Inspire North is a parent organisation to charities providing award-winning and accredited mental health and housing services across the north of England. They commissioned Words of Colour, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, to reinforce their organisational commitment to its ‘Ending Racism is Everybody’s Business’ principle.
Over a three-month period we worked across the organisation, from the Board Chair and Vice Chair, Senior Leadership Team and CEO, to its leaders/managers, BAME Employee Network and the Anti-Racist Steering Group over a three-month period in the spring/summer of 2021.
Framed as a ‘Leadership, revisioning and strategic positioning’ consultancy, our approach was to inspire a ‘collaborative leadership’ approach, rooted in the importance of:
- co-production and co-creation
- inclusive communication models
- embedding anti-racist principles into practice and policy
- Inspire North’s guiding values (Passion / People / Integrity / Collaboration)
- connecting to, and empowering, race equality in action.
We facilitated safe (virtual) spaces for this collaborative work to happen. The creatively curated spaces enabled open conversations and explorations, an interrogation of Inspire North’s strategic plan and a more widely owned and shared language of transformation to facilitate the implementation of key recommendations outlined in our report.
Based on action learning principles, the consultancy sessions culminated in a one-day virtual workshop: Ending Racism is Everybody’s Business: Learning in Action Day for Inspire North’s Leaders. The day provided creative action learning, solution-focused and experiential opportunities for over 90 leaders to work together, problem-solve, self-define and self-actualise.