Fend off the forces of Armageddon

Keep the legacy alive by starting something new

 

By Maff Potts

 

Lankelly made the mainstream sit up and see them. And that really, really changed things. I think about the risks they took in the past and that if anything they were known for, what’s on their epitaph, was that they backed the wild cards. People talk about lived experience and the voices of homeless people because of the work Lankelly Chase did. They talk about literacy and illiteracy and they talk about the rights of all sorts of people because Lankelly Chase gave them a life and then others saw them. 

 

Now that Lankelly has made the decision, and I wouldn’t presume to try and convince them otherwise, the thing I really like about this idea of a closure is to give it a tail with some fresh energy that plants a culture change for what they stood for. 

 

Sometimes for really positive change to happen you have to burn down the house and start something new. That’s not a bad thing because otherwise you’re always trying to change something that’s not quite right and the energy’s not there.

 

That’s why people give things a new name and rebrand and all of that. Think of starting something new and fresh. It creates an energy and convinces people that change is real. I just want to validate the possibility that closing can be a positive thing if it then gives birth to something with this new energy. That can achieve a lot. 

 

People will speak differently, behave differently as a result. I really do think that. Maybe I’m finally becoming a proper hippie in my old age, but I really do believe this bad energy, good energy thing. 

 

I tried to change institutions by going where the bad energy was, always. I thought that’s what you had to do. Go into the wilderness, convince the heathens.

 

But I ended up getting the shit kicked out of me by people and it nearly ruined my marriage. I was overwhelmed by resistance. When I started going where the good energy was, working with the good people in things that were completely aligned to my ideals, the change was exponential. It wasn’t arithmetic. It changed like that. 

 

Why else do we, Camerados, have more than 270 public living rooms in six countries for God’s sake? That wasn’t me. That was the good energy generated by meeting other people and them saying, “yes, we can. Let’s do that. How about this? You should meet so -and -so”. 

 

Sometimes you can get stuck in that old energy. My own life is a metaphor for Lankelly because eventually I was in a charity that went under. It drained me of everything. 

 

But starting anew, I made sure Camerados was not going to have any of those elements and it was going to have positive-energy people who radiated energy along the lines of the things that I’d learned.

 

I think Lankelly would make a mistake if it just set up another fund. That’s obviously not what it needs to do. It needs to set up something very different that has a more movement vibe, a more empowering vibe, that sort of open source feeling of getting everybody involved.

 

That’s what they’ve been doing for the last 10 years. It was about building something in the mold of what they wanted right from day one, which was about bringing people together, it was about sharing stories, about the power being equally distributed, about mutuality. 

 

There is a way for this new thing that Lankelly could create to have an energy which was all right from the word go, instead of being about dismantling what they had.

 

It is much easier to start something new than dismantling the Tower of Babel.

 

I don’t think it has to be a new organisation. It doesn’t. It might be a new tiny team, a new idea that keeps the torch of what they had because what they had was so unique. I’ve never felt support from a funder like I did from Lankelly. I’ve never had anyone take a chance on me like Julian did. My life would be different. I’ve never had a relationship with grant officers like I did with Joe or Jess.

 

There are things that they did to change the sector, to change the culture by backing those wild cards. That’s a legacy. You don’t want that flame to go out. That has to be preserved. What the vehicle is for preserving it, is it a college, is it a kitemark, is it a convention, what is it? That’s up for grabs, but something has to preserve it. 

 

Otherwise they just go, and the forces of darkness laugh all the way to Armageddon.

 

Story Weaving by Peter Pula

 

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