Creativity Integrity Connection

Blog Author: Catherine Squire

Talking to field-based staff of NGOs leaves me dizzy with the number and variety of activities that they are expected to do in their daily work. The sheer volume of targets and deadlines is a huge source of stress and pressure for people. Management courses spend a lot of time teaching ways to manage this, […]

I came back recently from a week of training in Niger for Concern. It was my first time there, and two images stick in my mind: a stunning sunset over the huge glittering expanse of the Niger river, and the family of peacocks in the hotel garden. I have no memories of street life, of […]

Framework supported the development of Barefoot Guide 4 on ‘The Real Work of Social Change’ with both a contribution their fundraising page and Orla facilitating one of the online workshops pro bono. Now they are starting work on a new Guide: here’s the link to get involved through the Barefoot Guide Connection on Facebook.

We’ve just come back from our autumn retreat and we’re full of energy and good ideas. We all facilitate team events in the course of our work, so it is salutary to do it ‘to’ ourselves – a great reminder of how important it is to get the balance right between content and creativity and […]

How to maximise the benefits of working together, and minimise the chance of misunderstandings and conflict? That was an early question when Orla and I started working together on an evaluation for Fight For Peace International. We decided it would be useful to talk about how we’d work together and make sure we knew what […]

Over the last few years, I’ve noticed some changes in the pattern of my own work, but I hadn’t realised it was part of a bigger picture for consultants in the UK voluntary sector. As part of a process of thinking about it’s own future, MDN (Management Development Network) organised a day of discussion on […]

We’re really pleased to welcome Orla Cronin as a new member of the Framework collective. Orla’s main work is around developing and implementing effective M&E systems for learning. She brings three completely new areas of expertise to Framework: facilitation of online workshops, experience in “Sport for Development”, and training in facilitation, and in qualitative data […]

It’s been a very rewarding month with trips to both Haiti and Burundi for the second of the Pathway workshops for Concern Worldwide, which I’m doing with INTRAC.

We always look forward to getting together for our retreats, but this time it felt strange that there would only be three of us, with Gopal possibly joining us from Juba for a session on skype. It’s surprising how different each retreat feels, even though the basic formula is always the same. We arrive at […]

I’ve had a lot of fun learning about film making on a short course organised by my local Picturehouse cinema. Ryd Cook, our tutor, is a young film maker fizzing with ideas and enthusiasm and over a series of 10 sessions introduced us to semi-professional video cameras, sound recording, filming, and editing. I was interested […]