Roots of Reggae: Good Time Rock

@JoeSmithDesign Roots of Reggae poster on display at Supertone's Store, Acre Lane, Brixton

It's been an enjoyably hectic couple of weeks or so since my last proper post so I thought I had better get another one written before my thoughts take on a rose-tinted hew and (to continue with the colour theme) my anger at the Coalition's plans to privatise the NHS simply becomes just another grey hair on my weary head.

So where to begin? Gainful employment seems a reassuringly sensible place to start so here goes.

Experience is Everything

A poster which caught my eye whilst on location at James Cake hospital in Middlesbrough

Last time I mentioned I'd picked up some freelance project work with thinkpublic. With much fanfare I can now reveal I've been leading on a piece of work with the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement. The project is looking at how staff and patients experience either delivering or receiving Ambulatory Care services and exploring with them how, in future, we can build better processes for capturing and understanding these experiences in order to improve how services are designed and delivered.

Exploring how staff and patients experience and feel about services is a really powerful way of involving them in identifying and co-designing service improvements. The project is still ongoing but already we have identified lots of new areas for improvement and, more importantly, got people believing that they have the power to improve health services. You can read more about the project, including an explanation of what Ambulatory Care actually means, in the blog I wrote for thinkpublic.

Guardianista Profiling

An ambition realised: my profile on The Guardian Website

 Besides the work for thinkpublic, I'm also proud of the article on co-production which I recently wrote for The Guardian local government network. For the 90 per cent of the population who don't and should never have to know what the term means, co-production simply describes sharing the design and the delivery of public services with users. The article is based on my experience of attending a leadership network event designed to give officers of Lambeth Council the confidence to work in more collaborative ways with their citizens. You can the full piece here.

 I am also pleased to have recently connected with the social enterprise Spots of Time, whose mission is to make it easy for all of us for volunteering our time in fun, bite-sized ways. Rather like the work I've been doing with The Amazings, my involvement with Spots of Time is strictly pro bono for now (and I HATE U2) but hopefully there will be more formal opportunities as the organisation grows and connects with different communities. Watch this space for how things progress.

Roots of Reggae

An even greater ambition realised: Roots of Reggae blowing up the spot at  Sainsbury's Forest Hill

Those of you with the good fortune to have spent any time in my company or read my Tweets may well have heard of a little project I'm developing in my spare time called Roots of Reggae. I don't want  to go overboard in this post but here are a few key milestones:

• Age UK Lambeth have endorsed the project, which should help attract an older crowd than might otherwise get along to the Ritzy Brixton.
• Mistah-Brown Selector of Tighten-Up Crew up and Sly and Reggie have both been brilliant in offering their support to the event. Mistah-Brown in has brought on board his good friends DJ Keith Lawrence and MC DaddyRanks, which means we're in store for a fantastic day of music.
• Support with publicising Roots of Reggaes. Whether it has been DJ David Katz, music store owners Supertone and Blacker Dread, South London Press, The Brixton Bugle or local traders, I have been amazed by the warmth with which Roots of Reggae has been received.

Next Steps

For the next week or so I'll be working hard to ensure the Roots of Reggae launch is a success. I'll look to write a separate post this weekend on my experiences of developing the project. Other than that, I'm looking to continue with the freelance work whilst looking for new opportunities.

You can follow developments with Roots of Reggae on Twitter @RootsofReggae but to really get what I'm talking about make sure to get along to the FREE launch event on the afternoon of Saturday 3rd December.