Curating Spaces of Hope: Embodying Leadership in Uncertain Times

The Queen is dead, long live the King!

A post-Elizabethan era begins, and with it an existential shift unlike anything experienced, certainly since World War Two, maybe in our history. When the pandemic hit, Her Majesty said that ‘we will meet again’ and so it was, but in so doing we note the depths of uncertainty surrounding us. Something has changed; deep, intangible, fundamental. Life is more fragile than it was. The cost of living crisis bites, catalysed by Brexit. The Climate Crisis continues, exemplified by catastrophic floods in Pakistan and temperatures in the UK over 40 degrees for the first time. The war in Ukraine rages, displacing millions and rupturing the geopolitical terrain. These concerns are shaping our lives in different ways at personal, communal, societal and global levels.

With Her Majesty’s passing, tributes centred on her leadership, noting the depth of commitment she offered:

I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong.

Princess Elizabeth, Speech on her 21st birthday, April 21, 1947, broadcast on the radio from Cape Town.

In hearing this and in seeing the global response to this profound loss, I was challenged to ask, how might we all embody leadership for uncertain times? In my paper to the British & Irish Association of Practical Theology, conference on July 13, 2022, which carried the same title as this essay, I explored this question, which has now been given fresh significance and momentum. Curating Spaces of Hope emerged from lived experience of contexts of uncertainty from 2010-2020, a decade bookended by the global financial crash and the global pandemic. It was rooted in experiences of unemployment, poor mental health, social isolation, coercive and controlling behaviour, blackmail, abuse and discrimination. As time moved on, it was shaped by a social movement, public dialogues, and ethnographic research into organisational approaches, physically engaging circa 1000 people in urban spaces in north west England. In terms of what emerged, the Inquiry into the Future of Civil Society in England described Curating Spaces of Hope as bringing;

together innovative mixes of civil society actors – from professional community practitioners through to individual community activists – to ‘meaning-make’ as a response to experiences of pointlessness and emptiness in personal, community and professional life.

Civil Society Futures: The Independent Inquiry, Civil Society in England: Its current state and future opportunity (2018), 22.

Through doctoral research at Goldsmiths University of London, Curating Spaces of Hope offers a new paradigm and consultative methodology for faith based organisation.[1] It is defined in terms of 1) embodying responses to liminality, 2) characterised by different and creative potential, 3) expressed in rhizomatic or non-linear forms, and 4) productive of shared values and practices. This publication is not the place for unpacking these terms. Other references for exploring the paradigm further are available.[2] However, what is generally meant by Curating Spaces of Hope is, a means of mapping and mobilising responses to lived experiences of uncertainty, which are more than the sum of their parts.

This process begins with each of us. Curating Spaces of Hope is the task of leaders, committed to their context and drawing on all that they have, to offer to others what they can, to make the world a better place. This is for each of us to do as ‘Curators,’ for which 5 principles have emerged[3] from the Curating Spaces of Hope journey to date and are here for you to consider:

Freedom: The potential we have within us and the ability we have to make that real and tangible. Put another way, taking responsibility, and sharing the fullest possible expression of our personality.

Relationship: We are in relationship with everyone and everything, from the people we love to the places we live, to the rest of the world as we see it. Relationships help us to understand the freedom that we have positively, in terms of freedom for others, as opposed to freedom from others.

Service: Expressing freedom, in relationship with others is service; the incarnation of our potential as expressions of leadership in the multitude of different ways that this manifests itself.

Affect: Expressions of service can come in a wide variety of forms, each can be both subtle and significant and are simultaneously synonymous with hope. The principle of affect is a guide to be aware of and sensitive to everything around us. As the pandemic has taught us, the smallest of sources can bring hope.

Authenticity: Finally, we should consider if the freedom we are sharing through relationship with others and expressing through service that is affective and affected by what is around us, fits within our wider story. This is not an inward sense of authenticity that we decide upon for ourselves, but an outward question for others to answer about whether what we are doing is truly hopeful and hope filled.

With the death of Her Majesty, we have lost a giant in history, who has exhibited for us what it means to embody leadership in uncertain times. As this era of uncertainty continues to be ushered in apace, it is over to all of us to respond. My invitation to you is to explore these principles for yourself and consider what embodying leadership means for you by Curating Spaces of Hope.

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References

[1] Matthew Barber-Rowell, “Curating Spaces of Hope: Towards a Liminal Rhizomatic and Productive Paradigm of Faith Based Organisation (FBO),” (Goldsmiths, University of London: PhD Thesis, 2021).

[2] Matthew Barber-Rowell, “Curating Spaces of Hope: Coproducing shared values in uncertain times” Sociology Study International Journal (Forthcoming); Matthew Barber-Rowell, “Curating Spaces of Hope: Exploring the Potential for Intra-Communities’ Dialogue (ICD) and Faith-Based Organisations, in a Post-COVID Society,” Journal of Dialogue Studies 9 (2021): 11-33; Matthew Barber-Rowell, “Curating Spaces of Hope: Towards a new paradigm of Faith Based Organisation (FBO) for post-pandemic policy and practice,” International Journal of Urban Governance (Forthcoming).

[3] Matthew Barber-Rowell, Curating Spaces of Hope: Coproducing Local Leadership for post-pandemic society (William Temple Foundation, 2022).

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© Matthew Barber-Rowell, 2022.

This work is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

Cover Image: © Spaces of Hope, 2022.

A version of this article also appeared in the William Temple Foundation Blog.