Nothing happens without Lankelly: Maff Potts

Maff Potts, Camerados founder, says their success would not have not been possible without Lankelly Chase

 

By Peter Pula, Generative Journalism Alliance

The world has been graced with over 270 Public Living Rooms in six countries, and the count continues to grow. Camerados, the UK organisation that inspires people from around the world to reclaim public spaces for friendship and connection has, in the last nine years, continued to grow a convivial movement.

 

Camerados founder, Maff Potts, says that would not have been possible without Lankelly  Chase and its radical approach to funding.

 

Maff says Lankelly was instrumental in him having the faith to take his first step. 

 

“They were the only people to back me.” 

 

“So, nothing happens without Lankelly,” Maff says.  

 

“I hesitate to say that because it sounds like a sort of greeting card thing you say. But, well, it is the truth in this case.”

 

Potts recalls sitting in a park with Julian Case, Lankelly Chase CEO, whom he originally met over 20 years ago. 

 

“I sat in a park with Julian, who saw me trying to bring this idea of friends and purpose into social justice for many years. I was always doing it within very, very large organisations and institutions because I didn’t want to set up on my own. I thought that was wasteful. You should use what’s already there. He saw me get all the scars and all the bumps and all the dents on the way. He was a sort of friend on the sidelines who I would talk to as a kindred spirit,” Maff says.

 

Maff shared with Julian that he was now about to start this project, which would become Camerados, within a new organisation. Maff would help that organisation with some of its procurement processes, and in exchange they would provide Maff a desk and support his idea. 

 

“Maff, I think that’s a really bad idea,” Julian says.

 

“These people are just using you to win tenders for their own gain. You need to be on your own, working on this idea outside of all these institutions you keep trying to change. You need time and space to develop the idea, to think about it, and to get it right.”

 

Maff remembers responding, “Well, that’s lovely, Julian, but I also have a wife and three kids and a mortgage to pay. Like, you know, how do I do that, man?”

 

“Well, let me help you with that,” Julian says.

 

And so it was that Julian arranged a tiny seed grant.

 

With that grant, and with support and encouragement from his wife, Maff was able to go from working one day a week on Camerados from a room at the top of his house, to three, then four days a week and finally to full time on the movement.

 

He now had the time he needed to develop the project on its own terms.

 

Things got to the point that Camerados pitched and received, from Lankelly, a significant grant. 

 

With that they were able to establish a community interest company, get a bank account, and really do some projects. 

 

It was always Maff’s desire to stay small, cheap, and have many funders in order to stay under the radar, be independent, and not be a slave to things like outcome frameworks.

 

This new, and more significant, grant gave Maff the confidence to go to other funders. It also got the attention of potential funders. It served as a leverage point.

 

“These funders thought, well, if Lankelly Chase has funded them and they think they’re good, then we’ll take a look. And that’s how we got Esmee Fairbairn, The Lottery, the Tudor Trust.”

 

Eventually Camerados went to The Lottery again and received a very big grant that kept them going for five years. 

 

“But it all started with knowing Lankelly was a linchpin partner,” says Maff.

 

Maff notes another critical role Lankelly played in the Camerados journey: Coming alongside.

 

“It then became really important for us to have Lankelly there to stick up for us when the other funders started behaving badly. Lankelly would fight our corner,” says Maff. 

 

“I’ve never had a relationship with any funder like Lankelly. I developed very personal relationships with, first, Jess Cordingley, and then Joe Duran. They were the proper critical friends who told me straight what they thought.”

 

Maff says that the truth is that he’d have done what he needed to make Camerados happen with no money, and an understanding wife, no matter what. 

 

“But I was only able to do it to this scale and now have 250 public living rooms in five countries because I was able to have time to learn and think,” he says. 

 

And that wouldn’t have happened without Lankelly.

 

 

Editorial support by the Generative Journalism Alliance