaving metaphors resonate strongly!
  4. Jo read and loved I’m a fan by Sheena Patel, which offers ‘a devastating critique of social media, access and patriarchal systems’
  5. We’re big fans of the Leadermorphosis podcast and love the concept of ‘Inner Development Goals’ (IDGs) in this interview with Bernadette Wesley on Bridging inner and outer transformation
  6. Related to that, lots resonated from Transition Network's story of asking ‘What if we distributed power differently in our organisations? on the What If to What Next podcast. Great insights into their move to collective governance - a process that is now 8 years in! - and the common pitfalls along the way
  7. Creative or creepy? We’ve been enjoying following some of the AI-generated image bonanza happening on Midjourney and other tools
  8. April was Earth Month. If you didn’t catch David Attenborough’s latest Wild Isles BBC series, now is a good time to catch up - and don’t miss the sixth episode that’s only available online - a collaboration between the RSPB, WWF and National Trust, showing some of the brilliant people working to restore biodiversity in the UK
  9. I was lucky enough to see inspiring mycologist Paul Stamets live at Breaking Convention conference last month. If you love mycelia, you’ll enjoy this interview with him on Fungi, Heterodoxy and Systems (H/T Emily Bazalgette’s This Might Resonate newsletter)
  10. Finally, this SSIR article by the Ford Foundation’s Hillary Pennington on Tackling Inequality Through Social Innovation echoes a lot of our own sector trends and tech justice research projects. This quote in particular hit home:

“If the challenge of the past two decades has been to reckon with systems that are unfair, needless, and out-of-date, the challenge of our time is to replace them with systems that are more inclusive, more equitable, and built on an enduring foundation of justice for all.”

If you have a resource of any kind that you think we should have on our radar, please share it with us! We would love for the wider community to influence our work and provide creative input. 

Drop us a line at hello@thecatalyst.org.uk Or tweet us @wethecatalysts.

Image source: Unsplash

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