For over twenty years I have been developing a set of tools and methods that support good listening and enable me to understand the reality of other people’s lives. I think a good process needs to do 3 things: get close to the granular reality of people’s stories; connect at the system level – enabling me to see the wider structures that do or don’t make things possible; and enable action – the transition from analysis to making something new that works and can grow. I collaborate closely with designers and I draw on the tools of rapid rural appraisal, psychoanalysis and anthropology. I am continually learning and growing the methods I use. I think how we work is as important as what we work on and the design process I discuss in my forthcoming book Radical Help enables the inter-disciplinary collaborations at the heart of all the project work I am part of.
